This document defines and provides examples of key poetic terms and elements including: speaker, lines and stanzas, rhyme and rhyme schemes, sound devices like alliteration and assonance, poetic techniques like onomatopoeia, personification, and imagery, and types of poetry such as narrative, lyric, and dramatic. It aims to familiarize the reader with the basic building blocks used in poetry.

1. Terms and Elements
POETRY

2. SPEAKER
 We refer to the narrator of a poem as the
speaker.
 The speaker is not necessarily the poet, or
even a person.
 Who is the speaker in the following example?
But believe me, son
I want to be what I used to be
When I was like you.

3. LINES AND STANZAS
 A line is the row of words in a poem.
 A stanza is a group of lines forming a unit.
Example:
Open it.
Go ahead, it won’t bite.
Well…maybe a little.

4. RHYME
 Rhyme is the repetition of the same stressed
sound in any two or more words.
 Internal rhyme occurs within a line of poetry.
 End rhyme occurs at the end of lines.

5. RHYME SCHEME
 Pattern of end rhymes that are assigned a
different letter of the alphabet with each new
rhymes
Roses are red a
Violets are blue b
Sugar is sweet c
And so are you b

6. YOU TRY!
 The golden brooch my mother wore _______
 She left behind for me to wear._______
 I have no thing I treasure more_______
 Yet, it is something I could spare._______

7. SOUND DEVICES
Alliteration-the repetition of consonant sounds at
the beginning of words.
 Can you think of any?
Assonance-The repetition of vowel sounds
within a line of poetry.
Examples?
Onomatopoeia- the use of words that imitate the
sounds they represent.
Examples?

8. ONOMATOPOEIA, ASSONANCE, ALLITERATION
 And the stars never rise but I see the bright
eyes.
 Buzz, splat, boom
 In the steamer is the trout seasoned with slivers
of ginger.
 Fred phoned for you.

9. PERSONIFICATION/ ANTHROPOMORPHISM
 Personification is giving human
characteristics to a non-human object.
 Example: The stars danced in the sky.
 Anthropomorphism- Giving human form to a
non-human object.
 Example: The tree stretched her arms to the
sky.

10. IMAGERY
 Descriptive language that appeals to the
sense.
 How do poets benefit from using poetry?
 Example:
Her knotted hands showing slow blue rivers
Jerked nervously through cornbread frying.

11. TYPES OF POETRY
 Narrative- is a verse that tells a story
 Lyric- expresses the personal thoughts and
feelings of the speaker
 Dramatic- usually have one or more
characters that speak to themselves
throughout the poem.