Elements Of Poetry

FORM
SOUND DEVISES
IMAGERY
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
MOOD/TONE
THEME
 POETRY
• Poetry is a form of writing that uses not only
words, but also form (lines and stanzas),
patterns of sound, (rhyme, repetition, and
rhythm) as well as figurative language and
imagery to convey a message, tell a story, or
express the author’s feelings or thoughts.

• Any poem will include some or all of these

elements.
 FORM/STRUCTURE
• A poem’s form is its
appearance. Poems are
divided into lines. Many
poems, especially longer
ones, may also be divided
into groups of lines called
stanzas.
• Stanzas function like
paragraphs in a story.
Each one contains a single
idea or takes the idea one
step further.
What is the purpose of this
line from “A Psalm of
Life”?
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
• It conveys the message to
‘keep working patiently’.
 SOUND DEVICES
special tools that poets use to create certain effects in
the poem to convey and reinforce meaning through sound.

Some poems use techniques of sound such as:

• Rhythm • Assonance
• Rhyme • Repetition
• Alliteration
• Consonance
 RHYTHM
• The pattern of beats or
stresses in a poem.

Try beating out the rhythm

• Poets use patterns of
stressed and unstressed with a finger as you read
syllables to create a these lines:
regular rhythm.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
 RHYME
The repetition of the same or similar sounds,
usually in stressed syllables at the ends of
lines, but sometimes within a line.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
 RHYME SCHEME
The rhyming pattern that is created at
the end of lines of poetry.

Let us, then, be up and doing, A

With a heart for any fate; B
Still achieving, still pursuing, A
Learn to labor and to wait. B

If the poem does not have a rhyme scheme it is

considered to be a
free verse poem.
 ALLITERATION:
The repetition of consonant sounds at the
beginnings of words.

• Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers.

 ASSONANCE
The repetition of vowel sounds
in the same line.

•Still achieving, still pursuing

 CONSONANCE
• The repetition of consonant
sounds in the middle or end of
words in a phrase/sentence.

• Pitter, patter, pitter, patter

 REPETITION
The repeating of a particular sound
devise to create an effect.

To create emphasis, a poet may repeat

words or lines within the poem.

For example, 'I have to practice my lines over so I

can learn them' vs 'I have to practice my lines over
and over and over again so I can learn them.
 IMAGERY
• refers to language that stimulates the reader's senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.

• Visual Imagery (Sight)

• Auditory Imagery (Sound)
• Tactile Imagery (Touch)
• Olfactory Imagery (Smell)
• Gustatory Imagery (Taste)
 IMAGERY
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Visual Imagery
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
by William Wordsworth’
Olfactory They silently inhale
Imagery the clover-scented gale,
“Rain in Summer,” H.W. Longfellow

When glided in Porphyria; straight

She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm
Tactile Imagery
“Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning’s
 IMAGERY
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

Auditory Imagery
“To Autumn” by John Keats’

Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?

Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?

Gustatory Imagery
“This Compost,” by Walt Whitman’s
 FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
is phrasing that goes beyond
the literal meaning of words
to get a message or point
across.
 SIMILE
a comparison between two unlike things
that uses the words “like” or “as”

• Life is like a dream.

• as proud as a peacock, as busy as a bee
 METAPHOR:
a figure of speech that pulls
comparisons between two
unrelated ideas.

Hope is on the horizon

 PERSONIFICATION:

Gives human characteristics to something

nonhuman.

You can hear the trees whisper in the dark.

 Which figures are used to
describe the following?

• My love is like a rose. • Simile

• Love is a battlefield
• Metaphor

• The rose tipped its

head as we passed by. • Personification
 MOOD/TONE

The attitude of the author is expressed

through his/her word choices in the poem.
What tone is used in this excerpt:
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Tone: Encouraging and Determined.

 THEME:
• It is the message an author wants to communicate
through the piece.
• The theme of a poem is its central or
• main idea.

To identify a poem’s theme, ask

yourself what ideas or insights about
life or human nature you have found in
the poem.
What theme is associated in this excerpt:
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Theme: Optimism, Hope, and Life

HOW TO ANALYZE A POEM
1. Read the poem.
2. Circle unknown words and look up in dictionary.
3. What information does the title give you?
4. Read the poem again, this time aloud.
5. Map out the rhyme scheme.
6. Read again and annotate for elements of
poetry.
7. Read for the final time to identify the theme
and tone.