Poetry Structure
The basic unit of poetry. A sonnet has 14 of these and how and where these break off is one of the most distinctive features of poems.
What is a line?
A struggle (the problem in the story)
What is Conflict?
the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman
What is personification
hints or clues about the future of a story
What is foreshadowing?
Repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words
What is alliteration?
US poet laureate who hails from Gulfport, MS
Who is Natasha Trethewey?
Stanza
The choice of words an author uses
What is diction?
a direct comparison
What is metaphor?
the author's attitude or feeling about a subject that comes across in a piece of literature.
What is tone?
Repetition of vowels sounds
What is a assonance?
Acclaimed children's author and poet who spent much of his career as a cartoonist for Playboy and a writer of 1960s folk music; also known for his quirky poems about quirky characters such as Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout who appears in a poem in the collection Where the Sidewalk Ends
Who is Shel Silverstein?
Instead of "narrator", when analyzing poetry we use this term to discuss who is doing the talking.
What is a Speaker?
What is onomatopoeia?
an indirect comparison using like or as
What is simile?
Five feet in a line of poetry
What is pentameter?
What is consonance?
The Divine Comedy, a long, long narrative poem including sections for Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso (completed in 1320) is his best-known work
Who is Dante?
This poetic form comes in English and Italian varieties and (just about) always has 14 lines. Rita Dove's one of these was "In Primary Colors".
What is a sonnet?
This term describes the feeling that literature is creating in the reader.
What is mood?
Exaggeration
What is hyperbole?
a long poem about the extraordinary deeds of characters who often deal with gods or other superhuman entities
What is an epic?
Repetition of phrases at the beginning of lines
Half a league
Half a league
Half a league onward
What is a anaphora?
The Italian poet who wrote sonnets and inspired Shakespeare to write his own versions of the sonnet
Who is Petrarch?
What is a couplet?
A statement that seems illogical or untrue, but makes sense upon reflection:
I must be cruel, only to be kind. (Hamlet)
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. (Animal Farm)
What is paradox?
understatement, often sarcastic in tone
What is litotes?
The term for a type or subtype of text, which can include not just books but movies, poems, and other texts. Examples of this include Westerns, Sci-fi, realist novels, or anime.
What is Genre?
A verse or phrase that is repeated at intervals throughout a song or poem:
London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady
Take the keys and lock her up, my fair lady
What is a refrain?
The word "Lesbian" comes from the Greek island of Lesbos, home to this ancient poet.
Who is Sappho?
This poetic structure encompasses a range of styles. Examples of it are typically unrhymed but may have lots of different combinations of other structuring elements?
What is Free Verse?
A literary device in which a part of something is substituted for the whole:
--offer your hand in marriage
--get new wheels
What is synecdoche?
a reference to a well-known person, place, thing or event of historical, cultural or literary merit
What is an allusion?
Successful Broadway musical which is based on the poetry of TS Eliot
What is Cats?
he same words or phrases are used at the ends of multiple lines of a poem:
Bride in White, and so it goes
Rose petals thrown, and so it goes
I do, I do, and so it goes
What is epistrophe?
Godfather of the San Francisco area Beat Poets who owned City Lights Bookstore which printed and distributed many poetry editions for those Beat Poets.
Who is Lawrence Ferlinghetti?