Some Literary Terms for Poetry

1. Remind me after class, and I'll make these available on the website. Some Literary Terms for Poetry

2. Persona • What is is: the implied “speaker” of a poem, distinct from but not always radically different from the poet's self • Why it's important: Constructing the persona's persona-lity allows the poet to frame whatever other content the poem relates. Moreover, it draws attention to the extent to which our own persona-lities are made up of rather literary components.

3. Rhyme and Meter • What they are: artificial modifications of normal spoken discourse and prose writing that call attention to the language itself • Why it's important: Verse poetry (that is to say, poetry with rhyme or meter or both) reminds us at every turn that the events, emotions, people, and other entities and relationships in a poem are constructed literarily and thus help us reflect on our own constructions

4. Imagery • What it is: The use of five-senses details to bring across to a reader realities that more direct description would likely miss • Why it's important: Metaphor, as the ancients knew and as good teachers now remember, is the strongest way to make someone think about things differently.

5. Stanza Structure • What it is: Poems often lay out their content in chunks of three, four, six, or other numbers of lines. Each unit of poetry is a stanza. • Why it's important: Poetry's visual layout often tells the reader about where one thought begins and the next ends, and really good poets will stretch a thought across stanzas to challenge that convention.