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Conventions of Poetry

This document provides definitions and examples of key poetic conventions including: - Line, stanza, meter, rhyme, hemistich, caesura, alliteration, and enjambment. It explains that a line is the basic unit of a poem, a stanza groups lines, and meter refers to patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. It also outlines devices like rhyme, repetition of sounds, and continuation of sentences across lines.

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Charlene Deseo
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3K views13 pages

Conventions of Poetry

This document provides definitions and examples of key poetic conventions including: - Line, stanza, meter, rhyme, hemistich, caesura, alliteration, and enjambment. It explains that a line is the basic unit of a poem, a stanza groups lines, and meter refers to patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. It also outlines devices like rhyme, repetition of sounds, and continuation of sentences across lines.

Uploaded by

Charlene Deseo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Creative Writing

Conventions
of
Poetry
Hemi-
Line
Stich

Caesura Conventions Stanza


of
Poetry
Meter Rhyme

Alliteratio Enjamb-
n ment
Line
is a unit of language into which a poem or play is divided. 
Example:
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee?


Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints.
I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life;
and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
Hemi-Stich
is a half-line of verse
Example: Two Commata

I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life;

Caesura
Latin for "cutting“.a break between words within a metrical foot.

Example:

, //
Stanza
a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a
verse.
Meter
is a unit of rhythm in poetry, the pattern of the beats.
It is also called a foot. 

Example:

a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or
unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for
example Two households, both alike in dignity.
Rhyme
is a popular literary device in which the repetition of the same or
similar sounds occurs in two or more words, usually at the end of lines
in poems or songs.
Example:

“Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow;


And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day, which was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play, to see a lamb at school.
And so the teacher turned it out, but still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about till Mary did appear.”
Alliteration
the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or
closely connected words.

Example:
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A good cook could cook as much cookies as a good cook who could cook cookies.
Black bug bit a big black bear.
Sheep should sleep in a shed.
I saw a saw that could out saw any other saw I ever saw.
Enjamb-ment
the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end
of a line, couplet, or stanza.

Example:
The Good-Morrow
BY JOHN DONNE

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?


Prepared by:
Ma’am Rica Lyn
-God Bless-

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