Stanza

1. Stanza • Lines of fixed length, used in poetry to organize ideas. They act similarly to paragraphs. Language Arts rocks, this statement is true, When I’m not in class, I feel very blue.

2. Speaker • The character talking to us in a poem. It may be the poet, but most likely it is a character created by the poet.

3. Voice • The tone of the speaker’s “voice”: happy, sad, scared, angry, etc. Palms sweating, heart pounding, I tiptoed up the stairs only to find my worst fear realized.

4. Mood • The feeling a piece of poetry arouses in the reader: happiness, sadness, etc. Death, Death everywhere. Stench, Silence. Hot tears dripping off my cheeks.

5. Symbolism • Use of an object in a poem to stand for or have meaning for something else entirely. The setting sun=death A red rose=love

6. Structure • Physical construction a poet puts into a poem for deliberate effect: stanzas, indentations, capitalization, punctuation, line length, rhyme scheme, etc.

7. Literal Meaning • Literally, what the poem is about. • Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveller, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference ...Robert Frost

8. Symbolic Meaning • Think bigger; what message may the poet be trying to get across to you? • Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveller, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference ...Robert Frost

9. Free-Verse Poetry • Free verse is poetry that doesn’t have a regular rhythm, line length, or rhyme scheme. Free-verse poetry invents and following its own forms, patterns, and rules. Boys… greasy, mean, no good boys. I don’t care, he doesn’t like me, here one day, gone the next, just like my no good father. Why do we even have to have boys?

10. Personification • Giving human qualities to inanimate objects. • “The wind howled through the night.” • “The walls whispered.”

11. Simile • A comparison that uses “like” or “as”. • “The cat has eyes as dark as a night river.”

12. Metaphor • A comparison of two things without using “like” or “as”. It says one thing is something else. • “The eyes are flashing beacons.” • “The student is a raging animal.”

13. Alliteration • Repetition of the initial consonants of words: • Setting sun • Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

14. Onomatopoeia • A word that imitates the sound it represents. • Buzz • Crash • Bang • Splash

15. Hyperbole • An extreme exaggeration • I tried opening my locker a million times and it wouldn’t work! • I Could eat a whole cow!