What Is Poetry?

Poetry is a type of colorful and imaginative storytelling. It plays with words, using their sounds and meaning to create imagery and rhythm.

What Are the Features of Poetry?

Poetry uses very specific features. Here are some examples of the main ones.
Not all poems use all of the following features.

Structure
• Poems are made of lines that aren’t always full sentences
• Paragraph-like groups of lines are called stanzas

Rhymes
• Words that sound alike

Rhythm
• Beats or patterns of sounds, like in a song
• Sounds used to create musicality

Feelings & imagery
• Can make you feel emotions
• Can involve the 5 senses, as if you were there
• Create pictures in your mind

The poem “How Doth the Little Crocodile” by Lewis Carroll: “How doth the little crocodile. Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile, On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws!” With a fish looking at a welcome sign while a crocodile is waiting nearby.

Figurative Language in Poetry

Poetry uses figurative language to create interesting images in the reader’s mind.

Figurative language consists of words or phrases used to say something different than their usual meanings.

Here are some figurative language examples often found in poetry.

Simile & metaphor

Similes and metaphors compare 2 things to show they are similar.

Similes make the comparison using the words like or as.

Metaphors make the comparison by saying one thing is the other, without the words like or as.

Comparison of a simile and a metaphor. The simile is “Anna is like a bull in a china shop.” It uses the word “like” and it means she breaks everything. The metaphor is “she can’t help it, she’s a walking hurricane,” also meaning she’s clumsy and breaks everything, but doesn't use the word “like.”

Personification

Personification is giving human qualities to animals or objects.
It’s when animals or objects behave like humans.

Alliteration

Alliteration is when several words in a sentence start with the same sound or letter.
The repetition creates a pattern, a beat, that brings musicality to the words used.