Poetry Terms 1
Giving human qualities to nonhuman objects or things
What is Personification
An extreme exaggeration for effect
What is hyperbole
When a word sounds like it’s meaning
What is onomatopoeia
A literary device that uses words that evoke the five senses: Sight, Smell, Sound, Touch, Taste
What is imagery
The speaker in the first line of Billy Collins’ “Introduction to Poetry”:
“I ask them to take a poem/and hold it up to the light/like a color slide”
Who is a poetry teacher
An author's choice of words
What is Diction
The repetition of the same consonant letter or sound at the beginning of nearby words
What is alliteration
When the opposite of what you expect happens
What is irony
A play on words/a joke made with double meaning of words
What is a pun
The literary device Marianne Moore uses in the first line of her poem, “Poetry”
“I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.”
What is irony
A grouping of lines in poetry
What is a stanza
The attitude of the author or speaker toward the subject of the the writing
What is tone
A direct comparison of two unlike things to illustrate a similarity
What is a metaphor
A grouping of four lines in a poem
What is a quatrain
Emily Dickinson uses this literary device in this line of her poem “A narrow Fellow in the Grass,”
“You may have met him? Did you not/His notice instant is -”
What is syntax
The dictionary definition of a word
What is denotation
Following punctuation for pauses while reading poetry - not line breaks
What is enjambment
A grouping of two lines of verse or poetry
What is a couplet
When something stands for or represents something much larger than its own literal meaning
What is a symbol
In the following lines from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “We Real Cool”, this is the literary device she uses most:
The Pool Players./Lurk Late. We/Strike Straight. We/Sing sin. We/Jazz June. We”
What is alliteration
The order of words
What is Syntax
A comparison of two unlike things using the words "like" or "as" to illustrate a similarity
What is a simile
A literary term that shows contradictory terms appearing in conjunction
What is an oxymoron
The feeling a word evokes in addition to its literal meaning
What is connotation
Name the literary device in the line from Gary Soto’s poem “Behind Grandma’s House”
I hurled light bulbs like grenades
What is a simile