1. The technique behind the words
Poetic Devices
The technique behind the words

2. Figurative Language
What is figurative language? Language using figures of speech (a way of saying one thing and meaning another)

3. Why use figurative language?
Figurative language helps a writer show meaning and expression. If a writer does not create an image in the reader’s mind, he will lose the reader’s attention.

4. Simile
A figure of speech that creates a comparison between two things usually unalike. The comparison is made by using such words or phrases as like, as, than, similar to, resembles, appears, or seems.
EX: “Her eyes are like stars!”
“Life is like a box of chocolate.”

5. Metaphor
A figure of speech that creates a comparison between two things usually unalike. Doesn’t use connective words such as like or as.
EX: “Her eyes are jewels!”
“Life is a game.”

6. Personification
is giving human traits (qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics) to non-living objects (things, colors, qualities, or ideas).
EX: “The diamonds are jealous of your beauty!”
"The wind whispered through the night."

7. Stanza
A stanza is a group of lines that act like sentences. The sentences combine together to make stanzas, or paragraphs, of poetry.

8. Repetition
Poets can utilize this technique to repeat sounds, vowels, consonants, words, single lines, or in fact whole stanzas. This repetition can help create images and feelings for the reader.
EX: “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’ ”

9. Rhyme Scheme
The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, such as the ababbcc
I put a piece of cantaloupe a
Underneath the microscope a
I saw a million strange things sleepen’ b
I saw a zillion weird things creepen’ b

10. Alliteration
Also called head rhyme or initial rhyme, the repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) of stressed syllables in neighboring words or at short intervals within a line or passage, usually at word beginnings
"wild and woolly,"
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

11. ASSONANCE
The relatively close juxtaposition of the same or similar vowel sounds, but with different end consonants in a line or passage, thus a vowel rhyme, as in the words, date and fade

12. How pure, how dear their dwelling-place
ASSONANCE
One shade the more, one ray the less,     Had half impair'd the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress,     Or softly lightens o'er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place