2. Types of Poetry
Narrative poetry: tells a story
Dramatic poetry: uses drama to present the
speech of one or more characters
Lyric poetry: expresses the thoughts and
feelings of a single speaker
3. Elements of Poetry
Meter: the regular pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables in each line of poetry
Sound devices: elements that enhance a
poem’s meaning by adding a musical quality to
the language
Imagery: language that uses words or phrases
that appeal to the senses
Figurative language: language used
imaginatively instead of literally
4. Ways to Describe a Poem’s Meter
Name its main type of foot
Foot: each unit of rhythm
Iamb ( ˘ / ) around Trochee ( / ˘ ) broken
Spondee ( / / ) airship Dactyl ( / ˘ ˘ ) argument
Anapest (˘ ˘ / ) understand
Count the number of feet in each line
Monometer = one foot Dimeter = two feet
Trimeter = three feet Tetrameter = four feet
Pentameter = five feet
Name the different types of stanzas
Stanza: groups of poetic lines
Couplets = two lines Tercets = three lines
Quatrains = four lines Sestets = six lines
5. Sound Devices
Rhyme: repetition of sounds at the ends of words
(top and drop)
Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds
(weak and weary)
Consonance: repetition of final consonant sounds
(pull and fall)
Assonance: repetition of similar vowel
sounds (low and tow)
Onomatopoeia: use of a word that
sounds like what it means (fizz and hiss)
6. Figurative Language: Figures of Speech
Simile: compares two unlike things by using like or as
I wandered lonely as a cloud
Metaphor: compares two unlike things without using
like or as
Life is a broken-winged bird
Personification: gives human traits to something
nonhuman
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
Oxymoron: combines two contradictory words;
expresses a paradox (an idea that seems contradictory
but is actually true)
A wise fool
7. Emily Dickinson
1830-1886
Amherst, Massachusetts
Wrote 1,775 poems
only 7 were published
before she died
(anonymously)
Very private, small circle
of friends
8. Emily Dickinson: Adult Life
Traveled as young woman but
barely left hometown as an adult
Spent the last 10 years of her
life in house/garden
Dressed only in white
Wouldn’t let friends/family near her
Failinghealth doctor was only allowed to observe
from afar
Sometimes lowered a basket of candy/fruit to
children from her upstairs window
9. Emily Dickinson: Post-Death
Died in the same house she’d
been born in
Left drawers full of poems
Gave instructions to destroy
poems after death
Familydisobeyed edited and
published
Did not become fully recognized
until 1955
Publication of The Poems of Emily
Dickinson
10. Emily Dickinson’s Poetry
Uses both exact rhyme and slant rhyme
Exact rhyme: two words had identical sounds in
their final syllables
Glove - - Above
Slantrhyme: the final sounds are similar but not
identical
Glove - - Prove
11. “Because I could not stop for death”
Symbols: objects/ideas representing something else
1. Death
2. Immortality
3. Slow pace of carriage
4. Recess
5. Fields of “gazing grain”
6. Setting sun
7. Gossamer gown and tulle tippet
8. House
9. Feeling that each century feels shorter than a day