Elements of Poetry

VOICE
is a word people use to talk about the way poems "talk" to the reader.

•      Some other types of voice are mask, apostrophe, and conversation.

•      Mask puts on the identity of someone or something else, and speaks for it.

•      Apostrophe talks to something that can't answer (a bee, the moon, a tree) and is good for wondering, asking, or offering advice.

•      Conversation is a dialogue between two voices and often asks us to guess who the voices are.

     IMAGERY

•      Representation of the FIVE senses like sight, taste, touch, sound, smell.

•      Creates mental image about a poem’s subject.

•   The formation of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things, or of such 
      images collectively.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

•      Figures of speech are also called figurative language. The most well-known figures of speech are simile, metaphor, and personification. They are used to help with the task of "telling, not showing."

•      Simile - a comparison of one thing to another, using the words "like," "as," or "as though."

•      Metaphor - comparing one thing to another by saying that one thing is another thing. Metaphors are stronger than similes, but they are more difficult to see.

•      Personification - speaking as if something were human when it's not.

SYMBOLISM

•      The practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character.

•      Not to be confused with metaphors (expressions making figurative comparisons between unlike things for the purpose of describing one of them with greater precision), symbols are objects, places, beings, or actions that operate on two separate levels of meaning. A symbol operates on one level as the thing described literally, but it also operates on a different, higher plane of meaning in what it suggests, represents, or "stands for."

        An American flag is a common symbol: on the literal level the U.S. flag is a rectangular cloth covered with thirteen red and white stripes and fifty white stars on a blue background in one upper corner. The thirteen stripes symbolize the thirteen original colonies, and the fifty stars represent the fifty states making up the present-day United States of America. Beyond the symbolism contained within the design of the flag, however, the flag as a whole has symbolic meanings of liberty, equality, democracy, patriotism, and more. For American soldiers serving in foreign countries the flag no doubt symbolizes home.

SOUND

•      One of the most important things poems do is play with sound. That doesn't just mean rhyme. It means many other things. The earliest poems were memorized and recited, not written down, so sound is very important in poetry.

•      Rhyme - Rhyme means sounds agree. "Rhyme" usually means end rhymes (words at the end of a line). They give balance and please the ear. Sometimes rhymes are exact. Other times they are just similar. Both are okay.

•      Repetition - Repetition occurs when a word or phrase used more than once. Repetition can create a pattern

•      Refrain - Lines repeated in the same way, that repeat regularly in the poem.

•      Alliteration - Alliteration is the repetition of the same sound in different words.

•      Onomatopoeia - Onomatopoeia means words or phrases that sound like the things they are describing. (hiss, zoom, bow-wow, etc.)

•      Consonance - Consonance happens when consonants agree in words, though they may not rhyme. (fast, lost)

•      Assonance - Assonance happens when vowels agree in words, though they may not rhyme. (peach, tree)

     RHYTHM

•     The arrangement of words into a more or less Regular sequence of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables.

            Meter (or metrics) - When you speak, you don't say everything in a steady tone like a hum--you'd sound funny. Instead, you stress parts of words. You say different parts of words with different volume, and your voice rises and falls as if you were singing a song. Mostly, we don't notice we're doing it. Poetry in English is often made up of poetic units or feet. The most common feet are the iamb, the trochee, the anapest, and the dactyl. Each foot has one stress or beat.

Depending on what kind of poem you're writing, each line can have anywhere from one to many stressed beats, otherwise known as feet. Most common are:

Trimeter (three beats)

Tetrameter (four beats)

Pentameter (five beats)

You also sometimes see dimeter (two beats) and hexameter (six beats) but lines longer than that can't be said in one breath, so poets tend to avoid them.