A brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art or fiction.

"You better watch out,

You better not cry,

You better not pout

I’m telling you why"

(Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” lyrics by Haven Gillespie)

The repeated phrase above is an example of...

When the speaker in a poem addresses a person not present or an animal, inanimate object, or concept as though it is a person.

An imaginative comparison in which a word or phrase is used in a non-literal sense. For example, metaphor, simile, personification, or idioms.

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam”

(“Home on the Range” Daniel E. Kelley and Brewster M. Higley)

The sounds indicated above are an example of...

Poetry written in unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, for example:

"Yet in the number I do know but one

That unassailable holds on his rank,

Unshaked of motion: and that I am he,

Let me a little show it, even in this;

That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd,

And constant do remain to keep him so."

(Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare)

A metaphor or expression that has become overused, e.g.:

"diamond in the rough" or "vanished into thin air".

An emotional or imaginative association evoked by a word.

"So from that spring whence comfort seemed to come

Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark"

(Macbeth - William Shakespeare)

Two successive rhyming lines, e.g.:

"Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

("Sonnet 29" - William Shakespeare)

The strict dictionary meaning of a word.

Word choice, or the level of formality that a speaker uses in his or her writing.

A type of poem, derived from the theatre, in which a speaker addresses the reader or an implied listener.

A line having no end punctuation but running over to the next line.

A metaphor that develops throughout a poem and that involves several points of comparison.

An imaginative comparison in which a word or phrase is used in a non-literal sense. For example, metaphor, simile, personification, or idioms.

Poetry with neither rhyme nor set rhythm and meter, e.g.:

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

("The Red Wheelbarrow" - William Carlos Williams)

Exaggeration for effect, e.g.:

"Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world."

("The Concord Hymn" - Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Understatement for effect, often used for irony.

A comparison between two unlike things, this describes one thing as if it were something else. Does not use "like" or "as" for the comparison.

The rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

An object or idea that repeats itself throughout a literary work.

A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the activity being described.

A seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true, e.g.:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once"

(Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare)

Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions.

A play on words where multiple meanings are deliberately suggested.

A line or group of lines that regularly repeat at intervals throughout a poem.

What type of rhyme is use below:

"The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

("Ode to the West Wind" - Percy Bysshe Shelley)

What type of rhyme is used below?

"Six days of the week it soils

With its sickening poison-

Just for paying a few bills!

That's out of proportion."

("Toads" - Philip Larkin)

The following extract contains four examples of this device.

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

("A Dream Deferred" - Langston Hughes")

Something that represents something else. An object or action or image that means something more than its literal meaning.

A part of a thing stands for the whole thing.

A central idea or purpose in a poem or story that usually gives insight into human nature or human experience.

The subject that is treated or presented within a poem or another piece of writing.