Literary Devices in Poetry

Figurative Language * Poets use figurative language such as metaphor, simile, personification and anomatopeia, to express ideas or feelings. * Poets use metaphors to compare two apparently unlike things without using the words like, as, then, or resembles. The sky is a patchwork quilt * Poets use similes to make such comparisons using connection words as in the sky is a patchwork of quilt. * Personification is a language that attributes human qualifications to non-human things as in the wind danced in the trees * Onomatopoeia is the use of the word those sound imitates its meaning. Ex: buzz, hiss, thud, and sizzle * Imagery is a descriptive language poets use to create word pictures or images. Images are enhanced by sensory language which provides details related to the senses.
Types of poetry * Narrative-tells story that has the same literary elements, such as character, plot, stings, as works of prose fiction. Ballads, epics, and verse romances are three types of narrative poems. * Dramatic- uses techniques of drama to represent the speech of one or more characters in verse form * Lyric- expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker, sonnets, odes, elegies, and haiku are four types of lyric poem.
Elements
* Meter- the regular pattern of stressed (1) and unstressed (2) syllables in a poetic line * Foot- unit of rhythm
Most common English feet
Tamb ^/ Trochee /^ spandee //
(Around) (Broken) (Airship)

Dactyl /^^ anapest /^
(Argument) (Understand) * Number of feet per line
Monometer 1 foot dimeter 2 feet timeter 3 feet
Tetrameter 4 feet pentameter 5 feet * Stanzas- groups of poetic lines can be formally or informally organized and can run for many lines or just one
Couplet-2 lines tercet- 3 lines
Quatrain-4 lines sestet-6 lines
Sound devices * Rhyme-repetition of sounds at the end of words: top and drop * Alliteration-repetition of initial consonant sounds: weak and weary * Consonance-repetition of final consonant sounds: pull and fall * Assonance- repetition of similar vowel sounds; low and low * Onomatopoeia-use of word that sound like what it means

* Paradox-statement, idea, or situation that seems contradictory, but actually expresses a truth: “more things change, the more they stay the same”

* Paraphrasing- restating in your own words what someone else has said or written. Paraphrase retains the meaning but is usually simpler