POE - Poetry Module Overview
Poetry Module Overview
To better understand poetry, let's compare ourselves to a baker. A baker needs to understand what each ingredient does in a cookie recipe in order to make the end result turn out the way it should. There might be butter, salt, sugar, baking soda, eggs, and flour in a recipe. Each of these has its own function, but they all work together to create a final product that most of us just eat and enjoy.
Similarly, we can read a poem and enjoy it, but once we realize all of the ingredients that went into making it, we can better understand its structure and meaning. One ingredient might be alliteration, another might be symbolism, and still another might be imagery or rhyme. Together each of these parts makes up a poem that we can read and enjoy. However, before we can read and understand poetry, it is helpful to know the language we use to discuss it. Knowing these will help you dissect a poem to explore the many ingredients that it can have.
Essential Questions
- What is figurative language?
- How does figurative language make poetry come to life?
- How can I use the TPCASTT method to analyze poetry?
Key Terms
Master these terms to help in your understanding of the content in this module. 
Figurative Language: Words or phrases that reflect more than their literal meanings and express truth.
Rhyme: The pattern of repeated sounds.
Rhyme Scheme: The pattern of rhymed words in a stanza or generalized throughout a poem, expressed in alphabetic terms.
Haiku: Japanese poem, which consists of three lines five syllables in the first and third lines, and seven syllables in the second line.
Consonance: The repetition of consonant sounds, typically within or at the end of words that do not rhyme or have similar vowel sounds. Example horror-hearer.
Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds.
Repetition: The recurrence of sounds, words, phrases, lines, or stanzas in a speech or literary work
Alliteration: The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of a word. Example the repetition of b sounds in Keats's ''beaded bubbles winking at the brim'' (''Ode to a Nightingale').
Personification: A figure of speech in which something nonhuman is given human characteristics.
Metaphor: A figure of speech wherein a comparison is made between two unlike quantities without the use of the words ''like'' or ''as."
Simile: A figure of speech which takes the form of a comparison between two unlike quantities for which a basis for comparison can be found, and which uses the words ''like'', ''as'', or ''than'' in the comparison.
Free Verse: Unrhymed poetry with lines of varying lengths, and containing no specific metrical pattern.
Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming.
Poetic Meter: A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Foot: A meter's basic unit, which consists of one stressed syllable (marked as /) and one or more unstressed syllables (marked as u).
IMAGES CREATED BY GAVS