2.2 Poetry & Figurative Language

Poetry and Figurative Language

Poetry appears throughout the Reading (38%) category, and its terminology is dense and easily confused, which makes it a favorite of test writers. You should be able to name a poetic form, scan a line for meter, identify sound devices, and pin down each figure of speech — all from a short excerpt.

Poetic forms and structure

A poem is built from lines grouped into stanzas (a couplet is 2 lines, a quatrain is 4). Know these forms cold:

• Sonnet — 14 lines in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean (English) sonnet has three quatrains and a closing couplet rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, with the turn near the couplet. The Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet splits into an octave (ABBAABBA) and a sestet, with a volta (turn) after line eight.
• Haiku — a three-line Japanese form with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern, often about nature.
• Limerick — a humorous five-line poem with an AABBA rhyme scheme in anapestic meter.
• Blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter; it keeps meter but drops rhyme (much of Shakespeare's dialogue and Milton).
• Free verse — no regular meter and no rhyme scheme.
• Ballad — a narrative poem in quatrains, often rhyming ABCB; ode — a formal lyric of praise; elegy — a poem of mourning; villanelle — a 19-line form with two refrains (Dylan Thomas's 'Do not go gentle'); epic — a long heroic narrative poem.

Meter and scansion

Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. A foot is the repeating unit; the line is named by how many feet it has (dimeter = 2, trimeter = 3, tetrameter = 4, pentameter = 5, hexameter = 6).

The most tested combination is iambic pentameter: five iambs per line, giving a da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM rhythm, as in 'But SOFT / what LIGHT / through YON / der WIN / dow BREAKS.' A frequent trap swaps the iamb and the trochee — remember the iamb rises (unstressed then stressed), the trochee falls.

Rhyme and sound devices

• End rhyme falls at line ends; internal rhyme occurs within a line; slant (near) rhyme is an approximate match ('soul'/'all').
• Alliteration repeats initial consonant sounds ('wild and windy'); assonance repeats vowel sounds ('deep green sea'); consonance repeats consonant sounds anywhere; onomatopoeia is a word that imitates a sound ('buzz,' 'clang').
• Enjambment runs a sentence past the line break with no pause ('I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree'); end-stopping closes a line with punctuation; a caesura is a strong pause within a line.
• Anaphora repeats the same words at the start of successive lines; a refrain is a repeated line or stanza.

Figurative language

Figures of speech carry meaning beyond the literal. Master these distinctions — the exam builds distractors out of the near-misses.

Two pairs cause the most errors. Metaphor vs. simile: if you see 'like' or 'as,' it is a simile; otherwise a direct equation is a metaphor. Metonymy vs. synecdoche: metonymy swaps in something merely associated ('the White House said'), while synecdoche uses an actual part of the thing ('fifty head of cattle,' 'hired hands'). Imagery is descriptive language that appeals to the five senses; its main purpose is to make a scene vivid, not to advance plot.

Tone versus mood

Tone is the writer's or speaker's attitude toward the subject (ironic, reverent, bitter), revealed through diction (word choice). Mood is the emotional atmosphere the reader feels (eerie, hopeful, somber). A poem can have a calm tone yet a tense mood; keep them separate. Diction (word choice) and syntax (word arrangement) are the tools that create both.

More figures the test slips in

Beyond the core table, be ready to spot several more devices. A paradox is a statement that seems self-contradictory yet reveals a truth — Macbeth's witches chant 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair.' An oxymoron yokes two opposite terms in a phrase ('deafening silence,' 'jumbo shrimp'). Irony comes in three kinds: verbal irony says the opposite of what is meant (often sarcasm), situational irony delivers an outcome opposite to what is expected, and dramatic irony lets the audience know something a character does not. An allusion is a brief reference to a famous text, person, or event. Distinguishing these look-alikes quickly is exactly the skill the selected-response format is designed to measure, so drill the pairs until the label is automatic.

Reading a poem: worked example

Take Dickinson's lines: Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul. First, the literal image: a small bird. Second, the device: hope is equated with a bird without 'like' or 'as,' so it is a metaphor, and because the comparison is sustained across the poem it becomes an extended metaphor (conceit). Third, the effect: the frail, persistent bird makes hope feel resilient and alive. A Praxis item might ask you to name the device or the effect — always confirm the answer against the exact words, since a distractor like 'simile' fails simply because no comparison marker appears. A parallel process works for scanning meter: read the line aloud, mark the natural stresses, group them into feet, count the feet, and only then choose a label such as 'iambic pentameter' — never guess a metrical name without first hearing the beat, because the answer choices are built to punish the reader who matches a term to a form without testing it against the actual line.