NAME ________________________________________________________________________________ PERIOD _______________
AS ENGLISH LITERATURE POETRY PACKET DIRECTIONS: For each poem in the packet, complete the following steps. See the references section in the back of the packet for models, definitions, and other resources. STEP 1: Read and annotate the poem using the #123SPLITT method. STEP 2: Draw the poem. STEP 3: Paraphrase the poem in 1-‐2 sentences. STEP 4: Make connections to other poems in the packet.
ASSESSMENT/GRADING: • Students with completed packets may use them as a resource on timed writing assessments. • Timed writing assessments will be graded using the Cambridge AS English Literature rubric. • Listed below are possible essay questions that could appear on the timed writing assessment:
1. “Woman! Rise, assert thy right!” In light of this quotation, discuss ways in which TWO poems present a woman’s voice.
2. Compare ways in which poets present human relationships in TWO poems from your selection. 3. Compare ways in which poets evoke past times of events in TWO poems from your selection. 4. Comment closely on ways in which the writer uses imagery in the following poem.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Note: Some poems have no titles. In these cases, it is common to refer to the poems by their first lines.
Author Title Year Page Number
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia The Rights of Woman 1792 3
Bishop, Elizabeth One Art 1977 4
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
Sonnets from the Portuguese 43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!—“) 1850 4
Byron, George Gordon So, We’ll Go No More A-‐Roving 1817 5
Clarke, Gillian Lament 1997 5
Cowley, Abraham The Grasshopper 1656 6
Heaney, Seamus Mid-‐Term Break 1966 7
Hughes, Ted Full Moon and Little Frieda 1963 8
Keats, John On the Grasshopper and the Cricket 1884 8
Lindsay, Vachel The Flower-‐Fed Buffaloes 1926 9
Lochhead, Liz Storyteller 1981 10
Millay, Edna St. Vincent Sonnet 29 (“Pity me not because the light of day”) 1923 11
Philips, Katherine A Married State 1646 11
Rich, Adrienne Amends 1995 12
Scott, Dennis Marrysong 1989 12
Shakespeare, William
Song from Much Ado About Nothing (“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”) 1623 13
Tennyson, Alfred Tears, Idle Tears (Song from “The Princess”) 1847 13
Watts, Isaac The Ant or Emmet 1715 14
Poem Analysis Guide (#123SPLITT) pg. 15-‐16 Model Poem Annotation & Analysis A: “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale pg. 17 Model Poem Annotation & Analysis B: “Pretty Words” by Elinor Wylie pg. 18 Helpful Literary Terms for Poetry pg. 19-‐20
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Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825) The Rights of Woman (1792) Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right! Woman! too long degraded, scorned, oppressed; O born to rule in partial Law’s despite,1 Resume thy native empire o’er the breast! Go forth arrayed in panoply2 divine, That angel pureness which admits3 no stain; Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign And kiss the golden scepter of thy reign. Go, gird thyself with grace, collect thy store Of bright artillery glancing from afar; Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon’s roar, Blushes and fears thy magazine4 of war. Thy rights are empire: urge no meaner claim— Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost; Like sacred mysteries which, withheld from fame, Shunning discussion, are revered the most. Try all that wit and art suggest to bend Of thy imperial foe the stubborn kneel Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend; Thou mayst command, but never canst be free. Awe the licentious5 and restrain the rude;6 Soften the sullen, clear the cloudy brow: Be more than princes’ gifts thy favors sued7— She hazards all, who will the least allow.8 But hope not, courted idol of mankind, On this proud eminence9 secure to stay; Subduing and subdued, thou soon shalt find Thy coldness soften, and thy pride give way. Then, then abandon each ambitious thought; Conquest or rule thy heart shall feebly move, In Nature’s school, by her soft maxims10 taught That separate rights are lost in mutual love.
1 in partial Law’s despite: despite the sway of biased laws 2 panoply: magnificent armor 3 admits: allows 4 magazine: arsenal 5 licentious: lascivious, lewd 6 rude: harsh, uncivil 7 sued: sought for 8 She hazards all, who will the least allow] ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ 9 eminence: elevated ground (hence the lofty status) 10 maxims: moral sayings
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) One Art (1977) The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-‐to-‐last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. -‐-‐Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) Sonnet 43 (1850) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!— I love thee to the depth & breadth & height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight— I love thee freely, as men strive for Right— I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise; I love thee with the passion, put to use In my old griefs, … and with my childhood’s faith: I love thee with the love I seemed to lose With my lost Saints,-‐-‐I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) So, We’ll Go No More A-‐Roving (1817) So, we’ll go no more a-‐roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we’ll go no more a-‐roving By the light of the moon. Gillian Clarke (1937- ) Lament (1997) For the green turtle with her pulsing burden, in search of the breeding-‐ground. For her eggs laid in their nest of sickness. For the cormorant in his funeral silk, the veil of iridescence1 on the sand, the shadow on the sea. For the ocean’s lap with its mortal stain, For Ahmed at the closed border. For the soldier in his uniform of fire. For the gunsmith and the armorer, the boy fusilier2 who joined for the company, the farmer’s sons, in it for the music. For the hook-‐beaked turtles, the dugong and the dolphin, the whale struck dumb by the missile’s thunder. For the tern, the gull and the restless wader, 3 the long migrations and the slow dying, the veiled sun and the stink of anger. For the burnt earth and the sun put out, the scalded ocean and the blazing well. For vengeance, and the ashes of language.
1 Iridescence: a surface of shimmering colors 2 fusilier: rifleman 3 cormorant…tern…gull…wader: types of seabirds
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) The Grasshopper (1656) Happy insect, what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s gentle wine! Nature waits upon thee still,1 And thy verdant2 cup does fill; ‘Tis filled wherever thou dost tread, Nature self’s thy Ganymede.3 Thou dost drink and dance and sing, Happier than the happiest king! All the fields which thou does see, All the plants, belong to thee; All that summer hours produce, Fertile made with early juice. Man for thee does sow and plough; Farmer he, and landlord thou!4 Thou dost innocently joy,5 Nor does thy luxury destroy; The shepherd gladly heareth thee, More harmonious than he.
1 still: always, ever 2 verdant: green 3 Ganymede: the cup-‐bearer to Jove, the supreme god of Greek myth 4 Farmer he, and landlord thou!: Man merely labors on the land you own! 5 joy: revel
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) Mid-‐Term Break (1966) I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling1 classes to a close. At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying— He had always taken funerals in his stride— And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were “sorry for my trouble”. Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.2 No gaudy scars, the bumper3 knocked him clear. A four foot box, a foot for every year.
1 knelling: tolling (as for a funeral) 2 cot: child’s bed 3 bumper: protective bar on a car
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Ted Hughes (1930-1998) Full Moon and Little Frieda (1963) A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket— And you listening. A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming—mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor. Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath— A dark river of blood, many boulders, Balancing unspilled milk. “Moon!” you cry suddenly, “Moon! Moon!” The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work That points at him amazed. John Keats (1795-1821) On the Grasshopper and the Cricket (1884) The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-‐mown mead;1 That is the grasshopper’s—he takes the lead In summer luxury,-‐-‐he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
1 mead: meadow
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) The Flower-‐Fed Buffaloes (1926) The flower-‐fed buffaloes of the spring In the days of long ago, Ranged where the locomotives sing And the prairie flowers lie low:-‐-‐ The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass Is swept away by the wheat, Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by In the spring that still is sweet. But the flower-‐fed buffaloes of the spring Left us, long ago. They gore no more, they bellow no more, They trundle around the hills no more:-‐-‐ With the Blackfeet, lying low, With the Pawnees,1 lying low, Lying low.
1 Blackfeet…Pawnees: Native American tribes
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Liz Lochhead (1947- ) Storyteller (1981) she sat down at the scoured table in the swept kitchen beside the dresser1 with its cracked delft.2 And every last crumb of daylight was salted away.3 No one could say the stories were useless for as the tongue clacked five or forty fingers stitched corn was grated from the husk patchwork was pieced or the darning was done. Never the one to slander her shiftless. Daily sloven or spotless no matter whether Dishwater or tasty was her soup. To tell the stories was her work. It was like spinning, gathering thin air to the singlest strongest thread. Night in she’d have us waiting, held breath, for the ending we knew by heart. And at first light as the women stirred themselves to build the fire as the peasant’s feet felt for clogs as thin grey washed over flat fields the stories dissolved in the whorl4 of the ear but they hung themselves upside down in the sleeping heads of the children till they flew again in the storytellers night.
1 dresser: kitchen shelves displaying dishes 2 delft: old earthenware 3 salted away: scrupulously stored 4 whorl: coiled form
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) Sonnet 29 (1923) Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field to thicket as the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon, And you no longer look with love on me. This have I known always: Love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales: Pity me that the heart is slow to learn When the swift mind beholds at every turn. Katherine Philips (1632-1664) A Married State (1646) A married state affords but little ease; The best of husbands are so hard to please: This in wives’ careful1 faces you may spell,2 Though they dissemble their misfortunes well. A virgin state is crowned with much content, It’s always happy as it’s innocent: No blustering husbands to create your fears, No pangs of childbirth to extort3 your tears, No children’s cries for to offend your ears, Few worldly crosses4 to distract your prayers. Thus are you freed from all the cares that do Attend on matrimony, and a husband too. Therefore, Madam, be advised by me: Turn, turn apostate5 to love’s levity. Suppress wild nature if she dare rebel, There’s no such thing as leading apes in hell.6
1 careful: full of care 2 spell: observe 3 extort: extract forcibly 4 crosses: troubles 5 apostate: religious traitor 6 leading apes in hell: the proverbial fate of spinsters
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) Amends (1995) Nights like this: on the cold apple-‐bough a white star, then another exploding out of the bark: on the ground, moonlight picking at small stones as it picks at greater stones, as it rises with the surf laying its cheek for moments on the sand as it licks the broken ledge, as it flows up the cliffs, as it flicks across the tracks as it unavailing pours into the gash of the sand-‐and-‐gravel quarry as it leans across the hangared fuselage1 of the crop-‐dusting plane as it soaks through cracks into the trailers tremulous2 with sleep as it dwells upon the eyelids of the sleepers as if to make amends.
Dennis Scott (1939-1991) Marrysong (1989) He never learned her, quite. Year after year that territory, without seasons, shifted under his eye. An hour he could be lost in the walled anger of her quarried hurt on turning, see cool water laughing where the day before there were stones in her voice. He charted.3 She made wilderness again. Roads disappeared. The map was never true. Wind brought him rain sometimes, tasting of sea— and suddenly she would change the shape of shores faultlessly calm. All, all was each day new; the shadows of her love shortened or grew like trees seen from an unexpected hill, new country at each jaunty helpless journey. So he accepted that geography, constantly strange. Wondered. Stayed home increasingly to find his way among the landscapes of her mind.
1 fuselage: the body of an airplane 2 tremulous: quivering 3 charted: mapped
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Song: Sigh No More, Ladies (1623) Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never. Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into ‘Hey nonny, nonny’.1 Sing no more ditties, sing no more Of dumps2 so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy.3 Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into ‘Hey nonny, nonny’. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) Song: Tears, Idle Tears (1847) Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-‐fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, That brings our friends up from the underworld, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe4 of half-‐awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more. 1 ‘Hey nonny nonny’: a cheerful chorus 2 dumps: fits of depression 3 leavy: leafy, decked with foilage 4 pipe: song
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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Isaac Watts (1674-1748) The Ant or Emmet1 (1715) These emmets, how little they are in our eyes! We tread them to dust, and a troop of them dies Without our regard or concern: Yet, wise as we are, if we went to their school, There’s many a sluggard, and many a fool, Some lessons of wisdom might learn. They don’t wear their time out in sleeping or play, But gather up corn in a sunshiny day, And for winter they lay up their stores: They manage their work in such regular forms, One would think they foresaw all the frosts and the storms, And so brought their food within doors. But I have less sense than a poor creeping ant If I take not due care for the things I shall want, Nor provide against dangers in time: When death or old age shall stare in my face, What a wretch I shall be in the end of my days, If I rifle away2 all their prime? Now, now, while my strength and my youth are in bloom, Let me think what will serve me when sickness shall come, And pray that my sins be forgiven: Let me read in good books, and believe and obey, That when death turns me out of this cottage of clay,3 I may dwell in a palace in heaven.
1 emmet: ant 2 rifle away: ransack, squander 3 cottage of clay: i.e. the human body
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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POEM ANALYSIS GUIDE for AS English Literature
Mnemonic Task/Term Explanation/Notes
NUMBER
1
2
3
S
_________________________ -‐ first impressions? _________________________ -‐ gradual or sudden? informative or mysterious? _________________________ -‐ regular or random? separate or connected ideas? _________________________ -‐ words, phrases, sounds, grammatical constructions? ___________________________ -‐ regular or random? enjambment or caesura? _________________________ -‐ patterns? connections between words and ideas? _________________________ -‐ patterns? disturbances? _________________________ -‐ gradual or sudden? logical or surprise twist? ______________________________ -‐ predictable or irregular? a particular name or pattern?
P
_________________________ -‐ clearly defined? 1st person? storyteller? observer? ______________________________-‐ single or multiple? when/where does it shift? _________________________ -‐ objective or subjective narrator? complementary or contrasting? _________________________ -‐ narrator is poet? or created character?
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Mnemonic Task/Term Explanation/Notes
L
_________________________-‐ complex or simple? formal or informal? ornate or plain? _________________________ -‐ connotations of word choices? complementary or contrasting? jargon? slang? specialized field?
I
______________________________-‐ sight, smell, touch, taste, sound ______________________________________-‐ comparisons to what? clear or open to interpretation? ____________________________________-‐ hyperbole? metonymy? onomatopoeia? pathos? pun? oxymoron/paradox?
T
TONE/ATTITUDE -‐ Humor? Sarcasm? Awe? How do you know? • _______________ -‐ word choice • _______________ -‐ sensory details/figurative devices • _______________ -‐ ideas included/omitted • _______________ -‐ general sense of words • _______________ -‐ sentence structure, punctuation
T
In your own words, state what you think is the THEME of the poem: what the poem is about AND what the poet thinks about it THEME = _________________ + __________________ A theme statement must be • ____________________________________________ • _____________________ with evidence from the text • _______________________ (could logically disagree) • ___________________ (express the author’s opinion)
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MODEL POEM ANALYSIS & ANNOTATION Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) There Will Come Soft Rains (1920) There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-‐wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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MODEL POEM ANALYSIS & ANNOTATION
Elinor Wylie (1885-1928) Pretty Words (1921) Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-‐enameled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-‐feathered birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-‐eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver disk,
Blue Persian kittens, fed on cream and curds.
I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honeyed words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.
Step One: Annotate using #123SPLITT
Step Two: Draw the poem
Step Three: Paraphrase poem
Step Four: Connect to other poems (include page numbers)
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HELPFUL LITERARY TERMS FOR POETRY allusion: a brief reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event. The most common sources for allusions are literature, history, Greek mythology, and the Bible. alliteration: the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Example: “Ah, what a delicious day!” anaphora: the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. Example: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (Shylock, The Merchant of Venice by W. Shakespeare) apostrophe: a direct address to an absent or dead person or to an object, quality, or idea. Example: “O Captain, My Captain” was written by Walt Whitman upon the death of Abraham Lincoln assonance: repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sequence of nearby words. Example: “sainted maiden… radiant maiden” (“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe) cacophony: the clash of discordant or harsh sounds within a sentence or phrase connotation/denotation: The literal (dictionary) definition of a word is its denotation. The connotation of a word involves the feelings and emotions associated with it. hyperbole: a figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is used for emphasis. Example: I’ve been waiting a thousand years for my meal; I’m so hungry that I could eat a horse. imagery: written description of sensory details (smell, sight, taste, touch, or sound) juxtaposition: two items placed side by side to create an effect, reveal an attitude, or accomplish a purpose. Example: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens) metaphor: a comparison between two seemingly unrelated objects without using “like” or “as”. Example: “All the world’s a stage.” (As You Like It by William Shakespeare) extended metaphor: metaphor that is carried over many lines meter: a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse
iambic pentameter: 5 pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables (5x2=10); common in sonnets; if unrhymed, it is often called blank verse
metonymy: the substitution of one term for another that is generally associated with it. Example: “suits” instead of businessmen or “The Oval Office” instead of the President of the United States mood: the general atmosphere or feeling created for the reader through language, imagery, etc. onomatopoeia: the use of words whose pronunciation suggest their meaning. Example: hiss, bang, crunch, buzz, snap, crackle, pop, etc. parallelism: the use of two or more word, phrases, or sentences with the same grammatical structure in close succession. Example: “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardships, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” (John F. Kennedy) personification: a figure of speech in which an animal is given human characteristics. Example: The tree cried aloud, begging for attention. rhyme: the repetition of similar ending vowel and consonant sounds in nearby words. Example: “ring”/”sing” rhyme scheme: a pattern of rhyming words that continues through a poem
near rhyme: (also, half rhyme or slant rhyme): words that are close, but not perfect, rhymes. Example: “lose”/”rose”, “kind”/”time”
simile: a figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another, usually using “like” or “as”. Example: Her vanity bled like a rusty nail. stanza: a divided set of lines in a poem, similar to a paragraph in prose. A stanza is usually tied together by rhyme, meter, length, or topic. synecdoche: a form of metonymy in which part of something is used to represent the whole. Example: “wheels” for “car”, “hired hands” for workers synesthesia: in literature, the use of one kind of sensory experience to describe another. Example: “heard melodies are sweet” (Keats) symbolism: an object, animate or inanimate, which represents or stands for something else theme: the author’s underlying or essential idea or philosophy expressed (explicitly or implicitly) in a piece of literature tone: the author or speaker’s attitude or feeling toward his/her subject