1. Key Concepts and Examples
Elements of Poetry
Key Concepts and Examples

2. What is poetry? No single definition
Most concentrated and condensed form of literature
Intense focus on each word and line and how they operate together to communicate experiences
Focus on communicating experiences
No lesson or moral required
Not always beautiful

3. Where do we begin? Denotation vs. Connotation
Literal meaning vs. Figurative meaning
Figures of speech and figurative language
Sound devices and musicality
Rhythm and meter
Tone and Theme

4. What do words mean? Denotation Connotation Example:
Dictionary definition of a word; literal meaning
Connotation
Implied or suggested meaning of a word
Depends upon implication or shared emotional association
Example:
“Greasy” has a negative connotation, independent of dictionary definition

5. Literal meaning vs. figurative meaning
The simplest, most obvious meaning
Tied to denotation of words
“The sky is gray” tells the color of the sky.
Figurative Meaning
Associational or connotative meaning
Tied to representations, symbolic meaning
“The sky is gray” suggests an ominous, foreboding atmosphere.

6. Why are connotation and figurative meaning important?
Poems do not have only a literal meaning, but they have deeper meanings tied to their connotative or figurative meaning
Poets use connotations to develop or complicate a poem’s meaning
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”

7. What is figurative language?
Language that cannot be taken literally or only literally
Language that employs figures of speech
Figures of speech – ways of saying something other than the ordinary way, where you say one thing and mean another
Examples: “It’s raining cats and dogs” or “I could eat a horse”

8. Types of figurative language
Simile
A comparison of two essentially unlike things using “like” or “as”
Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Metaphor
A comparison of two essentially unlike things without using words; application of a name or description to something to which it is not literally applicable
Literal and figurative terms may be named or implied
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro”

9. Types of Figurative Language
Personification
Giving the attributes of a person to an animal, object, or concept
Tennyson, “The Eagle”
Apostrophe
Addressing someone absent or dead or something nonhuman as if that person or thing were present and alive
Angelou, “Woman Work”

10. Types of Figurative Language
Hyperbole
Overstatement, exaggeration in the service of truth
Tennyson, “The Eagle”; Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Understatement
Saying less than one means
Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays”; Hardy, “The Man He Killed”

11. Types of Figurative Language
Symbol
Something that means, suggests more than what it is
Functions both literally (what the symbol is) and figuratively (what the symbol represents)
Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays”
Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

12. What is the relationship between symbols and similes/metaphors?
Similes and metaphors compare two seemingly unlike things
“Some dirty dog stole my wallet”
Symbols associate two things using literal and figurative meaning
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”

13. Types of Figurative Language
Paradox
A seeming contradiction that is somehow true
Valuable for shock effect, attracts attention
Example: “Poetry is a language that tells us, through a more or less emotional reaction, something that cannot be said.” Edwin Robinson
Example: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.” Shakespeare

14. Types of Figurative Language
Irony
When you say or get the opposite of what you mean or expect
Verbal irony – discrepancy between what the speaker says and what the speaker means
Dramatic irony – discrepancy between what the speaker says and what the poem means
Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”
Brooks, “We Real Cool”

15. Types of Figurative Language
Pun
A play on words; a humorous use of a single word or sound with two or more implied meanings
Oxymoron
A compact paradox in which two successive words seemingly contradict one another
Examples: bittersweet, wild civility, cold heat

16. Types of Figurative Language
Metonymy
The use of something closely related for the thing actually meant
Example: “The pen is mightier than the sword”
Synecdoche
A part substituted for the whole
Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

17. What poetic elements exist?
Imagery
Words or sequence of words that represent a sensory experience (sight, smell, hearing, taste, touch)
Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” and nearly all poems

18. What poetic elements exist?
Allusion
A reference to something in history or previous literature
Hopkins, “Spring”
Yeats, “No Second Coming”

19. What sound devices exist?
Alliteration – repetition of initial consonant sounds
Assonance – repetition of vowel sounds
Consonance – repetition of final consonant sounds
Onomatopoeia – use of words to imitate the sounds they describe

20. What sound devices exist
Rhyme – repetition of accented vowel sounds and any succeeding consonant sounds
Internal rhyme – one or more rhyming words within single line
End rhyme – rhyming words at end of line
Approximate rhyme – slant rhyme, words with any kind of sound similarity (alliteration, assonance, and consonance at end of lines)

21. What sound devices exist?
Elision – omission of unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve meter
Anaphora – repetition of opening word of phrase in a series of lines (Angelou, “Woman Work”)
Refrain – repetition of whole words, phrases, lines, or groups of lines according to fixed pattern (Shakespeare, “Winter”)

22. What is meter?
Meter – measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse
Foot – basic unit of meter, consisting of one accented syllable plus one or two unaccented syllables
Iambic (iamb) – metrical foot containing two syllables, first unstressed, second stressed
Iambic pentameter – five iambic feet

23. What is rhythm? Rhythm – natural rise and fall of language
Corresponds to alternation between accented (stressed) and unaccented (unstressed) syllables
End-stopped line – end of the line corresponds with natural speech pause
Run-on line – no natural pause at end of the line; enjambment
Caesura – a pause for a beat in the rhythm of the verse (within a line)

24. What poetic forms exist?
Open vs. Closed
Open – free from regularity and consistency
Closed – follows fixed structure and pattern (rhyme, length, meter)
Blank verse vs. Free verse
Blank verse – unrhymed iambic pentameter (Shakespeare’s plays)
Free verse – no prescribed pattern or structure

25. What poetic forms exist?
Stanza – unit of poetic lines, verse paragraph
Couplet – a pair of lines, usually rhymed
Heroic couplet – pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter
Sonnet
14 lines, iambic pentameter, prescribed rhyme
English (Shakespearean) sonnet: abab cdcd efef gg
Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet: abbaabba cdecde OR cdcdcd

26. Tone and Subject Tone Subject
The writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward the subject, the reader, or herself of himself
Subject
What is the poem about?

27. Meaning vs. Theme Poem’s meaning – the experience it expresses
What experience does the poem communicate, and how well does it do so?
Poem’s theme
The central idea or unifying generalizations implied or stated by a literary work
Ascertain from the poem itself
Not simply the subject of the poem, but what does the poem suggest about a subject

28. How do we approach poems?
Six Steps
Read aloud twice – define unknown words – initial impressions, responses, observations – TP-CASTT analysis – return to initial impressions, responses, observations – evaluate the poem
TP-CASTT
Title – Paraphrase – Connotations – Attitude – Shifts– Title – Theme