Look at this list of
literary devices commonly used in poetry and learn them. Then think
of one more example of each literary device and bring it to class on
the date the teacher tells you.
Common Figures of
Speech & Poetic Devices
1.
Alliteration--Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant
sounds in successive
or closely
associated words. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
2.
Assonance--Assonance (slant rhyme) is the resemblance of similarity
in sound
between vowels
followed by different consonants in two or more stressed syllables
in a line of
poetry. Then came the drone of a boat in the cove.
3.
Hyperbole--Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which conscious
exaggeration is
used for effect. I
had a headache the size of a washtub.
4.
Personification--Personification is a figure of speech in which
animals, ideas,
abstractions or
inanimate objects are endowed with human qualities. Death
reached down and
carried the old man away.
5. Simile--A simile
is a figure of speech in which a similarity between two objects or
ideas is expressed
using the words "like" or "as." She sings like a
bird. Considering
how much you hurt
me, you might as well have put a dagger through my heart!
6. Metaphor--A
metaphor is a figure of speech which imaginatively identifies one
object with another
and attributes to the first object one or more qualities of the
second. Simply
stated, a comparison that does not use "like" or "as."
John was a tiger in the battle, fighting with tooth and claw.
