Poetry Terms: Rhythm

Definition A sound patterns of certain repetition or a musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Example

There once was a young girl named Jill.
Who was scared by the sight of a drill.
She brushed every day
So her dentist would say,
“Your teeth are so perfect; no bill.

or Television by Roald Dalh

Significance Movie has rhythm, rap has rhythm, romance music has rhythm, why not the poem people? The poems are just as complicated as others, like movie, songs, and speeches. It cost money and time. Just wait for the future and see. It is important to have rhythm in poem so the reader will feel more enthusiastic while reading the poem of anything. And don't even start to ask the question 'what is the anything?'

Poetry Terms: Personification

Definition A figure  of speech's family. Metaphor's family. Describe an object or animal is spoken as if it is a person's feelings, thoughts or attitude.
Example

The leaves on the ground danced in the wind

The brook sang merrily as it went on its way.

The fence posts gossiped and watched cars go by

which winked at each other just to say hi.

The traffic lights yelled, ”Stop, slow, go!”

The tires gripped the road as if clinging to life.

Stars in the sky blinked and winked out

While the hail was as sharp as a knife.

~"My Town"

by unknown

Significance Easy, to describe an object or/and an animal more descriptively without dead/ennui words. Like this,

Poetry Terms: Elegy

Definition A serious poem to reflect, for a lament/mourn of dead.

Example

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.


O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.


My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead. 

~O Captain! My Captain!

by Walt Whitman

Significance If there is a speech for death, then why not a long serious poem? It make more sense and more creative.

Poetry Terms: Alliteration

Definition The repetition of consonants sounds in words that are close together or near.

Example

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop.
Where she sits she shines, and where she shines she sits.

Luke Luck likes lakes.
Luke's duck likes lakes.
Luke Luck licks lakes.
Luck's duck licks lakes.
Duck takes licks in lakes Luke Luck likes.
Luke Luck takes licks in lakes duck likes.

Significance It is a type of poetic device that you should use in a while. It is good to use some words that is tongue twisting to re-awake the reader.

Poetry Terms: Symbol

Definition A person, a thing, or a place that is use to represent something.

Example

The bald eagle = the US, the star of David = the symbol of Judaism,  the cross = the symbol of Christianity, the sweater in "Sueter/Sweter" = the grandmother's love and caring.

Grandmother,

I'm cold;

can you knit me

some wrinkles?

"Sweater"

by Alberto Forcada
Significance In this case, poems use symbol are often for personal and surprising points. Using symbols will bring much alive description, instead of using the name again or 'it'. But also, it has to be specific so everyone read it will think of the same thing. If it is too general, then every different man kind with different live experience will misunderstood the poem/symbols.

Poetry Terms: Assonance

Definition Alliteration's family. The repetition of vowel sounds in words that are close together.

Example

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Dead in the middle of little Italy, little did we know that we riddled two middle men who didn't do diddily.

And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Significance Assonance is like alliteration, or the tongue twisters game. It makes the poem more alive and who can do it are awesome, just like one of you. I promise you this will be fun, add to your poems and go fopdoodle [silly]

Poetry Terms: Couplet

Definition Two continuous lines of poetry that rhyme.
Significance I like these because these poems, such as couplet or haiku, challenge you to compose poems within many words and have a meaning with it. This is hard, but good for practicing. Keep it up everyone. And I am pretty sure the ancient Chinese used this a lot.

Example.

My Cat

By Molly

I like to play with my cat

He likes to get in a hat.

Good Vacation

By David

I like to play games a lot

I loved when it was hot.

Poetry Terms: Meter

Definition The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

Example

Iambic Pentameter: That time | of year | thou mayst | in me | behold

Trochaic Tetrameter: Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers
Significance In this one, I am not really sure about it, but if poems are like songs, songs are friend of poems, both should have stressed and unstressed syllables. I am probably sure, many artist change the stress to fit the rhythm of the music, so you and I probably couldn't here the stressed/unstressed of the songs, but poems are great. These things are the elements what make it a song.

Poetry Terms: Interpretation

Sign Language

Define The meaning/explanation of something.
Example This is use while readers are reading the poems, they interpret it.
Significance Most of the poem are depends on the life's of the author/writer, but sometimes they are meant for someone special. If a girl reading a romantic poem, she will feels much better, but if a boy is reading, he would be feeling to puke.

Poetry Terms: Speaker

 

Define The one who is reading the poem, or the first person perspective.

Example Reading with enunciation is a person who knows how to read poem, or to use the speaker/voice of the speaker.

Significance This is another basic rules, read the poem OUT LOUD. Reading silently are like reading story with robot voice in your head. You won't be able to notice what the poem really mean, your just reading to kill your time, am I right? So please do me a favor, read the poem aloud, reread it again until you understand it, please please, I beg you!

Poetry Terms: Tone

Define  The attitude of the writer toward the audience/readers. The pitch of the voice while reading expressing feelings and thoughts of the writer.
Example While you read/sing, you stress your voice to express the real feeling or you would just be a robot your whole life. Another purpose is when the character talk in the poem, the story.
Significance Tone is a basic things everyone should know while reading, if not using it, that is called making the audience sleep. It is very important using it while reading anything, to show the audience the important phrase, words and what should you be feeling right now. If you are reading the poem for deaths, the reader should show the audience the sympathize/empathize feelings.

Poetry Terms: Onomatopoeia

Define A word of the sound that sounds of the objects, like sizzle, cuckoo, crunch.

Example

... the moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

or

Kaboom!
Ka-blast
Way in the past
the miners mined for ore.
They searched for copper, iron and salt,
for that and much, much more.

Kaboom!
The bite
of dynamite
cut deep inside the earth.
The charge explodes revealing lodes
of minerals of worth.

Kaboom!
The dust,
the air so mussed
went swirling through the sky.
It was a sight, the dynamite
that made the mountains fly.

Kaboom!
The earth
was filled with mirth
so tickled by the boom.
The miner's pleasure,
each new found treasure
that followed each
Kaboom!

~" Kaboom"

by Denise Rodgers

Significance Movies have sounds, musics have effects, why wouldn't poems have onomatopoeia? :]

Poetry Terms: Lines

Definition Poetry's language. Poem's sentences. A single line of the poem.
Example There are six lines in the bottom poem.

A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day. 

~"A word is dead"

by Emily Dickinson

Significance Without lines are like a paragraph without punctuations, or a paragraph with continuous run-on sentences, over and over again. Now pretend that you are the reader reading the things above, I think it would take millions of try to complete that. Try reading the whole paragraph non-stop. You would probably be blowing up right now, just like another balloon explode when they get to much air inside. Hope you see the importance of it.

Poetry Terms: Imagery

Definition Poetry's language.Visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in literary work. Not dead words, but descriptive words/language.

Example

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o'clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

~from "Preludes"
by T. S. Eliot

Significance Using imagery is like being descriptive, for example, from this "At dawn the sun peaks out from behind mountain tops. You can see the first rays of the sun grace the Earth." to this "Blazing ball of fire/scorching hot/sphere of golden/suspended in midair./fingers of warmth reaching out of the mountain peaks." Look how it change while you read it. Doesn't it amaze you with the imagery magic?...Hope you get the idea.

How about this? It is like writing a narrative or short story to catch the teacher's eyes, how would you make it works. That's right, using more adjective words for a better reader's viewing or to make the reader imagine the scene clearer with the descriptive words.

Poetry Terms: Extended Metaphor

Definition Metaphor's Family. A comparison of two unlike things that had a continuous series in a stanza or a line, without using like or as.
Significance It may help the poem by more a live to people. Most poets don't use extended metaphor that much, so it may make it more unique.
Example 

The willow is like an etching,

Fine-lined against the sky.

The ginkgo is like a crude sketch,

Hardly worthy to be signed.

The willow’s music is like a soprano,

Delicate and thin.

The ginkgo’s tune is like a chorus

With everyone joining in.

~"Willow and Ginkgo" 

by Eve Merriam

Poetry Terms: Stanza

A Clock stopped—
Not the Mantel's—
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing—
That just now dangled still—
[First Stanza]
An awe came on the Trinket!
The Figures hunched, with pain—
Then quivered out of Decimals—
Into Degreeless Noon—
[Second Stanza]
It will not stir for Doctors—
This Pendulum of snow—
This Shopman importunes it—
While cool—concernless No—
[Third Stanza]
Nods from the Gilded pointers—
Nods from the Seconds slim—
Decades of Arrogance between
The Dial life—
And Him— 

[Fourth Stanza]

~"A Clock Stopped"

by Emily Dickinson

Definition Poetry's language. A paragraph
Example The poem above. There is four stanzas in that poem, but there is only two stanzas in the picture poem.
Significance Without stanza are like three paragraph in a essay [introduction, body, and conclusion] in one paragraph or many ideas in a paragraph. Probably you wouldn't like to read it either? Too many words make you dizzy and so to me! It would make the poem harder for us to understand. Let's not be confusing.

Poetry Terms: Simile

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide.

~from "Introduction to Poetry"

by Billy Collins

Definition A figure of speech, comparing two alike things with connecting words, such as like, as, than, and resembles.
Example The poem above
Significance Comparing things help things get a little easier, while you don't know how to describe the cold as harsh as you can without using the word harsh. Yeah, that's right, compare the cold to a nail, isn't that much easier for you.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
~from "The Cremation of Sam McGee"
by Robert W. Service
Take time, the magic will come to you with this figure of speech. [sim-ee-ly]

Poetry Terms: Metaphor

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~"Hope"

by Emily Dickinson

Definition A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. Which simply means to make a comparison without using connecting words, such as like, as, than, and resembles.
Example The poem above. Writing about hopes are like birds. Flying and sharing by singing.
Significance This is a important figure of speech for writing poem. It is a good way to solve when you have used too much connecting words in the literature work. Another way to be descriptive and creative by comparing things to things, which is a way of avoiding the truth if you don't like admitting. Also, it takes time to use this strategy to 'parfait' it.

Types of Poetry: Free-verse

So complicated

That is what boys really are

With stupidity.

~by Mary Tran & Emily Lam

Definition It does not follow a meter or a rhythm scheme, but still including some of the other poetry's elements, such as imagery, rhyme, alliteration.
Example The poem above.

Types of Poetry: Elegies

Where are you Mom, where did you go

You have gone to a place I do not know

Your new world does not include me

It’s rather cloudy, from what I see

You sit there in your chair

With such a vacant empty stare

I wish I could bring back the better times

~Where Are You Mom

by Buddy

Definition  A poem usually for someone who has died.
Example The poem above.

Types of Poetry: Odes

I am new to writing poems and I hope I can learn from all of you.
By the way, I learned how to write this kind of poem because of
An Ode to Christmas. Thank you very much!
An Ode to Halloween
When you see a child
In a costume scary and wild
You know it is Halloween.

When kids go trick-or-treats
And get lots and lots of sweets
You know it is Halloween.

When the trees give up their yellow leaves
And the dead give back their R.I.P.s
You know it is Halloween.

~from "An Ode to Halloween"

by Andy Jin

Defnition Lyric's Family. Long, lyrics poems that are written to celebrate a famous person or a mighty idea.
Example The poem above.

Types of Poetry: Sonnets

I stroll along a fragrant country lane
With honeysuckle perfume on the air –
And feathered crooner’s warble to revere –
Then cross a golden sea of flowing grain 

~from "Wife to Be"

by Mark R Slaughter

Definition Lyric's Family. Always has fourteen lines long and usually has a specific meter.

Example The poem above.

Types of Poetry: Lyric

The old man

must have stopped our car

two dozen times to climb out

and gather into his hands

the small toads blinded

by our lights and leaping

live drops of rain. ...

~from "Birdfoot's Grampa"

by Joseph Bruchac

Definition Usually do not tell a story, but they express personal thoughts and feelings of the poet or the speaker.
Example The poem above

Types of Poetry: Epics

This poem is epic
so I named it so
it's more epic than wind and snow
which are in there own respects quite epic

~from "Epic Poems"

by Torben Ducan

Definition Narrative's family. Long narrative poems, originally used orally, that tells story about heroes/heroines.
Example The poem above.

Types of Poetry: Ballads

Light do I see within my Lady’s eyes

And loving spirits in its plenisphere
Which bear in strange delight on my heart’s care
Till Joy’s awakened from that sepulchre. 
~from "Ballata 5"
by Guido Cavalcanti

Definition Narrative's family. A songlike poem that tells a story. It is often about love, betrayal, or death. It usually have a steady rhythm and a simple rhyme pattern to complete the poem.
Example The poem above.

Types of Poetry: Narrative

Sitting in a tree
He waits silently

Slowly breathe, draw an arrow
Catch a meal for tomorrow

Bring home meat, feed them today
His family is week, in disarray

He eyes grow weary, mind goes dark
His skin is irritated against the bark

A figure moves within the brush
His arrow flies, a wooden rush

His eyes go blank, his mind a swirl
For his arrow found a little girl...

~""

by  lucidnightmares

Definition Tell stories. Poem that has a plot to it. It includes ballads, epics and idylls.

Example The poems above.

Poetry Terms: Rhyme

Don't be sad

Don't be blue

Frankenstein

Was ugly too.

~from""

by Andrey

Define Correspondence of sound, effects, or beats between words or the endings of words, mostly are used at the ends of lines of poetry. There are many types of rhymes, such as end rhymes, internal rhymes, exact rhymes and approximate rhymes.

Example the poem above.
Significance

Poetry Terms: Poetry

Look no farther than your hand

Make a choice and take a stand.

~from "Princess Academy"

by Shannon Hale

Define A rhythmical composition of art or a literary work; to be spoken or written; to show the pleasure of beauty, imagination and well-done thoughts.
Example the poem above.
Significance It is important to every human beings on this planet to learn the basic things of poetry. For students, learning poetry is adding a part to your literature collection, one more new way of expressing yourself with words. It almost take up the same amount of time to make a outstanding poem(s)like writing essays, but with less amount of words. For workers who is stressed should take some time and write poem(s) to express all your emotionally feelings you got there in your balloons. Especially for adults who is not doing so well with arts. Practice poetry first, then take a big step to show your beautiful imagination that have been hide on the bottom of your heart (since elementary school) out to shine. BE BRAVE!