POETRY TERMS

alliteration repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. Some famous examples of alliteration are tongue twisters such as She sells seashells by the seashore and Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

hyperbole a figure of speech using exaggeration for effect. Many everyday expressions are examples of hyperbole: tons of money, waiting for ages, a flood of tears, etc. Hyperbole is the opposite of understatement.

imagery sensory details that are vivid and put a picture in the reader’s mind. In the poem "How Did They Kill My Grandmother?" you can feel the weight of the bundles, and hear the tin mugs clanking. You can feel the shoves within the crowed of old people. You can see the young men's indifferent faces. We gathered holding their bundles And the German polizei were herding the old people briskly and their tin mugs clanked as the young men led them away far away.

internal rhyme rhyming words found within a line of poetry. Examples include “From my home I shall not roam” and “O fleet sweet swallow” and the following little poem: "Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell, Though he'd often say in his homely way that 'he'd sooner live in hell.'" --Robert W. Service, "The Cremation of Sam McGee"

metaphor a direct comparison between two things. Some examples of metaphors: the world's a stage, he was a lion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles.

onomatopoeia word whose sound imitates the sound of the thing being spoken about. Examples of onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, and tick-tock. Another example of onomatopoeia is found in this line from Tennyson's Come Down, O Maid: "The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/And murmuring of innumerable bees." The repeated "m/n" sounds reinforce the idea of "murmuring" by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer day.

personification giving human characteristics to nonhuman things. Examples are: the sky is crying, dead leaves danced in the wind, blind justice.

repetition repeated beat, sounds, words, or phrases used to provide emphasis. Examples include “I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep” (from Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”)

rhyme scheme a specific pattern of rhyme in a stanza. For example, “Twinkle, twinkle A Little star B How I wonder C What you are” B follows an ABCB pattern.

simile a comparison using “like” or “as.” An example of a simile using like occurs in Langston Hughes's “poem Harlem”: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"