Giving human attributes to a thing, animal, or abstract term.
What is personification?
100
This former Poet Laureate wrote "The Lanyard" and "The Names."
Who is Billy Collins?
100
The repetition of vowel sounds
What is assonance?
100
A long narrative poem that traces the adventures of a tribe or a nation's popular heroes.
What is a folk epic?
200
a "closed form" poem of 19 lines
What is a villanelle?
200
Natasha Tretheway
Who is the current U.S. Poet Laureate?
200
The theme of this poem is that death in battle is hideous, no matter what certain ignorant poets say about it.
What is "Dulce et Decorum Est"?
200
Latin for "mask" -- not necessarily the poet
What is persona?
200
Includes underlining, circling, highlighting key passages, drawing arrows to connect ideas, and making notes in the margins
What is annotating?
300
Also called a Petrarchan sonnet, this closed form is composed of an octave and a sestet.
What is an Italian sonnet?
300
This poem is an allegory suggesting that life is like a journey.
What is "Uphill" by Christina Rossetti?
300
Wordsworth uses this phrase to describe a shameful gain or a tarnished blessing.
What is a "sordid boon"?
300
John Updike's poem "Player Piano" exemplifies these harsh, discordant sounds
What is cacophony?
300
"Original copy" and "working vacation" are examples of this literary device.
What is an oxymoron?
400
Includes works as diverse as dramatic monologues, sonnets, haiku, and odes.
What is lyric poetry?
400
David Gilmour of Pink Floyd sings a rendition of this Shakespearean sonnet.
What is "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"?
400
The inspiration for this poem was a newspaper story about a man who drowned in full view of his friends.
What is "Not Waving But Drowning"?
400
Here's an example of this literary device:
"But all they want to do/is tie a poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of it."
What is personification?
400
This poem's theme is that society is so bent on making money, spending it and chasing it, that we ignore the pristine glory of nature, which is a reflection of the Divine.
What is "The World is Too Much With Us"?
500
This closed form of 14 lines is composed of three quatrains and one couplet.
What is an English sonnet?
500
The subject of the poem "Tara" by Patti Smith
What is the Virginia Tech Massacre?
500
This poem was prompted by the poet's distress at the decline and approaching death of his father.
What is "Do not go gentle into that good night"?
500
A brief and sometimes indirect reference in a text to a person, place, or event that the writer assumes we will recognize
What is an allusion?
500
The theme of this poem is that duty to one's country should take priority over the love of a woman.