Glossary of Poetic Devices
Use this list of some of the most common poetic devices to guide you in analyzing and in writing poetry.Use this list of some of the most common poetic devices like to guide you in analyzing or in writing poems and stories.
Use this list of some of the most common poetic devices like to guide you in analyzing or in writing poems and stories
Sound Devices
- Mimetic: words that suggest their meanings by the sounds that they make (ex: chunk or sleazy)1
- Onomatopoetic: words that imitate their meanings by the sounds that they make (ex: splash or boom)
- Alliteration: the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more words in a line or phrase (ex: Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore)
- Dissonance: harsh sounds that can be added to a poem through alliteration
- Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds (ex: the wine became the night)1
- Ascend: the vowels in a poem move from low, rich o’s and u’s to short i’s and long e’s.1
- Descend: the vowels move from short i’s and long e’s to low, rich o’s and u’s.1
- Rhyme: two or more words with the same sound
- End rhyme: rhyme that comes at the end of a line of poetry. This is the most obvious rhyme pattern.1 End rhyme often takes over the poem and makes it sound forced and awkward.
- Beginning rhyme: rhyme that occurs in the first syllable of the line1
- Internal rhyme: rhyme that occurs within a line or lines1
- True rhyme: the correlation of sound in the accented syllables of the words and the syllables which follow them (ex: wood and good, eaten and beaten)1
- Eye rhyme: words that look like they rhyme on paper but actually do not when they are read aloud (ex: cough and though)1
- Slant rhyme: rhyme that is imperfect, typically in the vowel sounds (ex: body and bloody)1
- Syntax: word order within a poem. You can alter meaning in a poem by switching around the syntax to create irony or confusion.
The Rhythm of Poetry
- Cadence: the natural sound pattern created by the spoken word1
- Meter: the recurrence of a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables2
- Scansion: the process of examining a poem’s metrical pattern and deviation from the pattern1
- Foot: the basic unit of measure. This is a combination of stressed and/or unstressed syllables1
- Stanza: a certain number of lines grouped together which usually forms a pattern throughout the poem. Common stanza forms are1:
- Couplet: two-line stanza
- Tercet: three-line stanza
- Quatrain: four-line stanza
- Cinquain: five-line stanza
- Sestet: six-line stanza
- Septet: seven-line stanza
- Octave: eight-line stanza
- Punctuation: can be manipulated to change rhythm. Types1:
- End-stopped: when punctuation occurs at the end of a line
- Run-on/enjambment: when there is no punctuation at the end of a line
- Caesura: within a line of the poem; it usually divides a foot and is in the middle of the line.
Other Devices
From: Candace Schaefer and Rick Diamond. The Creative Writing Guide. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, 1998.
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Sunda. “Glossary of Poetic Devices.” The Poet’s Bookshelf. 06 Jan 2007. http://www.kyrene.k12.az.us/schools/brisas/sunda/poets/poetry2.htm, 2007.
