literary terms for poetry

Figurative language that compares two unlike things and uses “like” or “as.”

The perfume smelled like a spring day.

Figurative language that compares two unlike things directly without using a specific word of comparison.

The crowd was a storm.

Figurative language that speaks of a nonhuman or inanimate thing as if it has human like qualities.

The frog cried.

People, places, events, or things that have meaning themselves but also stand for something beyond themselves.

The writer produces mood by creating images and using sounds that convey a particular feeling.

The attitude a writer takes toward his/her subject, characters, and audience.

The author’s message in a story. The author reveals something about life and people.

The stories that have a meaning beyond the people and events on their pages- meaning that we can use-are the ones that change our lives. This deeper meaning is called THEME.

The way a writer uses language. Punctuation Allusion dialect

The repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables—it provides the poem’s beat.

Thĭs lŏvely flówěr féll tŏ séed

A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Dăy áftěr dáy, dăy áftěr dáy

The repetition of the sounds of stressed syllables and any unstressed syllables that follow.

sport sputtering court muttering

A pattern of rhymes in linesABAB or AABB and so on

The rhyming words occur at the end of the line.

These rhymes occur within lines.

These rhymes use sounds that are similar but not exactly the same.

Fellow hollowBat bit

Repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close together.

The repetition of vowel sounds in words close together.

The word imitates the sound it makes.

Crash bang boomSnap crackle pop

Two rhyming lines are consecutive or together (one right after the other).

A poem written for someone who has died.

This does not have a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Free verse sounds like ordinary speech.

Songlike poem that tells a story, often a sad story of betrayal, death, or loss. Ballads usually have a regular, steady rhythm, a simple rhyme pattern, and a refrain, all of which make them easy to memorize.

A long narrative poem about many deeds of a great hero. Epics are closely connected to a particular culture. The hero of an epic embodies the important values of the society he comes from. (Heroes from epics have-- so far-- been male.)

A poem that tells a story – a series of related events.

A poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelings of a speaker.

A long lyric poem, usually praising some subject, and written in dignified language.

A fourteen-line lyric poem that follows strict rules of structure, meter, and rhyme.

Iambic pentameter is the meter or rhyme pattern most often found in Shakespearean sonnets. [Iambic refers to an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Pentameter means there are five beats or meters per line.]