PF - Module Overview
Poetic Forms: Ballad, Lyric, and Pastoral Poetry
Introduction 
Poetry is an art form that is capable of creating powerful images with simple words and often offers to its reader an escape from the routines of life by creating new worlds through literature. Poetry is very much alive today in various forms, and many people do not realize that the songs we often listen to regularly are forms of poetry set to music with multiple types of rhyme and rhythm. In the Poetic Forms module, you will learn the various methods that artists use in order to create poetry and music in order to tell a story or create a different world for listeners and readers. The musical texts created appear in the forms of ballad, lyric, and pastoral poetry, and you will learn the characteristics of each poem type in order to analyze examples of each poetic form. You will then have the opportunity to craft your own poetic music. Finally, you will learn to combine descriptive and narrative writing to enhance your personal, narrative essays.
Essential Questions
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- Can I analyze a poem in order to determine the theme or main idea of the poem?
- Can I understand the use of connotative devices and figurative language in order to determine how they add meaning to a text and help develop the theme?
- Can I write an organized, developed essay that is appropriate to the given task, purpose and audience in a short time frame?
Key Terms 
Refrain: A recurring stanza occurring in poetry that resembles the chorus of a song
Consonance: Repetitive sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase that takes place in quick succession such as in pitter, patter
Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences
End Rhyme: When a poem has lines ending with words that sound the same
Slant Rhyme (Eye Rhyme): A type of rhyme formed by words with similar but not identical sounds such as years, yours
Internal Rhyme: Two or more rhyming words occurring within the same line of poetry
Ballad: A poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas. Traditional ballads are typically of unknown authorship, having been passed on orally from one generation to the next as part of the folk culture
Lyric Poetry: A type of highly emotional poetry with a set rhyme scheme and meter detailing themes of unrequited love or death
Ode: A lyric poem that highly praises and object or person
Elegy: A lyric poem written to commemorate the dead
Pastoral Poetry: A type of poetry with a set rhyme scheme and meter that praises rural, or country, life
Stanza: A group of lines in a poem
Alliteration: The repetition of words that have the same first consonant sounds either next to each other or close together
Rhyme: Two or more words or phrases that end in the same sound
Allusion: A casual or indirect reference to something else such as another work of literature, a historical event, a biblical story, or mythology
Symbol: An object or idea that represents or stands for something else— especially a material object having a deeper meaning
Figurative Language: Using figures of speech to be more effective, persuasive and impactful. Figures of speech such as metaphors, similes, allusions go beyond the literal meanings of the words to give the readers visual images
Hyperbole: A figure of speech that is an extreme exaggeration in order to create emphasis
Repetition: A literary device that repeats the same words or phrases a few times to make an idea clearer
Meter: Meter is a unit of rhythm in poetry, the pattern of the beats. It is also called a foot. Each foot has a certain number of syllables in it, usually two or three syllables. The difference in types of meter is which syllables are accented and which are not
Feet: The combination of stressed and unstressed syllables
Iambic Pentameter: A specific type of foot is an iamb. A foot is an iamb if it consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, so the word remark is an iamb. Pent means five, so a line of iambic pentameter consists of five iambs - five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables.
Simile: A figure of speech that makes a comparison and shows similarities between two different things by using "like" or "as"
Metaphor: A figure of speech that makes a direct comparison and shows similarities between two different things without using "like" or "as"
Pe rsonification: A figure of speech in which a thing, an idea or an animal is given human attributes
Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined to create an effect
Descriptive Essay: An essay that uses similes, metaphors, and other figurative language to illustrate something in a way that the reader can see, feel, or hear whatever is being written
Key Terms Review
Poetry uses various types of figurative language to create imagery and rhythm. Spend time reviewing the types of figurative language and other new vocabulary you will need to know for this module:
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