READING AND WRITING POETRY
Poetry is a literary work to express feelings and
ideas with the use of distinctive style and
rhythm. In poetry, sound and meaning of words
are combined to express feelings, thoughts and
ideas. The poet chooses words carefully. Poetry
is usually written in lines.
TYPES OF POETRY
1. Narrative – a poem that tells a story,and has
the elements of a story.
Types of Narrative Poetry
• Epic - an epic is a long unified narrative poem,
recounting in dignified language the adventures
of a warrior, a king or a god, the whole
embodying the religious and philosophical
beliefs, the moral code, customs, traditions,
manners, attitudes, sciences, folklore and
culture
of the people or country from which it came.
• Metrical Romance – it recounts the quest
undertaken by a single knight in order to gain a
lady’s favor.
• Metrical Tale - is a simple, straightforward
story in verse.
• Ballad - is a narrative poem which is meant to
be sung, usually composed in the ballad stanza.
2. Dramatic – a poem where the speaker is
someone other than the poet themselves.
A Dramatic poem often includes characters and
dialogue. A Dramatic Monologue is often from a
fictional character’s point of view.
Types of Dramatic Poetry
• Dramatic Monologue - is a literary device that
is used when a character reveals his or her
innermost thoughts and feelings, those that are
hidden throughout the course of the story line,
through a poem or a speech.
• Soliloquy - is the act of speaking while alone,
especially when used as a theatrical device that
allows a character’s thoughts and ideas to be
conveyed to the audience.
3. Lyrical – a poem that expresses emotions,
appeals to your senses, and often could be set
to music.
Types of Lyric Poetry
• Ode - is a dignified and elaborately structured
lyric poem praising and Discover glorifying an
individual, commemorating an event, or
describing nature intellectually rather than
emotionally.
• Elegy - is a lyric poem, written in elegiac
couplets, that expresses sorrow or lamentation,
usually for one who has died.
• Sonnet - is a short poem with fourteen lines,
usually written in iambic pentameter. For
example, the word "remark" consists of two
syllables. ... A foot is an iamb if it consists of one
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable, so the word remark is an iamb. Penta
means five, so a line of iambic pentameter
consists of five iambs - five sets of unstressed
and stressed syllables.
• Song - is a lyric poem which is set to music. All
songs have a strong beat created largely
through the 3R’s: rhythm, rhyme, and
repetition.
• Simple Lyric - is a short poem expressing the
poet’s thought, feeling, or emotion.
Elements of Poetry
1. Speaker – is the narrative voice of the poem.
The persona/ voice of a poem can be the first
person “I”, second person “you”, the third
person “he or she”, or the public person (large
audience, like society).
2. Subject – is the topic of the poem such as
nature, love, death, and other life events.
3. Theme - It is defined as a main idea or an
underlying meaning of a literary work that may
be stated directly or indirectly.
4. Tone - the attitude you feel in it - the writer's
attitude toward the subject or audience. The
tone can be formal or informal, serious or
humorous, sad or happy.
5. Form - refers to a type of poem that follows a
particular set of rules, whether it be the number
of lines, the length or number of stanzas, rhyme
scheme, subject matter, or really whatever rule
you can think of.
6. Sound - rhyme, rhythm, alliteration
7. Rhythm - a literary device which
demonstrates the long and short patterns
through stressed and unstressed syllables
particularly in verse form.
8. Rhyme - a repetition of similar sounding
words occurring at the end of lines in poems or
songs.
9. Stanzas - a division of four or more lines
having a fixed length, meter or rhyming scheme.
Stanza divides a poem in such a way that does
not harm its balance but rather it adds to the
beauty to the symmetry of a poem.
✓ couplet (2 lines)
✓ tercet (3 lines)
✓ quatrain (4 lines)
✓ cinquain (5 lines)
✓ sestet (6 lines) (sometimes it's called a sixain) 6.3 Metaphor make comparisons between
✓ septet (7 lines) things by stating that one thing literally is
something else. It is used to bring clarity to
✓ octave (8 lines)
ideas by forming connections.
10. Imagery – uses its 5 senses to point a
· The classroom was a zoo.
picture on image in the reader’s mind.
· The road ahead was a ribbon stretching across
11. Diction – can be defined as style of speaking
the desert.
or writing determined by the choice of words by
· Laughter is the music of the soul.
a speaker or a writer.
· Life is a roller coaster.
12. Meter- a stressed and unstressed syllabic
pattern in a verse, or within the lines of a poem.
Techniques on Writing Poetry
Stressed syllables tend to be longer, and
1. Causality. A plot is not a random string of
unstressed shorter.
events. It has a logic based on cause and effect
13. Symbolism– is the use of a specific object or
relationships between things that happen in the
an image to represent an abstract idea. A
story.
symbol is a word or phrase that represents
2. Foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a plot-
something other than its literal meaning.
related literary technique whereby an author
Examples of symbolism include a rose to
shows or says something in an early part of a
represent love, a dove to represent peace, the
story that hints at a later event. Psychologically,
owl symbolizes wisdom and the cross to
foreshadowing prepares us for what is to come
represent Christianity.
in the story, particularly the ending.
3. Flashback. A flashback is an interruption in
Poetic Devices
the chronological sequence of events in the
1. Alliteration- is derived from Latin’s “Latira”,
plot. It narrates a scene that occurred earlier.
which means “letters of alphabet”. It is a stylistic
4. Euphemism. Often in literature, whether for
device in which a number of words, having the
humor or just for taste, a writer wishes to
same first consonant sound, occur close
describe some graphic or offensive event using
together in a series.
milder imagery or phrasing. When an author
2. Imaginative - (provokes thought, causes an
does this, it's called a euphemism.
emotional response: laughter, happy, sad)
5. Allusion. An allusion is when an author refers
3. Creative (words and phrases that have a
to the events or characters from another story
pattern made with rhythm and rhyme)
in her own story with the hopes that those
4. Descriptive and vivid (imagery where the
events will add context or depth to the story she
reader/listener creates vivid mental images
is trying to tell.
5. Free verse - poetry that is free from
limitations of regular meter or rhythm and does
not rhyme with fixed forms.

6. Uses figurative language (personification,

similes, metaphors)
6.1 Personification where a non-human thing or
idea is ascribed human qualities or abilities
· Lightning danced across the sky.
· The wing howled in the night.
· My alarm clock yells at me every morning.

6.2 Simile work by saying something is similar to

something else. Those that make a comparison
using ‘as’ or ‘like’.
·Her cheeks are red like a rose.
· He is as funny as a monkey.
· He is as busy as a bee.