Transcript Poetry Terms - Glacier Peak High School :: Home

Poetry Terms and
Techniques
Glacier Peak
High School
So.. you think you know
All about poetry?
Let’s see!
Yes, you must take notes!
I am not kidding!
Types of Poetry
Narrative Poetry- a narrative poem is one that tells a
story. Types of narrative poetry include ballads and
epics.
Lyric Poetry- a highly musical verse that expresses
the emotions of the speaker. Common types are
sonnets, odes, free verse and elegies.
Dramatic poetry- a dramatic poem is a verse that
relies heavily on dramatic elements such as
monologue, or dialogue. Two types of dramatic
poetry are dramatic monologue and soliloquy.
What’s a Ballad?
Come on… I know you can
guess…
Ballad: a narrative poem, sometimes
sung, that tells a dramatic story.
What about….
An acrostic poem?
What’s that?
Acrostic poem: The first letters of the lines in an
spell a word, often the subject of the poem.
Another very incredibly
Intelligent and intuitive
Xena type warrior princess teacher with
An attitude.
Domo arigato
gozaimashita
Ok hotshots!
What’s an epic poem?
Epic : a long narrative poem centering on a
heroic figure who represents the fate of a nation.
Beowulf is an Old
English heroic epic
poem of anonymous
authorship. In the poem,
Beowulf, a hero of the
Geats, battles three
antagonists: Grendel,
Grendel's mother; and,
later in life after
becoming a king, an
unnamed dragon.
Ah…Obi-wan has taught you well.
The force is with you young Skywalker,
but you are not a Jedi yet.
- Darth Vader
Define concrete poem.
Concrete poem is written in a shape that adds meaning
to the poem.
A little too easy…- Darth Vader
Define free verse..
Free verse : poetry with no set
rhythm or rhyme.
Ha! Impressive… most impressive..Darth Vader
A challenge you say!
Here you are! Define blank verse!
Blank verse: unrhymed
iambic pentameter.
A bit of tutoring you need hmmm..- Yoda
And if a person is to become one with the
force….what type of poem shall we write for
them hmmmm?
Elegy or Elegiac poem: a meditative poem
mourning the death of an individual.
What’s a …

Dramatic Monologue?
 Soliloquy
Dramatic monologue: a poem in which a
character addresses an audience.

A fictional character, at a critical or dramatic
point in life, addresses a particular “audience”,
which his identifiable but silent. In the course
of the monologue, we learn a great deal, often
ironically, about the character who is speaking
and the circumstance that have led to the
speech.
Soliloquy

A form of monologue found most often in
drama. It differs from a dramatic monologue in
that the speaker is alone, revealing thoughts
and feelings to or for oneself that are
intentionally unheard by other characters in
Shakespeare’s plays for example the principal
characters’ reflections on how to act or
questions of conscience are revealed in their
soliloquies. “To be or not to be…”
(Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
See if you can get this clue…
The next poem rhymes with the last word in the
above sentence. It originated in an archipelago
famous for natural disasters, especially tsunamis and
earthquakes.
Haiku: a three-line poem usually about nature,
with this syllable pattern: 5,7,5. This style
originated in Japan.
The old bicycle
leaning against the lamp post
Will it fall over?
Alright poetic geniuses…
What is another poem
similar to haiku but
longer?
Tanka: a five-line poem usually about emotions with this syllable pattern:
5,7,5,7,7.
The tanka poem is very similar to haiku but tanka poems have
more syllables and it uses simile, metaphor and
personification.
There are five lines in a Tanka poem.
Line one - 5 syllables
Line two - 7 syllables
Line three - 5 syllable
Line four - 7 syllables
Line five - 7 syllables
Beautiful mountains
Rivers with cold, cold water.
White cold snow on rocks.
Trees over the place with frost.
White sparkly snow everywhere.
Tanka poems are written about nature, seasons, love, sadness
and other strong emotions. This form of poetry dates back
almost 1200 years.
Ok champs.. Lets see you get this one…
???: a meditation or celebration of a specific subject.
Ode: a meditation or celebration of a specific subject.
Excerpt from
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
By John Keats
What leaf-fringed legend haunts
about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What
maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to
escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild
ecstasy?
Let’s see if you get this one….
___________ : a
poem of fourteen lines in
iambic pentameter.
Sonnet: a poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, (a)
With conquering limbs astride from land to land; (b)
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand (b)
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame (a)
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name (a)
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand (b)
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command (b)
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. (a)
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she (c)
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, (d)
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, (c)
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. (d)
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, (c)
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (d)
Emma Lazarus, 1883
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments. Love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)
O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring barque, (c)
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come; (f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (f)
If this be error and upon me proved, (g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)
A quick quiz: Do you know…

Stanza_________________
 Rhyme ________________
 Rhyme scheme ______________
Stanza: grouping of lines within a
poem.
Rhyme: repetition of the same
sound.
Rhyme scheme: a regular pattern
of end rhyme in a poem.
Ok, so lets now go over common
FORMS OF STANZA!
What’s a couplet?
What’s a couplet?
Je nais se
pas!
Couplet: two lines of poetry that usually
rhyme.
Avocado Girl
By: Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez
I am an ahuacatl of ancient days,
Of both past and present ways.
I am an aguacate of a familiar green,
A nuyorbronxrican Queen.
I am an avocado with rough Bronx skin,
both Latina and American.
Not bad.. Not bad..
How about a tercet? Or triplet?
Triplet or tercet: any three lines of poetry, whether as a
stanza or as a poem, rhymed or unrhymed, metered or
unmetered.
I am a yellow dog
who wishes he was
a purple-spotted frog.
You are getting it!
And now.. a quatrain?
Quatrain: four lines of poetry that usually have a rhyme
scheme.

A quatrain is a poem, or a stanza within a poem, that
consists always of four lines. It is the most common of
all stanza forms in European poetry. The rhyming
patterns include aabb, abab, abba, abcb.
Example: aabb (from William Blake, "The Tyger")
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
A cinquain? A quintain? It’s
driving me insane!
You can do it!
USE THE FORCE!
Cinquain: a five-line poem
In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.
-A.E. Houseman, “Bredon Hill”
Does it ever end?

Sestet: six lines
O, young Lochnivar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war.
There never was knight like the young Lochnivar.
- Sir Walter Scott, “Lochnivar”
Nope….

Heptastich: seven lines
The flower that smiles today
Tomorrow dies;
All that we wish to stay
Tempts and then flies;
What is this world’s delight?
Lightning, that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mutability”
Last one! I promise!

Octave: eight lines
Labor is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?
O body swayed to the music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
- William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children”
Quick quiz

Sestet: _________________________
 Heptastich: ______________________
 Octave: _________________________
Ok.. now Rhythm and Rhyme!
Techniques of Poetry: Sound
Rhyme

End Rhyme- the use of rhyming words at
the ends of lines.
 Internal rhyme: use of rhyming words
within lines
 Slant Rhyme- use of rhyming sounds that
are similar but not identical, as in rave and
rove or rot and rock. (consonance is a type
of slant rhyme).
Ok, ok… how about
Alliteration and consonance?
Alliteration: repetition of initial
consonant sounds.
Sometimes some students
decide to stand instead of
sitting, to speak when
someone is speaking and
simply act silly.
Consonance: same consonant sound
Avocado Girl
By: Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez
I am an ahuacatl of ancient days,
Of both past and present ways.
I am an aguacate of a familiar green,
A nuyorbronxrican Queen.
I am an avocado with rough Bronx skin,
both Latina and American.
Ok keep it clean…
What is assonance?
Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds among words that
begin or end with different consonants.
"Do you like blue?".
How now brown cow
Hear the mellow wedding
bells.
— Edgar Allan Poe, "The
Bells"
Meter and rhythm: movement and pattern in a poem.

Metrical verse follows a set rhythmical
pattern. Free verse or vers libre, does not.
 The meter of a poem is its rhythmical pattern.
 English verse is made of rhythmical units
called feet. A foot is made up of weakly
stressed (˘) and strongly stressed (/) syllables.
Poetry has feet?
Type of Foot
Pattern
Example
Iamb, or iambic foot
˘/
afraid
Trochee, or trochaic foot
/˘
freedom
Anapest, or anapestic foot
˘ ˘/
in a flash
Dactyl, or dactylic foot
/˘˘
feverish
Spondee, or spondaic foot
//
baseball
Pyrrhee or pyrrhic foot
˘˘
unbelievable
How many feet does your poem have?
Term
Number of feet Example
monometer
one foot
And I
Shall fly
away
dimeter
two feet
After autumn
Comes the winter
trimeter
three feet
In the midst of mourning
tetrameter
four feet
O saddle up my milk white steed
pentameter
five feet
That time of year thou may’st in me behold
hexameter
six feet
A perfect knight he was, that all could
plainly see.
Iambic pentameter: ten syllables with 2nd, 4th 6th, 8th,
10th syllables accented.

Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter.
Techniques of Poetry: Meaning

Image- language that creates a concrete representation of an
object or an experience.
 Objective correlative- group of images that together create a
given emotion in a reader or listener.
 Figure of speech or trope is an expression that has more than a
literal meaning.
 Hyperbole- an exaggeration made for rhetorical effect.
 Metaphor- figure of speech in which one t thing is spoken or
written about as if it were another.
 Tenor of the metaphor is the writer’s actual subject.
 The vehicle of the metaphor is the other thing to which the
subject is compared or likened.
 Personification and similes are types of metaphor.
Techniques of Poetry: Meaning cont’d

Metonymy- the naming of an object associated with a
thing instead of the name of the thing itself. Ex: The
White House for the President, or The Crown for the
King.
 Simile- a comparison using like or as.
 Synaesthesia- a figure of speech that combines in a
single expression images related to two or more
different senses. Ex. Singing light.
 Synecdoche- a figure of speech in which the name of
a part of something is used in place of the name of the
whole or vice versa. Ex. Hired hands = laborers
Rhetorical techniques







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Rhetorical techniques are extraordinary but literal use of language to achieve a
particular effect.
Antithesis- a rhetorical technique in which words, phrases or ideas are strongly
contrasted often by repeating a grammatical structure. Ex; to err is human, to
forgive divine.”
Apostrophe- rhetorical technique in which an object or person is directly addressed.
Catalog- a list of people or things
Chiasmus- a rhetorical technique in which the order of occurrence of words or
phrases is reversed. Ex.: we can weather changes but we can’t change the weather.
Parallelism- a rhetorical technique in which a writer emphasizes the equal value or
weight of two or more ideas by expressing them in the same grammatical form, as
in the phrase “with hope, with joy, and with love.”
Repetition- writers conscious reuse of a sound, a word, phrase sentence or other
element.
Rhetorical question: a question asked for effect but not meant to be answered
because the answer is clear from the context.
Structure and Language in Poetry

Allegory- a narrative in prose or verse, in
which abstract ideas, principles human values
or states d of mind are personified. The
purpose of the allegory is to illustrate the
significance of the ideas by dramatizing them.
Parable and fable are kinds of allegory in
which a moral I illustrated in the form of a
story.
Allusion

A reference to a historical event, to Biblical,
mythological or literary characters and incidents with
which the reader is assumed to be familiar. Allusion
may , with few words, enrich or extend the meaning
of a phrase or idea or image, Allusion may also be
used for ironic effect. In his poem Out Rober frost
expects the reader to recall from Macbeth’s final
soliloquy the line “Out out brief candle “ Such
expressions as “ a Herculean task” or “Achilles heel”
are also forms of allusion.
Ambiguity

Denotes uncertainty of meaning. In literature
and especially poetry, we speak of intentional
ambiguity, the use of language and images to
suggest more than one meaning at the same
time.
Connotation

The feelings attitudes images and associations
of a word or expression. Connotations are
usually said to be “positive’ or “negative”
Denotation

That which a word actually names, identifies,
or “points to” Denotation is sometimes
referred to as “the dictionary definition” of a
work.
Figurative Language

The intentional and imaginative use of words
and comparisons that are not literal but that
create original, vivid, and often unexpected
images and associations .
Hyperbole

An exaggerated expression also called
overstatement, for a particular effect, which
may be humorous, satirical, or intensely
emotional. Hyperbole is the expression of
folktales and legends.
 Ex. I have mountains of work to do.
Irony

In general a tone or figure of speech in which
there is a discrepancy a striking difference or
contradiction between what is expressed and
what is meant or expected. Irony maybe used
to achieve a powerful effect indir4ectly. In
satire, for example it may be used to ridicule or
criticize.
Metaphor

Form of analogy or comparison where the
author finds and expresses similarity between
dissimilar things.
Onomatopoeia

The use of words or phrases that sound like the
things to which they refer. Examples include
the words meow, clink, boom, and mumble.
Oxymoron

Related to paradox, oxymoron is a figure of
speech in which two contradictory or sharply
contrasting terms are paired fro emphasis or
ironic effect. Students favorite examples
include “jumbo shrimp” and “army
Intelligence.” Poets have written of the “wise
fool” “ Joyful sadness” or and “eloquent
silence.”
Paradox

An expression concept of situation whose
literal statement is contradictory , yet which
makes a truthful and meaningful observation.
“ Less is more”
Satire

A form or style that uses elements of irony,
ridicule, exaggeration , understatement,
sarcasm, humor or absurdity to criticize human
behavior or a society.
Simile

An expression that is a direct comparison of
two things using words as like a s as if seems
and appears.
 “ I wandered lonely as a cloud” (William
Wordsworth
Speaker

The narrative voice in a poem. Also the
character who speaks in a dramatic monologue
Symbol

Anything that stands for or suggests something
else.
Understatement

Expression in which something is presented as
less important or significant than it really is.
Understatement is often used for humorous,
satiric or ironic effect.
 “ He was not without imagination” (Mark
Twain)
Unit Quiz
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Stanza: grouping of lines within a poem.
Rhyme: repetition of the same sound.
Rhyme scheme: a regular pattern of end rhyme in a
poem.
Meter and rhythm: movement and pattern in a poem
Iambic pentameter: ten syllables with 2nd, 4th 6th, 8th,
10th syllables accented.
Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Acrostic poem: The first letters of the lines in an spell a
word, often the subject of the poem.
Free verse : poetry with no set rhythm or rhyme.
Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds.
Consonance: same consonant sound
Quiz cont’d
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds among words that begin or end with different
consonants.
Internal rhyme: pattern where words within a line rhyme with the one that ends it.
Couplet: two lines of poetry that usually rhyme.
Triplet or tercet: any three lines of poetry, whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or
unrhymed, metered or unmetered.
Quatrain: four lines of poetry that usually have a rhyme scheme.
Cinquain: a five-line poem, with this syllable pattern 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.
Ballad: a narrative poem, sometimes sung, that tells a dramatic story.
Epic : a long narrative poem centering on a heroic figure who represents the fate of a
nation.
Concrete poem is written in a shape that adds meaning to the poem.
Elegy: a meditative poem mourning the death of an individual.
Dramatic monologue: a poem in which a character addresses an audience.
Haiku: a three-line poem usually about nature, with this syllable pattern: 5,7,5. This
style originated in Japan.
Tanka: a five-line poem usually about emotions with this syllable pattern: 5,7,5,7,7.
Lyric: poems that are brief and express a powerful emotion Ode: a meditation or
celebration of a specific subject.