ENGLISH 11

ENGLISH 11 POETRY DEVICES

SpeakerO voice that addresses the reader;

author and speaker are NOT necessarily the same

O Example: Speaker = an object I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.What ever you see I swallow immediatelyJust as it is, unmisted by love or dislike ~ Sylvia Plath

RhythmO – pattern of sound created by the

arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line

O Example: See Meter

MeterO a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed

syllables that set the overall rhythm of certain poems

O Example: iambic pentameter –

U / U / U / U / “The brain is wider than the sky” (Dickenson)

RhymeO repetition of similar sounds in words

that appear close to each other in a poem

Internal rhyme O occurs within a single line of poetry

O Example: “Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, and each separate, dying ember wrought its ghost upon my floor.”

End rhyme O occurs at the end of lines

O Example:

Slant(eye) rhyme O words that nearly, but not exactly,

rhyme

O Example: “prove” and “glove” O Example: “farm” and “yard”

Rhyme scheme O pattern of rhyme formed by end rhyme;

identified by assigning a different letter of the alphabet to each new rhyme

O Example: A word is dead a When it is said a Some say b

I say it just c Begins to live d That day. b

AlliterationO the repetition of consonant sounds at

the beginning of words

O Example: “Two hours later, shortly before dark, the panting puppy pack returned.”

~ Jim Kjelgaard, Irish Red

AssonanceO the repetition of vowel sounds within

words or at the ends of words

O Example: while I try to weigh what you might say, okay?

ConsonanceO repetition of consonant sounds

within words or at the end of words

O Example: the letter sat atop her stack

OnomatopoeiaO use of a word or phrase that imitates

a word it describesO Example : “buzz” “splat” “hiss”

Imagery O – descriptive language that evokes an

emotional response and appeals to the senses – sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell

O Example: Over the winter glaciersI see the summer glow.And through the wild-piled snowdriftThe warm rosebuds below. (Beyond Winter  Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Simile O figure of speech that uses words

such as “like” or “as” to compare seemingly unlike things

O Example: The trees looked like pitch forks against the winter sky.

MetaphorO compares or equates seemingly

unlike things by stating that one thing is another; does NOT use “like” or “as”

O Example: “Death is a long sleep”

PersonificationO figure of speech in which an animal,

an object, or an idea is given human characteristics

O Example: “Shivering with the arms of death around him” (Hawthorne)

StanzaO a group of lines in a poem

O Example: Over the winter glaciersI see the summer glow.And through the wild-piled snowdriftThe warm rosebuds below. (Beyond Winter  Ralph Waldo Emerson)

CoupletO 2 lines of rhyme in a poem

O Example: The night was creeping on the ground! She crept, and did not make a sound ~ James Stephens, Check