ELEMENTS

OF POETRY
P R E PA R E D B Y:
E S T R E L I TA G . D E M E S A , T E A C H E R I I I
WHAT IS POETRY?

The art of rhythmical

composition, written or
spoken, for exciting A literary work in
pleasure by beautiful, metrical form or verse.
imaginative, or elevated
thoughts.
 Lyric Poems
Express the feelings

TYPES OF of the writer

POEMS Narrative Poems

Tells a story
 1. Voice

2. Stanzas

3. Sound
ELEMENTS
4. Rhythm OF POETRY
5. Figures of Speech

6. Form
 • Just like fiction has a narrator, poetry has a
speaker–someone who is the voice of the
poem.

1. VOICE • Often times, the speaker is the poet.

• Other times, the speaker can take on the
voice of a persona–the voice of someone
else including animals and inanimate
objects.
 MASK
Puts on the identity of
someone or something else
and speaks for it.

TYPES OF
APOSTROPHE
Talks to something that can’t
answer (a bee, the moon, a tree)
and is good for wondering, asking,
or offering advice VOICE
CONVERSATION
A dialogue between two
voices and often asks us to
guess who the voices are
2. STANZA

A group within a poem which may have two or more lines.

They are like paragraphs.

Some poems are made of really short stanzas, called COUPLETS –

two lines that rhyme one after the other, usually equal in length
 • One of the most important things
poems do is play with sounds.
3. SOUND • The earliest poems were memorized
and recited, not written down, so sound
is very important in poetry.
 Rhyme

Repetition

Refrain
CATEGORIES Alliteration
OF SOUND
Onomatopoeia

Consonance

Assonance
RHYME

• Sounds that agree.

• Usually means end rhymes (words at
the end of a line).
• They give balance and is pleasant to
the ear.
• Sometimes, they are exact. Other
times, they are just similar.
 REPETITION VS. REFRAIN

REPETITION REFRAIN
• Occurs when a WORD or • LINES repeated in the
PHRASE is used more than same way, that repeat
once. regularly in the poem.
• It can create a pattern.
 ALLITERATION
• Repetition of the same
sound in different words. ONOMATOPOEIA
• Words or phrases that sound
like the things they are
describing. (hiss, zoom,
bow-wow, etc.)
 CONSONANCE VS. ASSONANCE

CONSONANCE ASSONANCE
• Happens when consonants • Happens when vowels agree
agree in words, though they in words, though they may
may not rhyme. not rhyme.
 Rhythm is
Rhythm can created by the
be described pattern
as the beat of stressed and
and pace of a unstressed
poem. syllables in a
line or verse.
4. RHYTHM Rhythm can
help to METER – the
unit of rhythm
strengthen the
in poetry, the
meaning of
pattern of the
words and beats. It is also
ideas in a called a foot.
poem.
5. FIGURES • Also called “figurative language”.
• Used to help with the task of “telling, not
OF SPEECH showing”.

WELL-KNOWN FIGURES OF SPEECH:

a. Simile – a comparison of one thing to
another, using the words “like”, “as” or
“as though”
b. Metaphor – comparing one thing to
another by saying that one thing is
another thing.
c. Personification – speaking as if
something were human when it’s not
6. FORMS

Ballad Haiku Cinquain Villanelle

Free Concrete
Limerick Sonnet
verse poety
 A story told in verse.

A ballad stanza usually has 4

BALLAD lines, and often has a repetitive
refrain.

It started out as a song.

 Usually written in
A short poem with
three line in a 5-7-5
17 syllables.
pattern.

The present tense is

HAIKU
used, the subject is one
thing happening now It does not rhyme.
and words are not
repeated.

It originated from
Japan.
 A five-line
poem with
2-4-6-8-2
pattern.

It expresses
CINQUAIN
one image
or thought,
in one or
possibly two
sentences.
A 19-line poem with 5 tercets
and 1 quatrain at the end.

VILLANELLE
Two of the lines are repeated
alternately at the ends of the
tercets.
LIMERICK

A five-line poem, usually meant to be funny.

Rhythm is anapests. Lines 1,2 and 5 rhyme with one another;

lines 3 and 4 rhymes with one another.

Lines 1, 2 and 5 have three feet; lines 3 and 4 have two feet.
 There different types of sonnets. The
most familiar to us is made of three
quatrains and ends with a couplet.

They tend to be complicated and

SONNET elegant.

William Shakespeare wrote the most

well-known sonnets.
 A type of modern poetry.
FREE
VERSE
(OPEN FORM) Do not make use of rhymes
and meter.
CONCRETE A picture poem.
POETRY
(PATTERN OR The visual shape of the poem
SHAPE POETRY) contributes to its meaning.