Common Poetic Devices
A comparison between two essentially unlike things using words such as like and as.
Simile
Example: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (excerpt)
“Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa.”
The implied or suggested meaning associated with a word or phrase.
Connotation
Example: Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (excerpt)
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
This type of poem is not dictated by an established form or meter and is often influenced by the rhythms of speech.
Free Verse or Open Form
This type of poem tells a story, usually about a very specific moment in time. They can be written in rhyme and with strict rhythmic pattern but are most often in free verse.
Narrative
A comparison between essentially unlike things, or the application of a name or description to something to which it is not literally applicable.
Metaphor
Example: Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare (excerpt)
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!”
The repetition of the vowel sound across words within the lines of the poem creating internal rhymes.
Assonance
Example: "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks (excerpt)
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
A long, often book-length narrative in verse form that retells the heroic journey of a single person, or group of persons.
Epic
A form of poetry in which the poet or speaker expresses grief, sadness, or loss.
Elegy
Vivid descriptive language that deepens the reader's understanding of the work by appealing to the senses.
Imagery
Example: "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (excerpt)
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
Repetitive sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase. This repetition often takes place in quick succession.
Consonance
Example: “He Fumbles at Your Soul” by Emily Dickinson (excerpt)
Your breath has time to straighten,
Your brain to bubble cool,
Deals one imperial thunderbolt
That scalps your naked soul.
A poem has three lines, where the first and last lines have five syllables, and the middle line has seven.
Haiku
A form of found poetry wherein a poet takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains.
Erasure
A literary device that uses, among other things, words, people, marks, locations, or abstract ideas to represent something beyond the literal meaning.
Symbolism
Example: "Wild Asters" by Sara Teasdale
In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
Always knew.
Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.
In writing or speech, the deliberate repetition of the first part of the sentence in order to achieve an artistic effect.
Anaphora
Example: "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth (excerpt)
Five years have passed;
Five summers, with the length of
Five long winters! and again I hear these waters…
This type of poem has 14 lines and is written in iambic pentameter. Each line has 10 syllables. It has a specific rhyme scheme, and a volta, or a specific turn.
Sonnet
This is a highly structured poem made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains.
Villanelle
A brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary, or political significance.
Allusion
Example: "Ode on Melancholy" by John Keats (excerpt)
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
The momentary changes in rhythm and pitch, which help set the rhythm and pace of a literary piece.
Cadence
Example: "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
A poetic form that doesn't rhyme but, instead, a rhythmic pattern marks it out. It is written in iambic pentameter meaning that each line has 10 syllables with a stress on syllables 2,4,6,8 and 10.
Blank verse
Also known as a collage poem, this type of poem is composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.
Cento