Poetic Devices Take Two

Hyperbole

An extreme exaggeration

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!

You've been talking forever.

Oxymoron

Two contradictory terms put together

-The living dead

-Jumbo shrimp

-deafening silence

Paradox/Oxymoron

Oxymoron is a two-word paradox, a statement or phrase thatseems contradictory but is actually true. Jumbo shrimp is an oxymoron. You have to be cruel to be kind is a paradox.

Juxtaposition

putting two ideas close to each other, especially for the purpose of comparing and contrasting them

"Juxta" means “next to”; "pos" means "placed."

Allusion

A reference to something else.

Those two kids are like Romeo and Juliet.

Don't act like a Scrooge.

Caesura is the use of a pause in a line of poetry.

Let's look at these examples in Simon Armitage's untitled poem known as 'Mother, any distance'.

ENJAMBMENT

• CONTINUATION OF A SENTENCE WITHOUT A PAUSE AND WITHOUT PUNCTUATION

• STANZAS 1,4, 5

Multiple Choice

Which of the following is a hyperbole?

• You didn't clean your room!

• I've told you to do your homework a million times!

• Life is like a box of chocolates.

Multiple Choice

“Danny strolled to the town common, sat on one of the benches in Teenytown and took one of the bottles out of the bag, looking down on it like Hamlet with Yorick's skull” ― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

• hyperbole

• personification

• metaphor

• allusion

Multiple Choice

It was an open secret that the company had used a paid volunteer to test the plastic glasses.

• oxymoron

• personification

• synecdoche

• metonymy

Multiple Choice

What is the subject terminology for a pause, created by punctuation, in the middle of a line of poetry?

• Caesura

• Iambic pentameter

• Enjambment

• End-stop

Multiple Choice

What is "enjambment"?

• A concise but ingenious, witty, and thoughtful statement.

• Pleasing, harmonious sounds.

• In poetry, the use of successive lines with no punctuation or pause between them.

• An adjective or phrase that expresses a striking quality of a person or thing; sun-lit lake.

Multiple Choice

Rolling through the field in the

dead of winter

• Consonance

• Enjambment

• Alliteration

• Personification

Multiple Choice

To be, or not to be - that is the question.

• caesura

• enjambment

Multiple Choice

deafening silence

• oxymoron 
• paradox
• onomatopoeia
• alliteration 

Multiple Choice

"Oh he's so beautiful--such a beautiful disaster," sings Kelly Clarkson. 

• oxymoron 
• paradox
• simile
• metaphor

Multiple Choice

This is the beginning of the end.

• paradox

• euphemism

• oxymoron

Multiple Choice

Example: "There is darkness and light within all of us."

• metaphor
• allusion
• juxtaposition
• alliteration