OTHER DEVICES USED IN POETRY

OTHER DEVICES USED IN POETRY

A List of Definitions

Other devices are used in poetry to convey and reinforce the meaning or experience of a poem. Many of these devices, too, are used in other genres, such as in fiction and plays. (Many of these definitions are also in your book, but because they are so important, you may find these valuable to have here.)

These definitions, by the way, come by way of the Glossary of Poetic Terms, which can be found on the Internet at http://shoga.wwa.com/~rgs/glossary.html

ALLEGORY

A figurative illustration of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience in a narrative or description by the use of symbolic fictional figures and actions which resemble the subject's properties and circumstances.

ALLUSION

An implied or indirect reference to something assumed to be known, such as an historical event or personage or a well-known quotation from literature.

Sidelight: An allusion can be used by the poet as a means of imagery, since, like a symbol, it can suggest ideas by connotation; its effectiveness, of course, depends upon the reader's acquaintance with the reference alluded to.

ANALOGY

A special form of comparison in which, typically, something unfamiliar is compared to something familiar. For example: “A transmission line is simply a pipeline for electricity.”

Sidelight: Prevalent in literature, the use of an analogy carries the inference that if things agree in some respects, it's likely that they will agree in others.

COUPLET

Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal length and rhythmic correspondence, with end-words that rhyme. The couplet, for practical purposes, is the shortest stanza form, but is frequently joined with other couplets to form a poem with no stanzaic divisions, as in Robert Browning's My Last Duchess.

ENJAMBMENT

The continuation of the sense and therefore the grammatical construction beyond the end of a line of verse or the end of a couplet.

Sidelight: This run-on device, contrasted with end-stopped, can be very effective in creating a sense of forward motion, fine-tuning the rhythm, and reinforcing the mood, as well as a variation to avoid monotony, but should not be used as a mere mannerism.

EPISTROPHE (ih-PIS-truh-fee)

The repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases or verses, as in Lincoln's "of the people, by the people, for the people."

EUPHEMISM (YOO-fuh-mizm)

The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression to replace one that might offend or suggest something unpleasant, for example, "he is at rest" is a euphemism for "he is dead."

FIGURE OF SPEECH

A mode of expression in which words are used out of their literal meaning or out of their ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional intensity or to transfer the poet's sense impressions by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning familiar to the reader. Some important figures of speech are: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole and symbol.

Sidelight: Some rhetoricians have classified over 200 separate figures of speech, but many are so similar that differences of interpretation often make their classification an arbitrary judgement. How they are classified, or "labeled", however, is secondary to the importance of construing their effect correctly.

Sidelight: Figures of speech are also a means of concentration; they enable the poet to convey an image with the connotative power of a few words, where a great many would otherwise be required.

FREE VERSE

A fluid form which conforms to no set rules of traditional versification. The free in free verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of meter and rhyme, but writers of free verse employ familiar poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, imagery, caesura, figures of speech etc., and their rhythmic effects are dependent on the syllabic cadences emerging from the context . The term is often used in its French language form, vers libre. The Bell is an example of a poem written in free verse.

Sidelight: Although as ancient as Anglo-Saxon verse, free verse was first employed "officially" by French poets of the Symbolistic movement and became the prevailing poetic form at the climax of Romanticism. In the 20th century it was the chosen medium of the Imagists and was widely adopted by American and English poets.

Sidelight: The one characteristic that distinguishes free verse from rhythmical prose is that free verse has line breaks which divide the content into uneven rhythmical units of cadence.

IMAGERY, IMAGE

Figurative language (sometimes colloquial) used to evoke particular mental images, not only in the visual sense, but of sensation and emotion as well.

Sidelight: Imaginative word use transfers the poet's sense impressions of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to the careful reader, as in The Chambered Nautilus, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, or The Cloud, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

IRONY

Verbal irony is a figure of speech in the form of an expression in which the use of words is the opposite of the thought in the speaker's mind, thus conveying a meaning that contradicts the literal definition, as when a doctor might say to his patient, " the bad news is that the operation was successful." Dramatic irony is a literary or theatrical device of having a character utter words which the the reader or audience understands to have a different meaning, but of which the speaker himself is unaware. Irony of fate is when a situation occurs which is quite the reverse of what might have been expected.

Sidelight: The use of irony can be very effective, providing it is reasonably obvious and not likely to be taken so literally that the reader is left with the opposite of what was meant to convey. It should also be noted that irony, of itself, is not intended to be bitter or cruel, but may become so when used as a vehicle for satire or sarcasm.

METAPHOR

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one object or idea is applied to another, thereby suggesting a likeness or analogy between them, such as "drowning in debt" or "the foot of the mountain."

Sidelight: The poetic metaphor can be thought of as having two basic components: (1) what is meant, and (2) what is said. The thing meant is called the tenor, while the thing said, which embodies the analogy brought to the subject, is called the vehicle.

Sidelight: Both metaphors and similes are comparisons between things which are unlike, but a simile expresses the comparison directly, while a metaphor is an implied comparison that gains emphatic force by the connotations arising from its lesser specificity.

REFRAIN

A phrase or line, generally pertinent to the central topic, which is repeated verbatim, usually at regular intervals throughout a poem, most often at the end of a stanza, as in Spenser's Prothalamion, or Villon's Les Temps du Dames Jadis. Occasionally a single word is used as a refrain, as nevermore in Poe's The Raven. Sometimes a refrain is written with progressive variations, in which case it may be termed incremental repetition.

REPETITION

A basic artistic device, fundamental to any conception of poetry. It is a highly effective unifying force; the repetition of sound, syllables, words, syntactic elements, lines, stanzaic forms, and metrical patterns establishes cycles of expectation which are reinforced with each successive fulfillment.

SCAN

To mark off lines of poetry into rhythmic units, or feet, to provide a graphic transcription of their metrical structure, as illustrated with the following lines from Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk, by William Cowper (written in anapestic trimeter):

SIMILE

A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two essentially unlike things, usually using like, as or than, as in Burns', "O my luve is like a red, red rose" or Shelley's "As still as a brooding dove," in The Cloud.

Sidelight: Similes in which the parallel is developed and extended beyond the initial comparison, often being sustained through several lines, are called epic or Homeric similes, since they occur frequently in epic poetry, both for ornamentation and to heighten the heroic aspect.

STANZA, STANZAIC

A division of a poem made by arranging the lines into units separated by a space, usually of a corresponding number of lines and a recurrent pattern of meter and rhyme. A poem with such divisions is described as having a stanzaic form, but not all verse is divided in stanzas.

Sidelight: A stanza having lines of the same length and meter, as is the case in most stanzaic poems, is said to be isometric. The exceptions, such as the stanzas in tail rhyme and Sapphic verse, in which the lines are not all of the same length and meter, are said to be anisometric or heterometric.

Sidelight: The regularity of stanza patterns conveys an impression of order and the expectation of closure.

Sidelight: A poem in which the lines follow each other without a formal pattern of stanzaic units is described as having a continuous form, in which there may be no line groupings at all or only irregular line groupings, dictated by meaning, as in paragraphs of prose.

(See also Fit, Stave, Strophe)
(Compare Canto, Couplet, Envoi)

STANZA FORMS

The names given to describe the number of lines in a stanzaic unit, such as: couplet (2), tercet (3), quatrain (4), quintet (5), sestet (6), septet (7) and octave (8),Some stanzas follow a set rhyme scheme and meter in addition to the number of lines and are given specific names to describe them, such as, ballad meter, ottava rima, rhyme royal, terza rima and Spenserian stanza.

Sidelight: Stanza forms are also functional in the categorization of whole poems described as following a fixed form.

SYMBOL

An image transferred by something that stands for or represents something else, like flag for country, or autumn for maturity, Symbols can transfer the ideas embodied in the image without stating them, as in Robert Frost's Acquainted With the Night, in which night is symbolic of death or depression.

Sidelight: Symbols can be subject to a diversity of connotations, so both the poet and the reader must exercise sensible discretion to avoid misinterpretation.