poetry device

Poetic Devices

Alliteration - The repetition of initial consonant sounds.
“Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever…” Poe, “The Raven”
Assonance - The repetition of vowel sounds. “Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far...So old it is that no man knows...” Sandburg, “Early Moon”
Hyperbole – An overstatement or extreme exaggeration. Example: I nearly died laughing.
Imagery - Words or phrases that appeal to any sense (sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell) or any combination of senses. "The Machine roared...The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur" [appeals to sense of hearing] Bradbury, “A Sound of Thunder”
Metaphor - A comparison between two objects with the intent of giving clearer meaning to one of them. Often forms of the "to be" verb are used, such as "is" or "was", to make the comparison. “Love is a rose/but you’d better not pick it/it only grows when it’s on the vine.” Neil Young, “Love is a Rose”
Meter - The recurrence of a pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables. “I let my neighbor know beyond the hill.” [iambic pentameter] Frost, “Mending Wall”
Mood – The feeling created by a literary work. “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.” Poe, “The Raven”
Onomatopoeia - The use of words which imitate an actual sound. bang; pow; swish; buzz
Parallelism – The use of similar grammatical structure to express ideas that are related or of equal importance. “I sit and look out…I hear secret…I see in low life…” Whitman, “I Sit and Look Out”
Personification - A figure of speech which gives animals/ideas/inanimate objects human traits or abilities. “Because I could not stop for Death--He kindly stopped for me—“ Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death”
Repetition - The repeating of words, phrases, lines, or stanzas. “I have a dream that one day this nation…I have a dream that one day the red hills of Georgia…” MLK, Jr. “I Have a Dream”
Rhyme - The similarity of ending sounds between two or more words. “And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could” Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Rhyme scheme - The pattern of end rhyme in a poem. The first end sound is represented as the letter "a", the second is "b", etc.
Simile - A comparison between two objects using a specific word or comparison such as "like" or "as.” “We live meanly, like ants” Thoreau
Stanza - A group of lines that form a unit in a poem. (Similar to a paragraph in prose.)
Symbolism – A device in literature in which an object represents an idea. Example: In Langston Hughes “The Weary Blues” the music symbolizes the musician’s disillusionment and tiredness.