Poetry Fundamentals
A piece of writing that often uses rhythm, imagery, and sound to express feelings or ideas.
What is a poem?
Repeating words or phrases for emphasis or effect.
What is repetition?
Her heart was a locked door—nothing could get in.
What is a metaphor?
I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam I am.
What is repetition?
The following is an example of what type of poem?
Fury said to a mouse
that he met in the
house, "Let us
both go to law:
I will prosecute
you.-- Come, I'll
take no denial;
We must have
a trial: For
really this
morning I've
nothing to do."
What is a concrete poem?
The general name for a literary form that emphasizes expression, sound, and sometimes structure.
What is poetry?
A direct comparison saying one thing is another.
What is a metaphor?
He ran faster than a cheetah chasing its dinner.
What is a simile?
"The rain plopped, splattered, and splashed against the roof." (Double points for correct spelling.)
What is onomatopoeia?
What type of poem is seen in the following example?:
An old silent pond
A frog jumps into the pond—
Splash! Silence again.
What is a haiku?
This term refers to the measured pattern of beats or syllables in a poem.
What is meter?
A reference to a person, place, event, or work of art, often from literature or history.
What is an allusion?
"The angry storm slapped the windows with its wild hands."
What is personification?
Silly snakes slither silently in the sand.
What is alliteration?
What type of poem is seen in this example?
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover’s tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won’t be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate—and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.”
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
The repetition of similar ending sounds in lines of poetry.
What is rhyme?
The repetition of consonant sounds within or at the end of words.
What is consonance?
"I told you a million times already!"
What is hyperbole?
Which sound device is used most frequently in the following sentence?
"Chuck tricked the duck with a quick flick."
What type of poem is shown by this example?
That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother.
The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.
It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:
What is an ekphrastic poem?
A structured pattern of end rhymes in a poem, often labeled with letters.
What is a rhyme scheme?
A poem with a specific form: four-line stanzas with a repeating pattern of lines.
What is a pantoum?
I went down a rabbit hole last night looking up the samples on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter. (Double points for naming the source of the reference.)
What is an allusion?
Which sound device creates structure in the following poem:
Higgledy-piggledy
Emily Dickinson
Liked to use dashes
Instead of full stops.
Nowadays, faced with such
Idiosyncrasy,
Critics and editors
Send for the cops.
What is meter/rhythm?
What type of poem is seen in this example?
Always a bad sign
people on the sidewalk looking up.
A crowd forms, cars slow
then stop,
people on the sidewalk looking up
I step into a pool of them
then stop.
I gape like the others.
I step into a pool of them,
become the pool
and gape like the others.
Mothers, peddlers, suits
What is a pantoum?