Poetry II

Some poems use closed forms with set patterns of lines, rhyme or meter, like the sonnet; others use open form, also called free verse. You learn to explain what a pattern, or a break in it, does for the poem. The exam won't ask you to name rhyme schemes, meters or forms.

Words can work literally and figuratively at the same time, and many carry several meanings or connotations. You learn to notice when a word means more than one thing and explain the extra layer of meaning that creates.

Descriptive words, like adjectives and adverbs, shape how you see a subject. Hyperbole exaggerates and understatement deliberately plays something down; both can create humor, irony or emphasis.

An image is a word or phrase that appeals to the senses, and imagery is a group of related images. You learn to explain what an image emphasizes and how a pattern of images builds an idea across a poem.

An extended metaphor develops one comparison across several lines or a whole poem, adding details and images as it goes. A conceit is a kind of extended metaphor that links two very unlike things in a surprising way, as in some of John Donne's poems.

Personification gives human qualities to something that isn't human. An allusion points to something outside the text, such as a myth, a sacred text, another work of art, or a real person, place or event, and borrows its associations.

A poetry essay needs a defensible thesis about what the poem means, evidence quoted precisely from its lines, and commentary that explains that evidence. Transitions show how your ideas connect and build on each other.