1. Poetry PowerPoint Review
The Essential Elements of Poetry

2. figurative language
Language that communicates ideas beyond the literal meaning of words.
Example:
Every few years
Tia Chucha would visit the family
In a tornado of song
And open us up
As if we were an overripe avocado.
Luis Rodriguez, from “Tia Chucha”

3. simile
A figure of speech that compares two things that have something in common, using a word such as like or as.
Example:
Abigail Adam’s statement “power and liberty are like heat and moisture.”
Thoreau’s statement “we live meanly, like ants.”

4. metaphor
A figure of speech that compares two things that have something in common. Unlike similes, metaphors do not use the word like or as, but make comparisons directly.
Example:
Abigail Adam’s statement “our country is… the first and greatest parent.”

5. personification
A figure of speech in which an object, animal, or idea is given human characteristics.
Example:
In Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death,” death is personified as a gentlemen of kindness and civility.

6. hyperbole
A figure of speech in which the truth is exaggerated for emphasis or for humorous effect.
Example:
The expression “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

7. alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words. Poets use alliterations to impart a musical quality to their poems, to create mood, to reinforce meaning, to emphasize particular words, and to unify lines or stanzas.
Example:
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan Poe, from “The Raven”

8. assonance
Repetition of vowel sounds within words. Both poets and prose writers use assonance to impart a musical quality to their works, to create mood, to reinforce meaning, to emphasize particular words, and to unify lines, stanzas, or passages.
Example:
Along the window sill, the lipstick stubs
Glittered in their steel shells.
Rita Dove, from “Adolescence—III”

9. consonance
The repetition of consonant sounds within and at the ends of words.
Example:
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.
Edgar Allan Poe, from “The Raven”

10. lyric poem
A lyric poem is a short poem in which a single speaker expresses thoughts and feelings in intensely emotional language. In a love lyric, a speaker expresses romantic love. In other lyrics, a speaker may meditate on nature or seek to resolve an emotional crisis.
Example:
“To My Dear and Loving Husband”

11. meter
Meter is the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry. Each unit, known as a foot, has one stressed syllable and either one or two unstressed syllables.
Example:
“To My Dear and Loving Husband” is written in iambic pentameter.

12. iambic pentameter
One of the basic types of meter where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable.
Example:
If ev er man were loved by wife then thee.
From “To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet

13. onomatopoeia Literal meaning “name-making”
It is the process of creating or using words that imitate sounds.
Examples:
The buzz of the bee, the honk of the car horn, the peep of the chick

14. repetition
The recurrence of words, phrases, or lines. Sometimes repetition is incremental: the structure of a line or stanza is repeated a certain number of times, with a slight variation in wording each time.
Example:
The sequence “May the warp be…/ May the weft be…/ May the border be…” is incremental repetition.

15. rhyme
The similarity of sound between two words. Words rhyme when the sounds of their accented vowels, and all succeeding sounds, are identical
Example:
Tether and together
Internal rhyme is a rhyme that occurs within a single line.
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
Edgar Allan Poe, from “The Raven”

16. rhyme scheme
When rhyme comes at the end of a line of poetry, it is called end rhyme. The pattern of end rhyme in a poem is called the rhyme scheme.
Example:
In silent night when rest I took
For sorrow near I did not look
I wakened was with thund’ring noise
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
That fearful sound of “Fire!” and “Fire!”
Let no man know is my desire.
“Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet

17. rhythm
The pattern or flow of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. Some poems follow a regular pattern, or meter, of accented or unaccented syllables. Poets use rhythm to bring out the musical quality of language, to emphasize ideas, to create mood, and to reinforce subject matter.