Overview of Poetic Elements

1. Overview of Poetic Elements

2. 5 Poetic Elements: • Denotation • Connotation • Imagery • Figurative language • Simile • Metaphor • Personification • Apostrophe • Metonymy and Synechdoche

3. Denotation • The dictionary meaning of a word • Useful in poetry when words have multiple meanings • Examples: • “Naming of Parts” by Henry Reed p. 692 • “Cross” by Langston Hughes p. 693 • “A Hymn to God the Father” by John Donne p.697

4. Connotation • Overtones of meaning beyond a word’s literal meaning • “Cross” by Langston Hughes • “When my love swears that she is made of truth” by William Shakespeare

5. Imagery • The representation through language of sense experience (Perrine’s p.700) • Appeals to the five senses • Most often suggests a mental picture • Examples in poetry: • “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen (p. 652) • “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (p. 703)

6. Figurative Language Part I • Figure of Speech • Any way of saying something other than the ordinary way • Includes • Simile and Metaphor • Personification • Apostrophe • Metonymy and Synechdoche • Figurative Language • Language that uses figures of speech

7. Simile and Metaphor • Ways of comparing things that are essentially unlike • Simile uses like, as, resembles, or seems: “The pond is like a mirror.” • Metaphor substitutes the figurative term for the literal: “You are a peach.” • Examples: • “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes (p. 732) • “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” by William Carlos Williams (p. 704)

8. Personification • Giving the attributes of a human being to an animal, object, or concept • Examples in poetry: • “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath (p. 680) • “It Sifts from Leaden Sieves” by Emily Dickinson p. 717 • “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” by William Shakespeare (p. 1001) “Love’s not Time’s fool…”

9. Apostrophe • Addressing someone absent or dead or nonhuman as if that person or thing were present and alive and capable of responding • Examples in poetry: • “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall (p. 658) • “Tiger! Tiger! burning bright” by William Blake (p. 947) • “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (p. 918)

10. Metonymy and Synechdoche • Metonymy • The use of something closely related for the thing actually meant • Example: “The White House” means the U.S. government • Synechdoche • The use of the part for the whole • “a hired hand” really means a whole person • “lend an ear” means give your whole attention

11. Metonymy and Synechdoche are basically interchangeable • Examples of metonymy: Please keep your mouth shut about it. I can’t stomach another movie like that. I stuck my head in. He has a wandering eye. What does your heart say? They’re rednecks. He drinks.

12. A poem for analysis • “Introduction to poetry” by Billy Collins • Discuss and enjoy the figurative elements. • See a screen version of the poem on the next slide.

13. Introduction to Poetry Billy Collins I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.