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Poetry Learning Targets

I can make inferences from a text.

I can determine the meanings of figurative and connotative words and phrases.

I can analyze the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds on a specific verse or stanza of a poem.

I can analyze how a poem’s form or structure contributes to its meaning.

Literary DevicesTechniques poets use to add description and

meaning to poetry

A speaker in a poem is the narrator of the poem

Like a narrator of a story, the speaker can be 1st or 3rd person.

Unlike a story, the speaker sometimes (but not always) is the poet.

What is the Speaker?What is the Speaker?

Word pictures that appeal to the senses.

The language and descriptions a writer uses to create images (word pictures).

The attitude portrayed by the speaker (narrator) in a poem

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGEdevices poets use to describe objects or ideas by

comparing them to something else the reader understands

A figure of speech in which non-human things are given human characteristics

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Example...

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An exaggeration used for emphasis

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Example...

A comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”

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Example...

A comparison between two unlike things in which one thing is said to be another thing

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Example...

SOUND DEVICESWays poets enhance a poem’s meaning through

sounds

The use of words that imitate sounds

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Example...

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words that are close together in a single line of poetry

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Example...

Repeating a sound, word, phrase, or line to create music, appeal to emotions, or emphasize an idea

Rhymes occurring at the ends of lines

POETIC STRUCTURESThe way poets organize their ideas; some poetic structures have special patterns and meanings

A group of words arranged into a single row in a poem

A poet can begin a new line for many reasons, including to make a particular rhyme or syllable pattern in the poem

What is a Line of Poetry?What is a Line of Poetry?

A group of lines in a poem that form a single unit like a paragraph

Poetry that has no fixed syllable or rhyme pattern

Poetry that tells a story

*As a reader, look for the same literary elements you would find in a short story: setting, characters, plot (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action), conflict, resolution, theme/central idea.

A poem written to express grief over death, usually a specific person’s death; can be set to music

*No specific structural pattern

What is an Elegy?

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Idiom

An expression that is not meant to be taken literally.

The words that are grouped together form a common expression instead of the actual denotation of the words.

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Examples

The Red Wheelbarrow

by William Carlos Williams

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

LT: I can make inferences.

1) The poet says, “So much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow.” What does this statement mean?

2) What details are used by the poet to create the mental image of the red wheelbarrow?

Examples

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

by Emily Dickinson

“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.

LT: I can determine the meaning of figurative phrases.

1) The poet compares “hope” to a bird. What type of figurative language is used in this comparison? How can “hope” be like a bird?

LT: I can make inferences

2) What does the poet mean when she says that hope never stops singing its song?

3) What does the poet mean when she says that she has heard “hope” singing in the “chillest land”?

4) What does the poet mean when she says that hope “never...asked a crumb of her?”