Rhythm

Definition: movement or procedure with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, or accent.


Example: 

 Love For The Music

The rhythm, and of course the beat.
Moving side to side and dancing the floor.
Feel the music flowing all through your feet.
The beats so good, it makes you want some more.
Get lost in the music, carried away.
Feel the deep passion coming from your heart.
Warm like the sun on the beach on mid day.
It’s been a part of my life from the start.
Made from things happening in real life.
If you listen closely there is a song.
Some are love and some are blunt as a knife.
I can listen to music all day long.
Music’s love or whatever it can be.
Music’s the life that is inside of me.

Significance: Rhythm refers to the pattern of sounds made by varying the stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem. This gives a very distinct form to a verse and gives it a beat. It also helps our understanding of how we are suppose to read the poem.

Rhyme

Definition: verse of poetry having corresponding sounds in the lines.

Example:

Beautiful Soup
'Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Soo - oop of the e - e - evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

'Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Beau - ootiful Soo - oop!
Soo - oop of the e - e - evening,
Beautiful, beauti - ful soup!'

~ Through the Looking Glass-Lewis Caroll

Significance: Rhyme gives poems a beat and rhythm, which is very useful if you are speaking it aloud. The reader will understand the flow of the words more easily by using rhyme.

Onomatopoeia

Definition: is a word or phrase that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes.

Example:

Hallelujah!

Significance: Onomatopoeias give the poem more auditory imagery. Using this can give the reader an idea of what is making the noise, where they are, or what they are doing.

Personification

Definition: the literary device that gives a non-human a human personality and abitilities.

Example: My homework and I had a staring contest.

Significance: People can connect more with non-human beings more when they are given humane properties. Relating to what the reader knows must be illustrated in the poem for them to interpret it correctly.

Imagery

Definition: the use of an object that is not really there, in order to create a comparison between one that is. There are six types of imagery : auditory, visual, gustatory, tactile, olfactory, kinesthetic, and organic.

Example: The day was so blistering hot that the sidewalk can easily burn someone's bare feet.

( This shows tactile imagery, because you can feel the hot weather.)

Significance: The use of imagery evokes a more meaningful visual experience for the reader. It allows an author to add depth and understanding to his/her work. Imagery allows the reader to live and feel the poem.

Simile

Definition: a literary device that uses "like" or "as" to compare different things.

Example: 

Life is like a box of chocolates;

You dig through the box until you find the one you like :)

A simile may be as simple as this line.

Significance: A simile is exact and precise, and not as vague as a metaphor. The common comparisons are used to easily let the reader understand the poem. A simile is a figure of speech that allows for the reader or listener to understand a concept through the understanding of a related concept.

 

Repetition

Definition: the action of repeating words and phrases that have already been written in the poem.

Example:

Lines

Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don't
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return's a line of flight, between
two points of view's a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line's no party
line, however fine your point.
A line of fire communicates, but drop
your weapons and drop your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.

~Martha Collins

* The word "line" is repeated many times in this poem.

Significance: Repetition can set the mood of the poem as more interesting. Repitition poems are very simple and easy to understand. The poet may be trying to express an emotion or phrase using repetition.