1. A unique and creative form of expression
Poetry
A unique and creative form of expression

2. Poetry Appreciation Reading a poem for its ‘total effect’
Understanding poetic devices employed
Examples of poetry

3. Interpretation Meaning – What is the poet/poem attempting to convey
Story line of the poem
Narrative or lyrical poem
Theme

4. Interpretation Language Question why the poet chooses
certain words. What do they
represent? What do you associate with the word?

5. Interpretation Form Why is the poem arranged the
way that it is? How does it
reflect the content of the poem?

6. Interpretation Sound Which poetic devices related to
sound are being used? What is
the rhyme scheme? How does
the sound of the poem reflect the
meaning?

7. Interpretation Total Effect How do all the elements of the
poem: meaning; language; form;
sound; work together to create
the ‘total effect?’

8. Poetic Devices
Alliteration – The repetition of initial consonant sounds.
Seven slithering snakes slid by.
Assonance – The repetition of vowel sounds.
How now brown cow?
In the total effect interpretation of poems, these poetic devices relate to sound.

9. Poetic Devices
Imagery – Words or phrases that appeal to any sense or any combination of senses.
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils…’
William Wordsworth

10. Poetic Devices
Metaphor – A comparison between two objects with the intent of giving clearer meaning to one of them.
The sun was a golden coin.
Simile – A comparison between two objects using the specific words ‘like’ or ‘as.’
She had eyes like a frog.

11. Poetic Devices
Meter – The recurrence of a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Iamb – A metrical foot, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one or short syllable followed by a long one.
Iambic Pentameter – A line of verse with 5 metrical feet. In a 10 syllable line of verse, every other syllable is stressed.
(Popularized by Shakespeare)

12. Poetic Devices Onomatopoeia – The use of words to imitate sounds.
Buzz, Chew, Crunch, Sizzle, etc.
Personification – A figure of speech which endows animals, ideas, or inanimate objects with human traits or abilities.
The winter wind howled and tormented us.

13. Poetic Devices
Point-of-view-The author’s/poet’s point-of-view is their vantage point of the speaker (or teller) of the story or poem.
1st person: the speaker is a character in the story or poem and tells it from his/her perspective using ‘I.’
3rd person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters with limited information about what one character sees and feels.
3rd person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to ‘know’ and describe what all the characters are thinking.

14. Poetic Devices
Repetition – the repeating of words, phrases, lines or stanzas.
The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe
…with the bells, Silver bells!
…bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells…

15. Poetic Devices
Rhyme – The similarity of ending sounds existing between two words.
They are all gone away,
The house is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.
Edwin Arlington Robinson

16. Poetic Devices
Rhyme scheme – The sequence in which the rhyme occurs. The first end sound is represented with the letter ‘a’, the second is ‘b,’ etc.
They are all gone away, (a)
The house is shut and still, (b)
There is nothing more to say. (a)
Through broken walls and gray(a)
The winds blow bleak and shrill:(b)
They are all gone away.(a)

17. Poetic Devices
Stanza – The grouping of two or more lines of a poem in terms of length, metrical form or rhyme scheme.
Couplet – A stanza with two lines.
Quattrain - A stanza with four lines.

18. In Depth Interpretation
Ask yourself the following questions:
What is the dramatic situation?
What is the structure of the poem?
What is the theme?
Are the grammar and meaning clear?
What are the important images or figures of speech?

19. What are the most important single words used in the poem?
What is the tone of the poem?
What literary devices does the poem employ?
What is the prosody of the poem?

20. Review of Poetry Poetry has its own form
The foot, line, and stanza are the building blocks
Meter and rhyme are sound effects of poetry
There are many types of rhyme forms
There are many types of poetic feet: iambic, trochaic, anapestic, etc.

21. Review cont’d There are several stanza forms
Narrative poetry tells stories
Ballads are simple narratives
Lyric poetry is subjective and emotional
Odes are formal lyrics that honor something or someone
Elegies are lyrics that mourn a loss

22. Review cont’d
Dramatic monologues converse with the reader as they reveal events
The sonnet is a 14 line form of poetry
The villanelle is a fixed form that depends on refrains
Levels of interpretation depend on the literal and figurative meaning of poems
Symbols provide for many levels of interpretation

23. Review cont’d
When comparing and contrasting poems, remember to consider speaker, subject, situation, devices, tone and theme

24. Poetry interpretation and analysis considers a multitude of factors, and requires insight and understanding of language, words, imagery and literary elements to fully appreciate it.