Poetic Devices

English 10 HonorsMrs. Caine

Alliteration

The repetition of beginning consonant sounds:

• The students wrote fast and furious

• Students study SAT skills to improve scores

Hyperbole

An extreme exaggeration or overstatement

• The teacher gave a ton of homework

• The class was never going to end

Metaphor

A comparison of two unlike things in which no comparison word is used

• Books are the doorways to adventure

• A thesis statement is the steering wheel of the essay

Onomatopoeia

The use of the word whose sound suggests its meaning

Example: boom, buzz, crackle, gurgle, hiss, pop, sizzle, snap, swoosh, whir, zip

• The pencils scratch the paper quickly

• Binders snap closed

Personification

When the author/poet speaks of or describes an inanimate object or idea as if it were a person

• The chalkboard stared at the students

• The bell screamed the end of class

Simile

The comparison of two unlike things using the words like or as

• Students work like machines

• A thesis statement as clear as mud

Assonance

The repetition of internal vowel sounds

• Hear the mellow wedding bells

• Try to light the fire

Consonance

It is the repetition of internal consonant sounds, usually in the more important words

• And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

• Whose woods these are I think I know.

allusion

A brief reference to something popular or well known – can be people, places, events, ideas, songs – historical, real or fictional.

• Like a Scrooge, she rarely splurged on anything

• Like men before, we step small and leap giant

Free verse

Lines with no prescribed pattern or structure

The fog comes

on little cat feet. 

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Refrain• a phrase, line, or group of lines that is

repeated throughout a poem, usually after each stanza

RhymeWords that have different beginning sounds but

whose endings sound alike

The warping night air having brought the boom

Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,

We tell the wakened child that all she heard

Was an odd question from a forest bird,

Asking of us, if rightly listened to,

“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Symbol

• Person, place, thing, or event that stands both for itself and something beyond itself.

Heart = love

Snake = evil

Speaker

• The voice that is talking to us in a poem.

Tone/Mood

• Tone is the attitude the writer takes toward a subject and conveyed through the choice of words & details

• Mood is the feeling in a work of literature