Poetic Devices
Mythological and biblical, to name two.
What are allusions?
"Does it dry up like / like a raisin the sun?"
What is "Harlem"?
This poem was written in 1899 during the second Boer War, a brutal conflict between the British Empire and two other states.
What is "A Wife in London"?
A contradictory statement such as "love is not love" in "Sonnet 116" are deemed this.
What is a paradox?
This simple theme for "Futility."
What is "life is futile"?
It's the repetition of vowel sounds in one or more words in close succession.
What is assonance?
"I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence"
What is "The Road Not Taken"?
"Ballad of the Landlord" was written during this literary and cultural movement in the 1930s and 40s.
What is the Harlem Renaissance?
"Sonnet 14" is, certainly, a sonnet, but it is this specific type of sonnet.
What is a Petrarchan sonnet?
One of the two themes for "Design."
What is "there is a malevolent designer" or "there is no designer at all"?
It may not be a perfect rhyme in pronunciation, but if the words are spelled similarly, then it's called this.
What is a slant rhyme or an eye rhyme?
"If I should meet thee / After long years, / How should I greet thee? -- / With silence and tears."
What is "When We Two Parted"?
This author served in WWI as a British solider, and his poem regards the futility of death in war.
Who is Wilfred Owen?
Thomas Hardy used this poetic device to suggest that war affects many people by using an anonymous protagonist in "A Wife in London."
An inspiring theme from "Harlem."
What is "dreams can be postponed but never lost"?
The poetic that best fits this example: "Beware the Jabberwock! / The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! / The frumious Bandersnach!"
What is cacophony?
"Offending race of human kind / By nature, reason, learning, blind"
What is "On the Day of Judgement"?
The author of this poem demands that one must love "for love's sake," but fails to explain what this means.
What is "Sonnet 14"?
Wilfred Owen's poem "Futility" could be described as this, a poem of serious reflection that is typically a lament for the dead.
What is an elegy?
The obvious theme of "Sonnet 116."
What is "love is everlasting"?
What is enjambment?
"Love, a child, is ever crying"
What is "Song"?
This author was less concerned with his own affair with Lady Frances Webster and more concerned that she was having one with the Duke of Wellington.
Who is Lord Byron?
The repetition of "and" in "When You Are Old" is an example of this (but, really, any conjunction could be used).
What is polysyndeton?
A somber theme in "A Wife in London."
What is "war is absurd and hopeless" or "war is not just tragic but also unnecessary"?