Locating Poetic Techniques (Poetry Metalanguage)

Locating techniques9W – 2015 – The Super Useful PowerPoint

that will help you locate techniques and sound smart when you refer to them.

Make your Poem Look like this – Then your

Homework is just putting

it into a PowerPoint

For Thursday

1. Does it rhyme? Circle where.

• If it doesn’t: The poem is free verse

• If the rhyming parts are within the middle of the sentence: internal rhyme

• If the rhyming parts are at the end: end rhyme

2. Where does it rhyme?

• Does ever line end with a rhyme with the next line?

• Then it is end rhyme or tail rhyme

• Does every first and third, second and forth line rhyme?

• Alternate rhyme

3. Alliteration?

• Same sound repeated

• Is the vowel sound repeated? This is called Assonance

• “Meat, sheet, heat, pleat, crete”

• Is the consonant sound repeated? This is called Consonance

• “Rapid Regular Repeating Rifle”

4. Questions / Rhetorical Questions?

• Are there any question marks? Are the questions answerable or rhetorical?

• “Who’s for the game?”

5. Onomatopoeia? Sound effects?

• Does your poem have any sound effect words, any words that sound like the thing they describe?

• “Bang, Smash, boom”

6. Personification, does your poem use emotional language?

• If the things being given emotions do not usually have them, then this is personification.

• “Angry bombs rained down across the battlefield”

7. Similes?

• Look for the word ‘like’ this is probably a simile

• “War is like a cancerous cell that foreshadows your own death.”

8. Metaphors?

• Look for the word ‘is’ • This is probably a metaphor if it is comparing

two different things.

• “War is mixed blood, War is true sadness, War is wet mud, War is ultimate madness.”

9. Enjambment

• Do any of the sentences in your poem run over more than one line without a full stop, this is called enjambment, and we say that the lines have been “enjambed”.

• “THE last sunbeamLightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,Down a new-made double grave.”

10. Stanzas• How many paragraphs

does your poem have?• These are called stanzas

• “This poem contains three stanas”

11. How many lines in each stanza?

• Two lines = couplet• Three lines = tercet / triplet• Four lines = quatrain• Five lines = quintain / quintet• Six lines = sixain / sextet• Seven lines = septet• Eight lines = huitain• Nine lines = hexameter

12. Repetition

• Are there any words that are repeated?

• “Though they go mad they shall be sane,Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; “

13. Imagery

• What types of images does your poem contain

• “Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,And death shall have no dominion.”

• Sun Imagery

14. Motif / Symbol

• Is there a certain images or word or group of words that is referred to frequently.

• This is the poems motif or symbol

• “You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,And no man claimed the conquest of your land.But gropers both through fields of thought confined. We stumble and we do not understand.”

• Motif of vision, blindness and awareness

15. Euphemistic or Dysphemistic

• Is your poem more direct and forceful when it describes war = dysphemistic

• Is your poem more ‘around about’ and polite when it describes war = euphemistic

• “War is a noble service” = Euphemistic• “ War is a bloodbath of guts and gore” =

Dysphemistic

16. Connotations

• What connotations (thoughts associated) are attached to the key words of the poem?

• Are the connotations positive or negative?

• “War as honourable service” = positive, law-based, service connotations

• “War is a murderous rampages” = negative, law-based connotations

17. Juxtaposition• This is two things that do not often go together, or

be compared, being put together or compared.• War and Peace• Babies and War• Guns and young people• “A toddler with a grenade launcher”

18. Patriotic Language

• Is a country referred to?• Is a nation mentioned?• Does the poem show that one country is the

good side, whilst the other is the bad side?

• “Our glorious homeland, our fortunate motherland”

19. Formal / Informal language

• Is your poem in informal, casual or everyday language? = Informal

• Is your poem in formal, professional and poetic language? = Formal

• “Me and me mates went into the fray” = informal• “The ninth battalion swept around the enemies

flanks” = formal

20. Punctuation and Pause

• Does your poem have punctuation? What effect does this give the poem? Rhyme? Rhythm? Pauses?

• Does your poem not make use of punctuation? What effect does this have on the poem and its rhythm?

• “Even, when the, men, took pause, to consider, their plight, they felt consumed.”

21. Does your poem contain References?

• To other texts? • The bible? The Khoran? The Torah? A famous

story? A line in another language? A line from another poem?

• “Like David and Goliath, the lads charged into the oncoming machine gun fire”

22. Refrain?

• Does your poem repeat a phrase or statement more than once? This is referred to as a refrain.

• “Who’s for the game?”• “Who’s for the game?”• “Who’s for the game?”

23. Allegory• Is your poem an allegory for

something.• An allegory is a story where the

characters are substituted for something else, such as animals, vegetables or something other than the obvious.

• Animal Farm is a well known example of this, as is ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’.

• “The men marched like roaches”

24. Dialogue

• Does your poem have these marks• “”• Then your poem contains dialogue

• “She had to ask, "What was it, dear?"

25. Personal Pronouns / Inclusive language?

• Does your poem contain the words ‘I, we, me, you, he, she’?

• Then it contains personal pronouns.

• Or collective / inclusive language?• We, us, all of us, us lads, our forces, our soldiers?

• “Grim giving to do over for them both.She dared no more than ask him with her eyes”

26. Emotive language

• Does your poem make use of a great deal of emotional, or emotive language?

• “For the proud tears of a sister! come you back, or never come! And the weary Elder Brother, looking after things at home—”

27. Extended Metaphor

• A metaphor that is taken to its fullest extent.

• Metaphor:• Love is a rose.

• Extended Metaphor:• “Love is a rose, it has thorns, it comes in many

colours, and at the bottom of it all it is ringed by unpleasant fertiliser.”