Elements of Poetry

When you read a poem, pay attention to some basic ideas:

Voice (Who is speaking? How are they speaking?)

Stanzas (how lines are grouped)

Sound (includes rhyme, but also many other patterns)

Rhythm (what kind of "beat" or meter does the poem have?)

Figures of speech (many poems are full of metaphors and other figurative language)

Form (there are standard types of poem)

Voice

Voice is a word people use to talk about the way poems "talk" to the reader.

Lyric poems and narrative poems are the ones you will see most. Lyric poems express the feelings of the
writer. A narrativepoem tells a story.

Some other types of voice are mask, apostrophe, and conversation. A mask puts on the identity of
someone or something else, and speaks for it. Apostrophe talks to something that can't answer (a bee, the
moon, a tree) and is good for wondering, asking, or offering advice. Conversation is a dialogue between
two voices and often asks us to guess who the voices are.

Stanza

A stanza is a group within a poem which may have two or many 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.

Sound

One of the most important things poems do is play with sound. That doesn't just mean rhyme. It means
many other things. The earliest poems were memorized and recited, not written down, so sound is very
important in poetry.

Rhyme - Rhyme means sounds agree. "Rhyme" usually means end rhymes (words at the end of a line).
They give balance and please the ear. Sometimes rhymes are exact. Other times they are just similar. Both
are okay.

Repetition - Repetition occurs when a word or phrase used more than once. Repetition can create a
pattern
Refrain - Lines repeated in the same way, that repeat regularly in the poem.

Alliteration - Alliteration is the repetition of the same sound in different words.

Onomatopoeia - Onomatopoeia means words or phrases that sound like the things they are describing.
(hiss, zoom, bow-wow, etc.)

Consonance - Consonance happens when consonants agree in words, though they may not rhyme. (fast,
lost)

Assonance - Assonance happens when vowels agree in words, though they may not rhyme. (peach, tree)

Rhythm

Meter (or metrics) - When you speak, you don't say everything in a steady tone like a hum--you'd sound
funny. Instead, youstress parts of words. You say different parts of words with different volume, and
your voice rises and falls as if you were singing a song. Mostly, we don't notice we're doing it. Poetry in
English is often made up of poetic units or feet. The most common feet are the iamb, the trochee, the
anapest, and the dactyl. Each foot has one stress or beat.

Depending on what kind of poem you're writing, each line can have anywhere from one to many stressed
beats, otherwise known as feet. Most common are:

Trimeter (three beats)

Tetrameter (four beats)

Pentameter (five beats)

You also sometimes see dimeter (two beats) and hexameter (six beats) but lines longer than that can't be
said in one breath, so poets tend to avoid them.

Figures of speech

Figures of speech are also called figurative language. The most well-known figures of speech are are
simile, metaphor, and personification. They are used to help with the task of "telling, not showing."

Simile - a comparison of one thing to another, using the words "like," "as," or "as though."

Metaphor - comparing one thing to another by saying that one thing is another thing. Metaphors are
stronger than similes, but they are more difficult to see.

Personification - speaking as if something were human when it's not.

Poetic forms

There are a number of common poetic forms. .

Ballad - story told in verse. A ballad stanza is usually four lines, and there is often a repetitive refrain. As
you might guess, this form started out as a song. An example of a traditional Scottish ballad is Lord
Randal at http://www.bartleby.com/243/66.html

Haiku - a short poem with seventeen syllables, usually written in three lines with five syllables in the first
line, seven in the second, and five in the third. The present tense is used, the subject is one thing
happening now, and words are not repeated. It does not rhyme. The origin of the haiku is Japanese.

Cinquain - a five-line poem with two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight
in the fourth, and two in the fifth. It expresses one image or thought, in one or possibly two sentences.

Villanelle - a 19-line poem with five tercets and one quatrain at the end. Two of the lines are repeated
alternately at the ends of the tercets, and finish off the poem: the first line and the third line of the first
tercet. Although it sounds very complicated, it's like a song or a dance and easy to see once you've looked
at a villanelle.

Limerick - A five-line poem, usually meant to be funny. The rhythm is anapests. Lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme
with one another, and lines 3 and 4 rhyme with one another. Lines 1, 2, and 5 have three feet, lines 3 and
4 have two feet. An iamb can be substituted for an anapest in the first foot of any line. The last foot can
add another unstressed beat for the rhyming effect.

Sonnet - There are different types of sonnet. The most familiar to us is made of three quatrains and ends
with a couplet. They tend to be complicated and elegant. William Shakespeare wrote the most well-
known sonnets. 

Free verse (or open form) - Much modern poetry does not obviously rhyme and doesn't have a set meter.
However, sound and rhythm are often still important, and it is still often written in short lines.

Concrete poetry (pattern or shape poetry) is a picture poem, in which the visual shape of the poem
contributes to its meaning.

 Compression, extensive use of imagery, and a strong emotional-and frequently sensuous-component are
characteristic of lyric poetry. The other major divisions of poetry, narrative (including epics, ballads,
metrical romances, and verse tales) and dramatic (poetry as direct speech in specified circumstances), are
more easily characterized. Lyric poetry, however, covers everything from hymns, lullabies, drinking
songs, and folk songs to the great variety of love songs and poems; from savage political satires to
rarefied philosophical poetry; from verse epistles to odes; and from 2-line epigrams or 14-line sonnets to
lengthy reflective lyrics and substantial elegies. The content of lyric poetry reflects the variety of
concerns of human beings in every period and in every region of the world.

 Epic, long narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style. Epics deal with legendary or historical
events of national or universal significance, involving action of broad sweep and grandeur. Most epics
deal with the exploits of a single individual, thereby giving unity to the composition. Typically, an epic
includes several features: the introduction of supernatural forces that shape the action; conflict in the form
of battles or other physical combat; and stylistic conventions such as an invocation to the Muse, a formal
statement of the theme, long lists of the protagonists involved, and set speeches couched in elevated
language. Commonplace details of everyday life may appear, but they serve as background for the story
and are described in the same lofty style as the rest of the poem. 
          The Greeks distinguished epic from lyric poetry, both by its nature and its manner of delivery; lyric
poetry expressed more personal emotion than epic poetry and was sung, whereas epic poetry was recited. 

          Epic poems are not merely entertaining stories of legendary or historical heroes; they summarize
and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation at a significant or crucial period of its history.
Examples include the ancient Greek epics by the poet Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The
characteristics of the hero of an epic are national rather than individual, and the exercise of those traits in
heroic deeds serves to gratify a sense of national pride. At other times epics may synthesize the ideals of a
great religious or cultural movement. The Divine Comedy (1307-1321) by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri
expresses the faith of medieval Christianity. The Faerie Queene (1590-1609) by the English poet Edmund
Spenser represents the spirit of the Renaissance in England and like Paradise Lost (1667) by the English
poet John Milton, represents the ideals of Christian humanism. 

     Ballad, short narrative folk song that fixes on the most dramatic part of a story, moving to its
conclusion by means of dialogue and a series of incidents. The word ballad was first used in a general
sense to mean a simple short poem. Such a poem could be narrative or lyric, sung or not sung, crude or
polite, sentimental or satiric, religious or secular; it was vaguely associated with dance. The word is still
commonly used in this loose fashion. In the field of folklore, however, ballad is applied specifically to the
kind of narrative folk song described in the opening lines. These narrative songs represent a type of
literature and music that developed across Europe in the late Middle Ages. Unlike the medieval romances
and rhymed tales, ballads tend to have a tight dramatic structure that sometimes omits all preliminary
material, all exposition and description, even all motivation, to focus on the climactic scene (as in the
British "Lord Randall"). It is as though the ballad presented only the last act of a play, leaving the listener
or reader to supply the antecedent material. When the ballad emerged, it was a new form of art and
literature, distinct from anything that had gone before. 

           Ranging from detailed, fully plotted narratives to almost purely lyric songs, the ballads of different
lands and eras are remarkably varied. Moreover, within the variants of any particular ballad, great
differences in structure may exist. Because it is transmitted orally, each ballad is subject to continual
change; for instance, England's "The Waggoner's Lad" began with a full plot, but its American derivative
"On Top of Old Smoky" is a near lyric. Generally, the closer a ballad is to polite literature, the more detail
it carries. Oral tradition tends to discard nonessential elements.  
Romance (literature), literary genre popular in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), dealing, in
verse or prose, with legendary, supernatural, or amorous subjects and characters. The name refers to
Romance languages and originally denoted any lengthy composition in one of those languages. Later the
term was applied to tales specifically concerned with knights, chivalry, and courtly love. The romance
and the epic are similar forms, but epics tend to be longer and less concerned with courtly love. 

    Romances began to appear in western Europe in the 12th century and reached their greatest popularity
in the late 13th century; they remained in vogue until the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century). At
first, they were related orally by troubadours and trouvères. Subsequently, they were written by court
musicians, clerics, scribes, and aristocrats for the entertainment and moral edification of the nobility.
Popular subjects for romances included the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, King Arthur of Britain
and the knights of the Round Table, and the Frankish emperor Charlemagne. The Arthurian romances fall
into three broad groups (see Arthurian Legend). Some, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(anonymous, 1370?), are tales that involve the moral testing of a young knight. Others, such as Tristan
und Isolt (1210) by the German poet Gottfried von Strassburg, describe the conflict between passion and
duty. The third group, exemplified by the romance Percival, or the Story of the Grail (12th century) by the
French poet Chrétien de Troyes, is concerned with the search for the Holy Grail. 
           Some romances were linked to ballads. Aucassin and Nicolette (anonymous, 13th century), one
such chant-fable, or song-story, is about two young lovers. Romances also often had their basis in
classical legends. Sir Orfeo (1480?) by the Italian poet Politian, for example, recounts the Orpheus and
Eurydice story from Greek mythology but places it in a medieval setting. Eventually, a tradition of
sophisticated contemporary romances developed, typified by the 13th-century French poem Le Roman de
la Rose. This dream allegory, based on the courtly love traditions of the time, contains little history or
legend.  
Later prose and verse narratives, particularly those in the 19th-century romantic tradition, are also
referred to as romances; set in distant or mythological places and times, like most romances they stress
adventure and supernatural elements. 

    Satire, in literature, prose or verse that employs wit in the form of irony, innuendo, or outright derision
to expose human wickedness and folly. The term is derived from the Latin satura, meaning a "medley" or
"mixture," and is related to the Latin adjective satur, "replete." In the Renaissance (14th century to 17th
century), as a result of false etymology, the word was confused with satyr, and so took on the connotation
of lasciviousness and crude mockery. In ancient times, however, it was agreed that satires were intended
to tax weaknesses and to correct vice wherever found.  
Epistle (Greek epistellein, "to send to"), formal and instructive letter, often intended for publication. The
epistolary form was familiar among the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
The Greek philosophers Aristotle and Epicurus made notable use of it. Twenty-one books of the New
Testament are epistles written by the apostles to members of the early church. Since the Renaissance the
epistle, in verse and prose, has held a prominent place in literature. Examples of the literary epistle are
Lettres provinciales (1656-57), by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal; the Drapier's Letters (1724-25),
by the English satirist Jonathan Swift; and An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), in verse, by the English
poet Alexander Pope. 

    Ode, dignified and elaborately structured lyric poem praising and glorifying an individual,
commemorating an event, or describing nature intellectually rather than emotionally. Odes originally
were songs performed to the accompaniment of a musical instrument. 

 Epigram, in literature, a terse, pointed, frequently witty observation, often in verse. Ancient Greek
epigrams were inscriptions on tombs or statues. Latin poets, including Catullus, Juvenal, and especially
Martial, developed the epigram as a short satire in verse, with a twist or thrust at the end. Among writers
in English regarded as master epigrammatists are John Donne, Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, John Dryden,
Jonathan Swift, and especially Alexander Pope, who in the 18th century perfected a form of epigrammatic
couplet. Samuel Taylor Coleridge used the form early in the 19th century, and Oscar Wilde was a famous
epigrammatist late in the century. In French, Voltaire and Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux both wrote
memorable epigrams, as did G. E. Lessing in German. A literary form similar to the epigram occurs in
Chinese and Japanese literature. The term has also been loosely applied to any aphorism or short popular
saying.  
Sonnet, lyric poem of 14 lines with a formal rhyme scheme, expressing different aspects of a single
thought, mood, or feeling, sometimes resolved or summed up in the last lines of the poem. Originally
short poems accompanied by mandolin or lute music, sonnets are generally composed in the standard
meter of the language in which they were written-for example, iambic pentameter in English, and the
Alexandrine in French (see Versification).  
The two main forms of the sonnet are the Petrarchan, or Italian, and the English, or Shakespearean. The
former probably developed from the stanza form of the canzone or from Italian folk song. 

 Lyric, short poem that conveys intense feeling or profound thought. In ancient Greece, lyrics were sung
or recited to the accompaniment of the lyre. Elegies and odes were popular forms of the lyric in classical
times. The lyric poets of ancient Greece included Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar; the major Roman lyric
poets included Horace, Ovid, and Catullus. Lyrical poetry was also written in ancient India and China;
and the Japanese verse called haiku is a lyric. 

 Elegy, originally, in classical Greek and Roman literature, a poem composed of distichs, or couplets.
Classical elegies addressed various subjects, including love, lamentation, and politics, and were
characterized by their metric form. Ancient poets who used the elegiac form include the Alexandrian
Callimachus and the Roman Catullus. In modern poetry (since the 16th century) elegies have been
characterized not by their form but by their content, which is invariably melancholy and centers on death.
The best-known elegy in English is Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), by the English poet
Thomas Gray, which treats not just a single death but the human condition as well.  
A distinct category of elegy, the pastoral elegy, has its roots in Greek and Sicilian poetry of the 3rd and
2nd centuries BC. Using formal conventions, which developed gradually over centuries, pastoral elegists
mourn a subject by representing the mourner and the subject as shepherds in a pastoral setting. The most
famous example of the pastoral elegy is Lycidas (1638), by the English poet John Milton.  
In music the term elegy is frequently applied to a mournful composition.  
A clear distinction exists between poetry as pure art form and most so-called didactic poetry, which at its
extreme is merely material that has been versified as an aid to memory (such as, "Thirty days hath
September") or to make the learning process more pleasant. Where the emphasis is on communication of
knowledge for its own sake or on practical instruction, the designation poetry is rather a misnomer. In
such works, the rules of ordinary discourse apply, rather than those of poetic art. Clarity, logical
arrangement, and completeness of presentation are valued over the poetic projection of human
experience, although didactic materials, like any others, can also serve this poetic end if handled properly.
This distinction between poetry as art and poetry as versified discourse is part of the larger question of the
boundaries of imaginative literature, a problem treated with particular incisiveness by American
philosopher Susanne K. Langer. Her book Feeling and Form (1953) discusses the difference between the
use of language for ordinary communication, as in expository writing, and its use as an artistic medium. 

   Among lyric poets, Japanese writers of verse are unequalled in the extreme compression of their poetry.
Two important forms are the tanka, which has existed since the 7th century AD, and the haiku, which
dates from the 16th century and had a marked effect on Western poets at the beginning of the 20th
century. Both forms are unrhymed and in syllabic meter: The tanka is five lines of five, seven, five, seven,
and seven syllables, and the haiku is three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. (Longer poems also use
these five- and seven-syllable lines, and shorter poems are frequently linked into sequences or are
carefully arranged in anthologies to provide a cumulative effect.)  
Haiku, Japanese verse form, notable for its compression and suggestiveness. It consists of three
unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables.  
Traditionally and ideally, a haiku presents a pair of contrasting images, one suggestive of time and place,
the other a vivid but fleeting observation. Working together, they evoke mood and emotion. The poet
does not comment on the connection but leaves the synthesis of the two images for the reader to perceive.
A haiku by the poet Bash, considered to have written the most perfect examples of the form, illustrates
this duality:  

Now the swinging bridge

Is quieted with creepers …
Like our tendrilled life.
 

          The haiku evolved from the earlier linked-verse form known as the renga and was used extensively
by Zen Buddhist monks in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the next 200 years, the verse form achieved its
greatest popularity and success. In addition to Bash?, important haiku poets include Yosa Buson,
Kobayashi Issa, and Masuoka Shiki.  
The precise and concise nature of haiku influenced the early 20th-century Anglo-American poetic
movement known as imagism. The writing of haiku is still practiced by thousands of Japanese who
annually publish outstanding examples in the many magazines devoted to the art. 

 Imagism, poetic movement that flourished in the U.S. and England between 1909 and 1917. The
movement was led by the American poets Ezra Pound and, later, Amy Lowell. Other imagist poets were
the English writers D. H. Lawrence and Richard Aldington and the American poets John Gould Fletcher
and Hilda Doolittle. These poets issued manifestos and wrote poems and essays embodying their theories.
They placed primary reliance on the use of precise, sharp images as a means of poetic expression and
stressed precision in the choice of words, freedom in the choice of subject matter and form, and the use of
colloquial language. Most of the imagist poets wrote in free verse, using such devices as assonance and
alliteration rather than formal metrical schemes to give structure to their poetry. Notable collections of
imagist poetry are Des Imagistes: An Anthology (1914), compiled by Pound, and the three anthologies
compiled by Amy Lowell, all under the title Some Imagist Poets (1915, 1916, 1917).  
Some of the short poems by 20th-century American poet Ezra Pound capture much of the haiku quality.
His poem "Fan-Piece, for Her Imperial Lord" (1926), for instance, although based on a 1st-century BC
Chinese poem (much longer in the original but still terse by Western standards), is quite Japanese in its
prosody and effect: 

           Two simple yet emotionally and sensuously powerful images-one evoking a courtly, gracious style
of living, the other suggesting both the end of summer and the frosting over of vibrant life (which applies
to the woman's sense of her own situation)-are associated in this work. They join with the lightly sketched
motion of laying the fan aside-as the woman "also" has been laid aside by her "Imperial Lord." The three
short lines exquisitely suggest, without any direct comment, the poignant end of a relationship and of a
whole way of life. The original Chinese poem also allows the images, for the most part, to speak for
themselves, with little direct comment, and it was this aspect that especially appealed to European poets.
Also, the rhymeless Japanese tradition that Pound followed in his translation-adaptation gave an added
impetus to the development of free verse in English. Pound's "Fan-Piece" may therefore be considered
either as a syllabic (five, seven, seven) poem, or as one alluding specifically to the haiku tradition in its
content and number of words (five, seven, five), or as an outstanding example of free verse of the imagist
school .  
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alliteration repetition of the same initial consonant sound throughout a line of verse

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought...." (Sonnet XXX)

anadiplosis the repetition of a word that ends one clause at the beginning of the next

"My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain."1 (Richard III, V, iii)

anaphora repetition of a word or phrase as the beginning of successive clauses

"Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!" (King John, II, i)

anthimeria substitution of one part of speech for another

"I'll unhair thy head." (Antony and Cleoptra, II, v)

antithesis juxtaposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel

construction

"Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more." (Julius Caesar, III,
ii)

assonance repetition or similarity of the same internal vowel sound in words of close
proximity

"Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks." (Romeo and Juliet, V, iii)

asyndeton omission of conjunctions between coordinate phrases, clauses, or words

"Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,

Shrunk to this little measure?" (Julius Caesar, III, i)

chiasmus two corresponding pairs arranged in a parallel inverse order

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (Macbeth, I, i)

diacope repetition broken up by one or more intervening words

"Put out the light, and then put out the light." (Othello, V, ii)

ellipsis omission of one or more words, which are assumed by the listener or reader

"And he to England shall along with you." (Hamlet, III, iii)

epanalepsis repetition at the end of a clause of the word that occurred at the beginning of
the clause

"Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer'd blows." (King John, II, i)

epimone frequent repetition of a phrase or question; dwelling on a point

"Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him I have
offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any speak; for
him have I offended." (Julius Caesar, III,ii)

epistrophe repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive clauses2

 "I'll have my bond!
Speak not against my bond!
I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond." (Merchant of Venice, III, iii)

hyperbaton altering word order, or separation of words that belong together, for emphasis

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." (Measure for Measure, II, i)

malapropism a confused use of words in which an appropriate word is replaced by one with
similar sound but (often ludicrously) inappropriate meaning

"I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your good honor two
notorious benefactors."
"Are they not malefactors?" (Measure for Measure, II, i)

metaphor implied comparison between two unlike things achieved through the figurative
use of words

"Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York." (Richard III, I, i)

metonymy substitution of some attributive or suggestive word for what is meant (e.g.,
"crown" for royalty)

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears." (Julius Caesar, III, ii)

onomatopoei use of words to imitate natural sounds

a
"There be moe wasps that buzz about his nose." (Henry VIII, III, ii)

paralepsis emphasizing a point by seeming to pass over it

"Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it.

It is not meet you know how Caesar lov'd you." (Julius Caesar, III, ii)

parallelism similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses3

"And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determinèd to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days." (Richard III, I, i)

parenthesis insertion of some word or clause in a position that interrupts the normal
 syntactic flow of the sentence (asides are rather emphatic examples of this)

"...Then shall our names,

Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered." (Henry V, IV, iii)

polysyndeton the repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinate words, phrases, or

clauses4

"If there be cords, or knives,

Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams,
I'll not endure it." (Othello, III, iii)

simile an explicit comparison between two things using "like" or "as"

"My love is as a fever, longing still

For that which longer nurseth the disease" (Sonnet CXLVII)

synecdoche the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part5

"Take thy face hence." (Macbeth, V, iii)