1. P OETIC T ERMS & D EVICES

2. F ORM The arrangement of words and the way a poem looks on a page Examples: haiku, ballad, blank verse, cinquain, limerick, and sonnet

3. L INE The form in which poems are written The lines may or may not be complete sentences.

4. S TANZA A group of lines within a poem A stanza is the equivalent of what a paragraph would be in a work of prose.

5. S PEAKER The speaker of a poem is the voice that relates the story or ideas of the poem. The speaker may be the poet, speaking directly to the reader, or the speaker may be a character or voice created by the poet.

6. IDIOM A descriptive expression that is not meant to be taken literally Examples: It’s a piece of cake….Speak your mind…Getting cold feet

7. R HYTHM The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line Stressed syllables ( ) are read with more emphasis, and unstressed syllables (  ) are read with less emphasis. Some poems have a regular, repeated arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables. This is called meter.

8. R EPETITION The repeating of sounds, words, phrases, or whole lines This is a device poets use to emphasize an idea or create a certain feeling.

9. A LLITERATION The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words Ex: the “w” in the line : “And wait to watch the water clear, I may.”

10. O NOMATOPOEIA The use of words whose sounds suggest their meanings, such as crack, boom, and bang

11. I MAGERY Language that appeals to the reader’s five senses---sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch Writer’s often use imagery to draw readers into a scene. Ex. “ blistering sands”/ “feather clouds”

12. S IMILE A comparison that uses the signal word like, as or than. Example: Her eyes shone like stars.

13. M ETAPHOR A metaphor is a direct comparison, with no signal words. “Into the sea of death” is a metaphor that compares death to the sea.

14. P ERSONIFICATION When a poet describes an animal or objects as if it were human or had human qualities Ex.: “The warm smile of the sun…”

15. S YMBOLISM Symbolism occurs when an object has meaning in and of itself and is also used to represent an abstract idea. Example: In Call of the Wild, the color red was symbolic of savagery.

16. R HYME S CHEME The pattern of rhymes in a poem. A rhyme scheme can be described by using letters to represent the rhyming sounds at the ends of lines. Lines that rhyme are given the same letter. Example: If I can stop one Heart from breaking a I shall not live in vain b If I can ease one Life the Aching a Or cool one Pain b

17. R HYME Rhyme is the repetition of sounds at the end of words. Words rhyme when their accented vowels and all the letters that follow have identical sounds. Example: dog, log End rhyme - the most common form of rhyme in poetry, where the rhyming words occur at the end of lines. Internal rhyme - rhyme that occurs within a line Slant rhyme - A.K.A. near rhyme or half- rhyme…occurs when rhyming words have similar but not exact or identical rhyming sounds

18. C OUPLET A rhymed pair of lines in a poem. Example: The garbage reached across the state/From New York to the Golden Gate

19. A SSONANCE The repetition of vowel sounds Example: A nnie A pple is a n a nt.

20. V ERSE Writing arranged with metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme Poetry is written in verse.

21. S ONNET A sonnet is a poetic form. The word sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto” which means “little song”. A sonnet contains 14 lines and can have several rhyme schemes. The Shakespearean sonnet has 14 lines with 10 syllables each.

22. H YPERBOLE The use of exaggeration or overstatement for emphasis Example: I am so hungry, I could eat a horse.