ELEMENTS OF POETRY

1. FIGURES OF SPEECH
A figure of speech is the use of language in a different way than the common usage in order
to convey a special meaning. Here are the mostly used ones:
Anaphora: the use of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or
verses.
e.g: Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition! (Shakespeare).
Antithesis: the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
e.g: Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. (Neil Armstrong)
Apostrophe: breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract
quality, an object, or a nonexistent character.
Hyperbole: the use of exaggerated terms in order to give a heightened effect,to make things
seem bigger or more important.
e.g: I have a million things to do!
Irony: to say something and mean the opposite. There are different types of irony. The
following figures can be used ironically.
Metaphor: a comparison two different things that actually have something in common.
e.g: My heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.
A metaphor is made up of three elements:
- The tenor: the subject under discussion.
- The vehicle: what the subject is compared to.
- The ground: what the poet believes the tenor and the vehicle have in common.

In this example, the tenor is: my heart; the vehicle: hunter; the ground: the loneliness.

Metonymy (Greek: change of name): to use a word or a phrase in the place of another to
convey the same idea.
e.g: the crown for the King or for Royalty/ White collars for office workers.
Oxymoron: opposite terms are used side by side.
e.g: Little big man / civil war
Paradox: a statement that contradicts itself.
e.g: Beyond the walls, I can see the mountain.
Personification: to give human qualities or abilities to inanimate objects, or to animals.
e.g: The lion is supreme in his kingdom. / Freedom smiled to us.
Simile:a comparison of two dissimilar things, using like or as.
e.g: her eyes are like two stars.
Like the metaphor, the simile is made up of three elements. In this example, the tenor is her
eyes; the vehicle stars; the ground the fact of shining.
Synecdoche: (Greek: taking together): a part is used to represent the whole. e.g: ABC for
alphabet. / the 9/11 for the events that happened in the USA on Sept. 11th,2001.
Or the whole is used for a part. e.g: Algeria will participate in the world Cup. (it is only a
team, not all the country)
 2. SOUND DEVICES IN A POEM

Skillful sounds are the tools poets use to create an emotional response within the reader. The order
in which the words are delivered should evoke images and the words themselves have sounds, which
clarify or reinforce the images.

Accent: the rhythmic stress that makes some syllables higher than others. Connective one-
syllable words (and, but, or, to) are generally unstressed. The words in a line of poetry are
usually arranged so the accents occur at regular intervals with the meter defined by the
placement of the accents within the foot.
Alliteration: the use of words that begin with the same sound. It is also called head rhyme or
initial rhyme.
e.g: She sells sea shells by the sea shore.
Or : From somewhere far beyond, the flag of fates caprice unfurled, (from the poem,
Darkness Lost)
Assonance: similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighbouring words.
e.g: Try to light the fire.
Consonance: The repetition of the same end consonants of words.
e.g: boat and night; cool and soul
Meter: regular organized succession of groups of syllables in a line of poetry. The unit of
meter is the foot (unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). Metrical lines are
named according to the number of feet in the line: monometer (1), dimeter (2), trimester (3),
tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7) and octameter (8). So, a line
containing five iambic feet is an iambic pentameter. In modern free verse, meter has become
either irregular or non-existent.
Onomatopoeia: the use of words which imitate sounds like whispering, clang, ding dong
Rhyme: close similarity of sound at regular positions. it includes the agreement of vowel
sounds in assonance and the repetition of consonant sounds in consonance and alliteration.
Terms like near rhyme, half rhyme, and perfect rhyme are used to distinguish between the
types of rhyme.
Rhythm: the regular pattern of recurrent accents in the flow of a poem, i.e., the rise and fall
of stress. The measure of rhythmic quantity is the meter.