POETRYFreshman A

2014

Metaphor

A metaphor points of the resemblance between two unlike things.

A metaphor identifies the two things as one

Jim is a bear.

“I’ll Tell You How the Sun Rose” by Emily Dickinson

I’ll tell you how the sun rose, -A ribbon at a time.The steeples swam in amethyst,The news like squirrels ran.

The hills untied their bonnets,The bobolinks begun.Then I said softly to myself,"That must have been the sun!"

But how he set, I know not.There seemed a purple stile.Which little yellow boys and girlsWere climbing all the while

Till when they reached the other side,A dominie in grayPut gently up the evening bars,And led the flock away.

Simile

Figure of speech that compares two unlike things using a word such as Like or As to suggest similarities

“The Day is Done” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darknessFalls from the wings of Night,As a feather is wafted downwardFrom an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the villageGleam through the rain and the mist,And a feeling of sadness comes o'er meThat my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,That is not akin to pain,And resembles sorrow onlyAs the mist resembles the rain…

Hyperbole

An over exaggeration

“Appetite”

In a house the size of a postage stamplived a man as big as a barge.His mouth could drink the entire riverYou could say it was rather largeFor dinner he would eat a trillion beansAnd a silo full of grain,Washed it down with a tanker of milkAs if he were a drain.

Allusion

An implied or direct reference to something.

Can be people, places, events, literary work, myths, works of art

“Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to gofollowed obediently by the title, the plot,the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novelwhich suddenly becomes one you have never read,never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbordecided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbyeand watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Imagery

Words and phrases used specifically to help the reader to imagine each of the senses of smell, touch, sight, hearing, and taste

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not oneWill care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawnWould scarcely know that we were gone. 

Onomatopoeia

The sound of a word that imitates a natural sound.

Crack!

Personification

Gives human qualities to something nonhuman. Through personification, a writer can describe a quality or idea in a concrete yet imaginative way.

At the New year, cartoonist depict the old year as a toothless old man and the new year as a sturdy baby.

Death is often portrayed as a grim and bony figure in a hooded robe.

“Silver” by Walter de la Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moonWalks the night in her silver shoon;This way, and that, she peers, and seesSilver fruit upon silver trees;One by one the casements catchHer beams beneath the silvery thatch;Couched in his kennel, like a log,With paws of silver sleeps the dog;From their shadowy cote the white breasts peepOf doves in silver feathered sleepA harvest mouse goes scampering by,With silver claws, and silver eye;And moveless fish in the water gleam,By silver reeds in a silver stream. 

Rhyme andRhyme scheme

Identify the rhyme patternIdentify how the pattern contributes to the sound of the poem

“The Sound of the Sea” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,  And round the pebbly beaches far and wide  I heard the first wave of the rising tide  Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;A voice out of the silence of the deep,  A sound mysteriously multiplied  As of a cataract from the mountain's side,  Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.So comes to us at times, from the unknown  And inaccessible solitudes of being,  The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;And inspirations, that we deem our own,  Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing  Of things beyond our reason or control. 

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