Literary Devices — Poetry
Metaphor
Help describe a thing by directly comparing it with another using "is" (can vary)
E.g. Love is a rose
Pathos
Simile
Help describe a thing by comparing it with other using "like" or "as" (can vary)
E.g. The cloud was fluffy like cotton candy
Pathos
Personification
Comparison between a non-person object to a human action
Few ways:
1. Kind of simile: "Kindness is like a shadow or a friend"
2. Use human verbs on it: "Kindness ties your shoes"
3. Give it a human body
E.g. The sun is playing hide and seek between the clouds.
Add liveliness and vividness, make inanimate objects such as express feelings and perform actions
Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like what it means
E.g. zoom
Make the scene more vivid
Rhetorical question
A question that implies the answer itself
E.g. "doesn't she look pretty?" (Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy)
To get the readers to think a little deeper, emphasize a point
Allusion
A reference in a work to another work
E.g. “... and Eden sank to grief” (Nothing Gold can Stay)
To create the same feeling/mood as the original work, comedic effect, show character motives or traits
Enjambement
A practice of running lines of Poetry from one to the next without using any kind of punctuation to
indicate a stop (period, comma, etc.). (Antonym: End-stopped)
*It is not the same as a run-on sentence, it is one though split between two lines, a run-on sentence is
multiple ideas in one sentences with no punctuation separating them
E.g.
Forces the readers to keep reading to the next line before they've processed the thought, creating tension
between word and idea.
Repetition/Parallel Structure
To repeat something in each stanza of the poem, aka Parallelism
Metaphor
Help describe a thing by directly comparing it with another using "is" (can vary)
E.g. Love is a rose
Pathos
Simile
Help describe a thing by comparing it with other using "like" or "as" (can vary)
E.g. The cloud was fluffy like cotton candy
Pathos
Personification
Comparison between a non-person object to a human action
Few ways:
1. Kind of simile: "Kindness is like a shadow or a friend"
2. Use human verbs on it: "Kindness ties your shoes"
3. Give it a human body
E.g. The sun is playing hide and seek between the clouds.
Add liveliness and vividness, make inanimate objects such as express feelings and perform actions
Onomatopoeia
A word that sounds like what it means
E.g. zoom
Make the scene more vivid
Rhetorical question
A question that implies the answer itself
E.g. "doesn't she look pretty?" (Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy)
To get the readers to think a little deeper, emphasize a point
Allusion
A reference in a work to another work
E.g. “... and Eden sank to grief” (Nothing Gold can Stay)
To create the same feeling/mood as the original work, comedic effect, show character motives or traits
Enjambement
A practice of running lines of Poetry from one to the next without using any kind of punctuation to
indicate a stop (period, comma, etc.). (Antonym: End-stopped)
*It is not the same as a run-on sentence, it is one though split between two lines, a run-on sentence is
multiple ideas in one sentences with no punctuation separating them
E.g.
Forces the readers to keep reading to the next line before they've processed the thought, creating tension
between word and idea.
Repetition/Parallel Structure
To repeat something in each stanza of the poem, aka Parallelism
