Unit 3: Craft and Structure

Poetry is a literary form that combines the precise meanings of words with their emotional associations and musical qualities, such as rhythm and sounds.

• Lyric: a short poem that expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker

• Narrative: a poem that tells a story

• Dramatic: a poem that presents the speech of one or more speakers in a dramatic situation

Most poetry is arranged in lines and stanzas, or groupings of lines.

Poets make use of this innate property of language to create meter, or rhythmic patterns.

Each foot is made up of one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable. This type of foot, called an iamb, mimics the rise and fall of the "wrinkled sea" described in the poem.

Trochee: a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, as in the word twinkle.

Dactyl: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in the word beautiful.

Anapest: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word comprehend.

Rhyme is a sound device commonly associated with poetry, although many poems do not rhyme.

Repetition is the use of any language element more than once.
Example: Above the town, above the lake, and high above the trees.

Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. Example: The snake sneaked past the snail.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonants in two or more stressed syllables.
Example: The green leaves fluttered in the breeze.

Consonance is the repetition of final consonant sounds in stressed syllables with different vowel sounds.
Example: The king sang a song.

Onomatopoeia is the use of words to imitate sounds.
Example: The bees buzzed, and the brook gurgled.

Poets choose each word carefully, considering both its denotation, or literal definition, and its connotation, or emotional associations.

Poets choose each word carefully, considering both its denotation, or literal definition, and its connotation, or emotional associations.

The connotative meanings of words are especially instrumental in conveying a poem's tone—the poet's emotional attitude toward his or her subject.

Poetic language is also often rich with imagery, or descriptive language that creates word pictures.

Poetry also often features figurative language, or language that is not meant to be interpreted literally.

A simile compares two apparently unlike things using the word like or as: Her visit was as welcome as a flower in winter.

A metaphor compares two apparently unlike things without the use of a connecting word: Her visit was a flower in winter.

Personification gives human qualities or abilities to nonhuman things: The alarm clock nagged me to get out of bed.

The example poem on this page is free verse—a type of poetry that exhibits poetic language but does not follow fixed patterns.

ballad: a songlike narrative poem, usually written in rhymed stanzas of four to six lines that feature repetition and strong meter

haiku: an unrhymed three-line lyric poem, usually focused on images from nature, in which lines 1 and 3 have five syllables and line 2 has seven syllables

English sonnet: a fourteen-line lyric poem consisting of three quatrains and a couplet, usually rhymed abab cdcd efef gg

ode: a lyric poem on a serious subject, usually written in a precise structure

Poems that do not rhyme but consist of iambic pentameter are known as blank verse.