Elements of Poetry Prior Knowledge

1. The following lines are an example of what sound device? "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing / Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." from "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe

• Alliteration

• Onomatopoeia

• Imagery

• Repetition

2. "Because I could not stop for Death-- / He kindly stopped for me."  What figure of speech does Emily Dickinson, the poet, use in the aforementioned lines?

• Understatement
• Simile
• Personification
• Hyperbole

The following lines are an example of what sound device? “Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came.”

• Onotamopoeia

• Consonance, Assonance

• Repetition

• Metaphor

The following lines are an example of what figure of speech?  "I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa meet, / And the river jumps over the mountain / And the salmon sing in the street." from W. H. Auden's "As I Walked Out One Evening"  

• Aphorism
• Allusion
• Alliteration
• Hyperbole

Poetry that does not follow a specific form nor a consistent rhythmic structure or pattern is known as ______ poetry.

• good
• free verse
• closed verse
• rhyming poetry

Essentially a reference to something else, this literary device intentionally relies on the reader's understanding of history and/or literature. An example is the line "Night's Plutonian Shore" from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," with Plutonian being a reference to the Roman God of the Underworld, Plato. Note that Hades is the Greek equivalent to the Roman Pluto.

• Personification

• Irony

• Idiom

• Allusion

A word that sounds like what it means. Examples include buzz, splash, thump.

• Onomatopoeia

• Metaphor

• Consonance

• Verse

Figurative language is the use of figures of speech, such as _______, ______, and _______ to go beyond the literal meaning of words, thereby giving readers new insights.  

• denotation, connotation, sensory language
• metaphors, similes, personification
• rhyme scheme, internal rhyme, repetition
• lines, stanzas, verses

An object or action that means something more than its literal meaning. An example is the apple in The Book of Genesis representing temptation, knowledge, the fall of humankind.

• Symbol

• Allusion

• Theme

• Enjambment

The central meaning or dominant message the reader is trying to deliver to the reader

• Verse

• Theme

• Tone

• Hyperbole