ELEMENTS OF POETRY

Stanza
•A unit of lines grouped together
•Similar to a paragraph in prose.

Couplet
•A stanza consisting of two lines that rhyme
Quatrain
•A stanza consisting of four lines.

Mood
•The feeling a poem creates for the reader
Tone
•The attitude a poet takes toward his/her subject.

Imagery
•Representation of the five senses: sight, taste, touch, sound, and smell
•Creates mental images about a poem’s subject
Example: “Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle on the milky way”.

Metaphor
•An implied comparison between two objects or ideas
Example: “A poet could not but be gay [happy] in such a jocund [cheerful] company. I gazed and gazed but little thought what wealth the show to me had brought.”.

Personification
•Giving human traits or characteristics to animals or inanimate objects
Example: “When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils; beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”.

Simile
•A direct comparison between two objects or ideas that uses the words “like” or “as”
Example: “I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills.”

Symbol
•A word or object that has its own meaning and represents another word, object or idea
Example: The daffodils represent happiness and pleasure to the author.

Alliteration
•The repetition of an initial (beginning) sound or consonant in two or more words next to each other in a line of a poem
Example: “What wealth …”

Assonance
•The repetition of a vowel sound in two or more words in the line of a poem
Example: “Which is the bliss of solitude”.

Onomatopoeia
•A word that imitates a noise or action
Example: “flutter”.

Repetition
•A word or phrase repeated within a line or stanza
Example: “gazed and gazed”.

Rhyme Scheme
•The pattern in which end rhyme occurs
Example:
Continuous as the stars that shine (A)
And twinkle on the milky way, (B)
They stretched in never-ending line (A)
Along the margin of a bay: (B)
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, (C)
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. (C).