Poetry Devices

Poetry

Devices

What is a poetic device?

• At its most basic, a poetic device is a deliberate use of words, phrases, sounds to convey meaning.

• Poetic devices are generally used to heighten the literal meaning of words by considering sound, form, and function.

Rhyme

It was many and many a years ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

-Edgar Allen Poe

A rhyme is a repetition of syllables at the end of words, often at the end of a line of poetry, but not exclusively.

Rhyme Scheme is the ordered pattern of rhymes at the end of the lines of a poem or verse.

Rhyme Scheme

​“Do not go gentle into that good night, (A)
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; (B)
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (A)

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, (A)
Because their words had forked no lightning they (B)
Do not go gentle into that good night. (A)

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright (A)
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, (B)
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (A)

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, (A)
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, (B)
Do not go gentle into that good night.” (A)

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake.

Rhythm refers to the pattern of long, short, stressed and unstressed syllables in writing.

Rhythm

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake.

Meter refers to the measured beat established by patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Meter

Assonance is the repetition of vowel or diphthong sounds in one or more words found close together.

Assonance

​“ Hear the loud alarum bells—

Brazen bells!/ What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune….”

-Edgar Allen Poe

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Consonance

Consonance is the repetition of specific consonant sounds in close proximity.

Stanzas are groups of lines, or like a paragraph.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky."

​Stanzas

A line in a poem is like a sentence in a paragraph.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,"

​Lines

Lines & Stanzas

​Couplet

• Two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit.

• The wind blew very strong-

As we scurried along.

When the author makes a comparison between two unlike things using like or as.

"Judy swam like a fish."

​Simile

When the author makes a direct comparison between two unlike things.

"Corey is a walking dictionary."

​Metaphor

Metaphor & Simile

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood the wondering,

fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream

Before"

Mood

​In this stanza, things are hidden and puzzling. The reader doesn't really know what is going on...

The mood of a poem comes from the specific emotions it conveys. The mood can change from one stanza to another.