meter

Definition: Poetic measure; arrangement of words in regularly measured, patterned, or rhythmic lines or verses.


Example: / - - / - - /
Hickory, dickory, dock,
- / - / - /
The mice ran up the clock.
- / - /
The clock struck one,
- / - /
The mice ran down.
/ - - / - - /
Hickory, dickory , dock.
Significance: I think that a meter is how the word sounds.

rhyme

Definition: Verse or poetry having correspondence in the terminal sounds of the lines.


Example:It was purchased just for you,

when you're happy or you're blue,
you can wear it on your head,
'round the house or in your bed,
you can wear it in the dark,
while you're ..........

Significance: I think that if a word rhymes than it sounds the same as a different word.

rhythm

Definition: Rhythm is the significant in poetry because poetry is so emotionally charged and intense. Rhythm can be measured in terms of heavily stressed and to less stressed syllables. Rhythm is measured in feet.


Example: By the shore of Gitchie Gumee, 

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

Significance: I think that rhythm is like the beat the poem has.

Onomatopoeia

Definition: The formation of a word, as cuckoo, meow, honk, or boom, by imitation of a sound made by or associated with its referent.


Example:

Mom & Dad Are Home

Slam! Slam!
Go the car doors.
Jangle! Jangle!
Go the house keys.
Jiggle! Jiggle!
Go the keys in the door.
Squeak!
Goes the front door!
Thump! Thump!
That is me running down the stairs.
Guess what?
Mom and Dad are home!!
Significane: Onomatopoeia is the sound the object makes.

Personification

Definition: The attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure.


Example:

Games

Chipmunks chatter and scurry,
Blue jays scream and scold.
Robins talk and gossip
demanding their story to be told.
Squirrels skip and box one another
and rabbits play hop scotch.
The games they play, the sounds they make
Really are top notch.


Significance: Personification is when you make an object a human.

Imagery

Definition: The formation of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things, or of such images collectively.




Example:

What Christmas Feels Like

The tree’s aglow with colors of red, green, blue, and orange,
The heat’s toasty arms warmly embrace us.
Presents under the Christmas tree
Beg to be released from their bright, sparkling coats.
Santa Claus cookies washed down with boiling, hot chocolate;
Shouts of glee and appreciation;
Hearts overflowing with love;
This is what Christmas feels like.
Significance: Imagery is when you use your five senses to explain something.

simile

Definition: A figure of speech in wich too unlike things are explicitly compared, as in " she is like a rose". compare metaphor.


Example:

Birds

Chirping non-stop, like a machine in the trees,
Building their nest like little worker bees.
They sing their songs, like chatter-boxes.
As regular as alarm clocks,
Waking people up each day.
They are silent at night,
Like snakes advancing on prey.


Significance: Simile is when you say something using like or as.

repetition

Definition: The act of repeating; repeated action, performance, production, or presentation.

Example:It’s raining…

Raining all around.
It’s raining puddles
On the ground.
It’s raining
On my booted feet.
It’s raining
Rivers in the street.
It’s raining cats.
It’s raining dogs.
It’s raining ponds
For polliwogs.
It’s raining
Drop by drop by drop…
A billion trillion—
It won’t stop!
It’s raining buckets
From the sky.
Significance: Repetition is when you say, write, or read something over and over again.

tone

Definition: Quality or character of sound.


Example: Sometimes I'm a brilliant orange -

able to achieve anything, and overcome everything.
Full of energy and happy feelings.
Bubbly and outgoing.
but other days I'm a deep dark grey -
Confused and incomplete.
Down and defeated.
Crushed and alone.
Any color, Orange or Grey, I'm still ready to face my days! 

Significance: Tone is like the mood of the poem, mortal or happy

Interpretation

Definition: An explation of the meaning of another's artistic or creative work.


Example:

A young black girl stopped by the woods,

so young she knew only one man: Jim Crow

but she wasn’t allowed to call him Mister.

The woods were his and she respected his boundaries

even in the absence of fence.

Of course she delighted in the filling up

of his woods, she so accustomed to emptiness,

to being taken at face value.

This face, her face eternally the brown

of declining autumn, watches snow inter the grass,

cling to bark making it seem indecisive

about race preference, a fast-to-melt idealism.

With the grass covered, black and white are the only options,

polarity is the only reality; corners aren’t neutral

but are on edge.

She shakes off snow, defiance wasted

on the limited audience of horse.

The snow does not hypnotize her as it wants to,

as the blond sun does in making too many prefer daylight.

She has promises to keep,

the promise that she bear Jim no bastards,

the promise that she ride the horse only as long

as it is willing to accept riders,

the promise that she bear Jim no bastards,

the promise to her face that it not be mistaken as shadow,

and miles to go, more than the distance from Africa to Andover,

more than the distance from black to white

before she sleeps with Jim.

Significance: When you explain a poem in your own words.

metaphor

Definition: A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance.



Example:

My family is an expired firecracker
set off by the blowtorch of divorce. We lay
scattered in many directions.
My father is the wick, badly burnt
but still glowing softly.
My mother is the blackened paper fluttering down,
blowing this way and that, unsure where to land.
My sister is the fallen, colorful parachute,
lying in a tangled knot, unable to see the beauty she
holds.
My brother is the fresh, untouched powder that
was protected from the flame. And I,
I am the singed, outside papers, curled away
from everything, silently cursing
the blowtorch

Significance: Metaphor is like something not true, something made up.

Speaker

Definition: A person who speaks formally before an audience. In the poem a speaker is the point of view of the audience.




Example:I will persist,

Even when life resists,

My time is coming,

I must keep running,

I'll run MY race,

and keep MY pace,

Difficulties I'll face,

But I'll keep my grace,

I do what I do,

Because I remain true,

I will rise above,

Doing what I love,

I will make that dough,

Doing what I know,

And to those who laugh,

They can kiss my ASSets 

Significance: A speaker tells a story out loud or says something out loud.

Symbol

Definition: Something used for or regarded as representing something else.


Example:The winter apples have been picked, the garden turned.
Rain and wind have picked the maple leaves and gone.
The last of them now bank the house or have been burned.
None are left upon the trees or on the lawn.

Green and tall as ever it grew in spring the grass
Grows not too tall, will not be cut again this year.
Geraniums in bloom behind the windowglass
Are safe. Fall has fallen yet winter is not yet here.
Significance: Symbols represents and helps you understand things. Like the sign that says no smoking, it is helping you understand that you can't smoke there. It's no tolerated in that place.  

couplet

Definition: a pair of successive lines of verse, especially a pair that rhyme an are the same length.


Example:
Little Billy Critter sat his arse upon a flat,

Singing a little song, petting a little cat.
The cat decided it should not be petted anymore,

Decapitated Billy, and left him on the floor.
Kinda sad that he killed the boy,

Not for long because he found a toy.
It was round, bouncy, and very red

Much more fun than Billy's head
He bounced it up and down the street

'Til another little boy did he meet
The new little boy's name was Jay

He took the little red ball and ran away.

Significance: Poets often choose couplets to make their poem funny and more interesting to read.

Stanza

Definition: An arrangement of a certain number of lines, usually four or more, sometimes haveing a fixed a fixed lenght, meter, or ryhme scheme, forming a division of a poem.




Example:


Join me now in seeing the beautiful playing of the beings all around us,
Expressing sharing the biosphere of earth with us,
Dolphins frolicking, dashing spray at sea,
Squirrels with their tails flowing, leaping tree to tree:
An elk stag bugling, sounding his love call,
Peregrine falcons mating in free fall;
A timber wolf cocking her head quizzically,
Tiger cubs cuffing, sprawling clumsily;
Penguins popping up on the ice flow,
Humming birds hovering, darting to and fro;
Baboons staging theater-in-the-round,
A rockin ol' bull walrus, makin' his walrus sound;
A big dog bounding high to catch a frisbee,
Kittens with their tiny claws having an unquilting bee;
Thoroughbreds at the gate, tossing their heads a prancing,
Elephants trumpeting, in the jungle dancing;
Otters sliding down the mud slide,
A white whale sounding, breaching high an' wide.


Significance: Stanza sepereates the meaning of the things the poet is trying to say.