Poetic devices, techniques, gimmicks – whatever you want to call them, there are “tricks” that make poems “work.” Below is a glossary of poetic devices. Why not use them to systematically produce more interesting poems? For examples of how to do this, and how to eliminate writer’s block, be sure to also check out the following pages:
Poetic Devices – A Glossary
Alliteration – The repetition of initial consonant sounds, either in consecutive words, or in the first word of each line.
Assonance – The repetition of vowel sounds in the words of the poem.
Imagery – Mental pictures created by the words of the poem.
Metaphor – Implicit comparison, by using a word normally used for one thing, to designate another (He closed the door to his heart).
Meter – The measured arrangement of words in poems.
Onomatopoeia – Using words which imitate the sound they refer to (Buzzzzz).
Personification – Endowing animals, objects or ideas with human traits or abilities (The trees laughed at us).
Point of View: First person: The writer is in the poem and tells it from his/her perspective (I came upon two paths…).
Point of View: Third person: The writer tells the poem from an objective perspective (He came upon two paths…).
Point of View: Third person omniscient: The writer isn’t in the poem, but knows and describes what all characters are thinking (John didn’t want to choose, and Mary hated both paths…).
Repetition – Repeating of words, phrases, lines, sounds, or stanzas.
Rhyme – Identical or similar ending sounds between two words or lines.
Rhyme pattern – The way the rhymes occur in a poem (First and third lines of each stanza, for example).
Simile – A comparison of objects using “like”, “as”, or “than” or similar words (It was like an orgy of despair).
Stanza – One of the divisions of a poem; a grouping of two or more lines.
Don’t just apply your knowledge of poetic devices to analyzing poems. Pick a poetic device, and play with it to create a new poem. Take a verse you wrote in the first person, and re-write it from a third person point of view. For more on playing with poetry, be sure to visit the pages, Mechanical Poetry, parts one, two and three.