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Poetic Devices

Poetry is the kind of thing poets write. — Robert Frost. Poetic Devices. Challenges . A POET IS LIMITED in the materials he can use in creating his works: all he has are words to express his ideas and feelings. These words need to be precisely right on several levels at once:

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Poetic Devices

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  1. Poetry is the kind of thing poets write. — Robert Frost Poetic Devices

  2. Challenges • A POET IS LIMITED in the materials he can use in creating his works: all he has are words to express his ideas and feelings. These words need to be precisely right on several levels at once: • They must sound right to the listener even as they delight his ear • They must have a meaning which might have been unanticipated, but seems to be the perfectly right one • They must be arranged in a relationship and placed on the page in ways that are at once easy to follow and assist the reader in understanding

  3. Personification • Giving human/life-like qualities to something that is not alive The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

  4. Onomatopeia Words that sound like their meanings. Hear the steady tick tock of the old hall clock Example: boom, buzz, crackle, gurgle, hiss, pop, sizzle, snap, swoosh, whir, zip

  5. Alliteration • the use of two or more words that begin with the same sound near one another wild and woolly babbling brook Hudsonvalleypainter.com

  6. Assonance • The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening consonants tilting at windmills. Google.com

  7. Repetition The purposeful re-use of words and phrases for an effect. Sometimes, especially with longer phrases that contain a different key word each time, this is called parallelism. It has been a central part of poetry in many cultures. Many Suras, Psalms, and Epic Poems use this device as one of their unifying elements. Example: I was glad; so very, very glad. Example: Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward… Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d…

  8. Epithet • A descriptive expression, a word or phrase expressing some quality or attribute. An epithet often precedes or follows a name which serves to describe the character. • Tybalt = Prince of Cats • Babe Ruth = Sultan of Swat • William the Conquerer • Swift Footed Achilles

  9. Apostrophe Speaking directly to a real or imagined listener or inanimate object; addressing that person or thing by name. Example: O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done…

  10. Metonymy A figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing is referred to by something closely associated with it. Example: The White House stated today that... Example: The Crown reported today that... www.whitehouse.gov

  11. Synechdoche Indicating a person, object, etc. by letting only a certain part represent the whole. Example: All hands on deck. www.cartoonstock.com

  12. Kenning • A poetic phrase used as substitute for the person, place or thing it is describing. Examples: • Whale Road … • Wave Traveler … • Battle Sweat … • Sky Candle …

  13. Conceit An elaborate extended metaphor; often a far-fetched comparison of very dissimilar things A conceit is often called an Epic or Homeric Simile Example – From “ A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne • If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two ; Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th' other do. • And though it in the centre sit, Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. • Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

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