This document provides an overview of poetry, including definitions of common poetic forms, terms, devices, and techniques. It discusses lyric poems, sonnets, narratives, odes, epics, and other forms. It also covers terminology like meter, rhyme scheme, figurative language, imagery, and irony. Examples are given of analyzing poems, including reading strategies and noting thematic elements. Shakespeare's sonnet and Shelley's "Ozymandias" are presented for reference.

1. POETRY
A form of literary art created to
evoke meaning.

2. Types of Poems
O Lyric= musical verse; expresses
observations & feelings of a
single speaker.
O Sonnet= 14 line lyric poem
1. Petrarchan- has an octave and a sestet:
• octave states a theme or asks a question,
• sestet comments on or answers the question.
2. Shakespearean- has three quatrains and a couplet.

3. Types of poems
O Narrative Poem= A poem that tells a story.
-it is longer than the lyric styles of poems.
- has characters and a plot.
O Ode= A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that
celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea.
O Epic= A long narrative poem in which a heroic
protagonist engages in an action of great mythic or
historical significance.
O Prose poem= A prose is not broken into verse lines,
but has poetic symbols, metaphors, and other figures of
speech common to poetry.

4. Types of poems
O Pastoral= Praises the virtues of rural life
O The bop= a form of poetic argument consisting of three
stanzas, each stanza followed by a repeated line, or refrain,
and each undertaking a different purpose in the overall
argument of the poem.
O Elegy= A poem or song composed especially as a lament
for a death may end in consolation.

5. other types of poems
O Couplet
O Dirge
O Hymn
O Lyric
O Limerick
O Haiku
O Ballad
O Heroic
and many more

6. Poetic terms
O Form= the appearance of the words on the page
O Line= a group of words together on one line of the
poem
O Verse= a single line, poetry, a particular form of
poetry, a stanza .
• Blank verse- Written in lines of iambic pentameter, but does
NOT use end rhyme.
• Free verse- Unlike metered poetry, free verse poetry does NOT
have any repeating patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.
- Does NOT have rhyme.

7. Stanza= a group of lines arranged together or formal
division of lines in a poem.
• Couplet- two line stanza
• Triplet- three line stanza
• Quatrain- four line stanza
• Quintet- five line stanza
• Sestet- six line stanza
• Septet- seven line stanza
• Octave- an eight line stanza

8. Meter= rhythmical pattern determined by a number and types of
stresses or beats in a line.
• Stress: greater amount of force used to pronounce one
syllable over another
• Pause: a pause for a beat in the rhythm of the verse
indicated punctuation)
• Iambic: unstressed, stressed (Again; repeat)
• Anapestic: unstressed, unstressed, stressed (on the
beach)
• Trochaic: stressed, unstressed (wonder, older)
• Dactylic: stress, unstressed, unstressed (wonderful)
• Spondaic: stress, stress (space walk, heartbreak)

9. Kinds of Metrical Lines
• Monometer - one foot on a line
• Dimeter - two feet on a line
• Trimeter - three feet on a line
• Tetrameter - four feet on a line
• Pentameter - five feet on a line
• Hexameter - six feet on a line
• Heptameter- seven feet on a line
• Octameter - eight feet on a line

10. “Poetic devices”
figures of speech
O Metaphor= where word or phrase or idea is used in
lace of another to suggest likeness or described as
though it were something else.
O Extended metaphor= A metaphor that continues
through several lines or possibly the entire length of a
poem
O Simile= A figure of speech that uses like or as to
make a direct comparison between two unlike ideas.
O Oxymoron= combination of contradictory words.
O Personification= animation of the inanimate or
non-human subject is given human characteristics.

11. “Poetic devices”
sound
O Alliteration= Repetition of initial consonant sounds.
O Onomatopoeia= The use of words that imitate
sounds
O Consonance= The repeated consonant sounds
can be anywhere in the words
O Assonance= Repeated vowel sounds in a line or
lines of poetry

12. other devices
O Allusion= A reference to a well-known person,
place, event, literary work, or work of art
O Imagery= descriptive language used to create word
pictures using the senses.
O Symbolism= anything that stands for or represents
something else
O Mood= The feeling created in the reader by a
literary work

13. other devices
O Diction= word choice (including vocabulary used,
appropriateness of words & vividness of language.)
O Hyperbole= deliberate exaggeration or
overstatement.
O Apostrophe= form of personification in which
absent or dead are spoken to as if present.
O Tone= writer’s attitude toward his or her audience
and subject matter.

14. other devices
O Refrain= A sound, word, phrase or line repeated
regularly in a poem.
O Repetition= The use, more than once, of any
element of language.
O Rhythm= Pattern of beats or stresses in spoken or
written language.
O Rhyme= Repetition of sounds at the end of words. A
regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem.

15. about Rhyme
O Near rhyme= The words share the same vowel
or consonant sound but not both.
O Internal rhyme= A word inside a line that
rhymes with another word on the same line.
O End rhyme= A word at the end of one line
rhymes with a word at the end of another line
O Rhyme scheme= a pattern of rhyme or regular
pattern of rhyming words in a poem.

16. and Irony
O Verbal= used to mean something different from
what a person actually says. It is used by a speaker
intentionally. The speaker means something different
to what is literally meant. Two types of verbal irony:
• Overstatement= when a person exaggerates the
character of something.
• Understatement= when a person undermines the
character of something.
• Sarcasm= used to insult or to cause harm

17. Irony
O Situational= occurs when the exact opposite of
what is meant to happen, happens. A difference
between what is expected to happen and what
actually happens. For situation irony to occur there
has to be something that leads a person to think that
a particular situation is unlikely happen.
O Dramatic= occurs when the audience is aware of
something that the characters in the story are not
aware of, and when a character in a play does or
says something that communicates a meaning
unknown to her but recognized by the audience.

18. Poems
Sonnet CXVI: Let me not to the
Marriage of True Minds
by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be
taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that
fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

19. How To Study A Poem
O Read the poem out loud and slowly .
O What is the poem about?
O What type of a poem is it?
O Who is the speaker in the poem?
O Who is the speaker addressing?
O How many stanzas are in the poem?

20. How To Study A Poem
O What is the subject of the poem?
O What are the themes of the poem?
O What is the message of the poem?
O What is the setting?
O What is the mood of the poem?
O What poetic devices did the poet use?

21. How To Study A Poem
O How many lines are in the stanzas or poem?
O Does the poem rhyme or use free verse?
O If the poem uses rhyme, what is the rhyme
scheme?
O How does the poem make you feel?
O What images does the poem evoke? Why?
O What is the most important word or phrase
in the poem Why?

22. References
Bueza, R. and Lopez, R. Introduction to poetry. Accessed from:
http://www.slideshare.net/nielrich013/poetry-26926699?qid=e3ca00ee-6e0a-4082-9a6b-
976392b9a2c3&v=default&b=&from_search=14 on 14.03.2014.
Brantley, M. Poetry terminology. Accessed from:
http://www.slideshare.net/MBrantley/poetry-terminologypresentation?qid=4848ea67-774c-4f8b-
9d05-2551b4226fc9&v=default&b=&from_search=27 on 14.03.2014.
Dimitrov, A. Academy of American poets. Accessed from:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/17105 on 17.03.2014.
DeWeese, P. de Wees Poetry notes. Accessed from:
http://www.slideshare.net/deweesep/de-weese-poetry-notes-ppt1 on 14.03.2014.
Slosek, M. Poetry foundation. Accessed from:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174373 on 17.03.2014.