Poetry terms Flashcards
Imagery
Language that appeals to the five senses:
Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, and Smell
Figures of Speech/Figurative Language
A word or phrase that possesses a separate meaning from its literal definition.
Similes
Metaphor
Personification
Hyperbole
Understatement
Oxymoron
Apostrophe
Simile
A figure of speech comparing two different things using like, as, resembles, than.
Metaphor
Comparison of two different things without using the words like or as
My brother is a prince.
Razorback Stadium was a slaughterhouse.
Richard was a lion in the fight.
Her eyes are dark emeralds.
Her teeth are pearls
Implied metaphor
Implied metaphors are not directly stated
Oh, my love has petals and sharp thorns.
Oh, I placed my love into a long-stemmed vase
And I bandaged my bleeding thumb.
(Love is a Rose)
And here, what is implied about the city and the subway?
The subway coursed through the arteries of the city.
Extended Metaphor
A metaphor that runs over multiple lines, passages, or chapters of a text
This kind of metaphor may run through an entire work. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, for example, the farm is compared to a nation, with different possible forms of governance. This comparison extends throughout the novel.
Dead Metaphor
A dead metaphor has been so used and overused that it has lost its power to surprise, delight, or effectively compare.
A cliché is a dead metaphor, a phrase so often repeated that it no longer has force:
He hit the nail on the head.
She was cool as a cucumber.
Jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
This powerpoint show is crystal clear.
Personification
Nonhuman things (animals, objects, elements of nature, and abstract ideas) are given human qualities.
John Milton calls time “the subtle thief of youth”
Homer refers to “the rosy fingers of dawn”
The stars smiled down on us.
An angry wind slashed its way across the island.
Oxymoron
Oxymoron - two contradictory terms are placed side by side, usually for an effect of intensity:
darkness visible (John Milton)
burning ice
Heavy lightness
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is an over-exaggeration or overstating, often for dramatic or humorous effect:
Your predicament saddens me so much that I feel a veritable flood of tears coming on
I’m so hungry I can eat a horse
Understatement
The intentional understatement is used for effect also: “Thank you for this Pulitzer Prize: I am pleased.”
Apostrophe
A person or thing which is absent is addressed:
“What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman” (Ginsberg 599).
“Oh sun, I miss you, now that it’s December.”
Macbeth and the floating dagger
Metonymy
In this figure (m’ tawn ni’mee) one thing is replaced by another thing associated with it:
The Crown is amused (“The Crown” is the Queen).
The White House is furious (“The White House” is the President).
Synecdoche
Here, (sin nec duh kee) a part represents the whole:
All hands on deck!
Lend me your ears.
Let’s buy one hundred head of cattle!
Anaphora
The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses
“Now is the time to make real the promises…”
“Now is the time to rise from the dark”
“Now is the time to make justice a reality”
