Poetry

Oodgeroo Noonuccal's works prominently feature poetic devices such as imagery, symbolism, and repetition. She uses vivid imagery to bring Indigenous Australian experiences to life, symbolism to...

In Leonard Clark's poem "Owls," Clark describes owls in negative terms, highlighting all the reasons that he dislikes them. He uses metaphor to compare owls to ghosts and personifies the owls by...

In "The Mistress," Keki N. Daruwalla humorously highlights how Indians have adapted English, infusing it with their unique cultural elements. He personifies the Indian English as a mistress, a...

In "This is the Dark Time, My Love," Martin Carter explores themes of oppression and resistance. The poem reflects on a period of political turmoil, highlighting the struggles and suffering of the...

Five literary devices used in Gillian Clarke's "Lament" include metaphor, personification, imagery, hyperbole, and onomatopoeia. Examples include "the soldier in his uniform of fire" (metaphor), "the...

Juliet Wilson's "The Lost Dances of Cranes" contrasts the extinction of whooping cranes with the rise of urban development. The poem begins by lamenting empty fields and the ghosts of cranes' mating...

"The River's Story" conveys the poet's awareness of environmental damage, focusing on river pollution caused by industrialization. Figures of speech in the poem include personification, metaphor,...

Imagery in poetry plays a crucial role by creating vivid mental pictures that enhance the reader's sensory experience. It helps convey emotions, themes, and moods more effectively, making the poem...

James Reeves uses personification in "The Sea" by attributing human qualities to a metaphorical dog that represents the sea. The sea "moans" the word "Bones," suggesting it can speak like a human....

In "An Ordinary Day," Norman MacCaig employs various figures of speech to highlight the beauty in everyday scenes. He uses personification, as in "small flowers were doing their level best to bring...

Lines 5-8 in "Beg a Rose" suggest that the speaker is wealthy and sophisticated. The speaker visits a "rose-shop" to choose "thin pinks for dinner-table décor," indicating a level of refinement and...

To poetically describe a bird, consider using personification to imbue it with human emotions and thoughts. Famous examples include "Ode to a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley and "Ode to a...

"The Border Builder" by Carol Rumens critiques the divisive nature of borders and immigration policies. The poem features a border agent demanding identification and loyalty, symbolizing the conflict...

Songs that use figurative language and relate to power include "Power" by Kanye West, where metaphors and hyperbole emphasize his influence and dominance, and "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor, which...

"Nettles" by Vernon Scannell and "Praise Song for My Mother" by Grace Nichols contrast in mood and theme. "Nettles" conveys anger and resignation as a father reacts to his son’s injury, while "Praise...

The quote "Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them" suggests that poetry evokes emotional responses akin to music. By likening poetry to a musical instrument, it highlights...

"Into the Woods" by Dorothy Baker is a light-hearted poem where the narrator describes a day spent in the woods. The poem uses couplets, personification, and alliteration to create vivid imagery....

"Dear Mum" by Brian Patten is a comic poem structured as a letter from a child to their mother. The poem humorously uses personification, attributing actions like breaking to inanimate objects,...

The poem "Rosalind's Madrigal" explores the dual nature of love, depicted as both sweet and painful. Through the metaphor of love as a bee, Rosalind describes love's persistent presence, affecting...

The poem "This Day in History" by Bert Almon contains literary devices such as imagery and alliteration. The poem is a description of the history of events across continents on a single day.

Liz Lochhead's "Laundrette" uses vivid imagery and wordplay to depict a laundromat scene, highlighting the socio-economic decline of the surrounding area. The poem's language, including puns and...

Marilyn Dumont's "Kindling" employs various imagery techniques and figures of speech, including simile, metaphor, and personification, to vividly describe the mother's handwriting. Dumont uses a...

The poem uses symbols, paradox, and multiple meanings to present a metaphor of the potential unity of the world.

The lines use several figures of speech: end rhyme with an ABCB pattern, imagery to create a vivid picture of a buzzard attacking its prey, and personification in "making sure death has its way,"...

To write a 5-6 stanza poem about your favorite color using poetic devices, focus each stanza on an object or feeling associated with that color. For example, if your favorite color is blue, write...

In "Lesson," Forrest Hamer uses metaphor, personification, and vivid imagery to convey themes of fear and vulnerability. The dark is metaphorically described as "hanging from the trees," suggesting...

It is helpful to read a new poem at least twice to become familiar with the text and its details. Trying to paraphrase the poem can sometimes help you understand its purpose and themes. In some...

The poetry excerpts feature various literary devices. Similes are present where "like" is used for comparisons, as in Millay's and Hall's lines. Metaphors appear when comparisons are made without...

Jim Daniels' poem "Work Boots: Still Life" uses free verse to depict the life of a blue-collar worker through the imagery of worn work boots. The poem employs simple yet effective language,...

The poem employs several literary devices, including vivid imagery with scenes like snow angels and a frozen lake. Similes compare the ice to a "photograph of water" and the snowy outdoors to "a...

Both Dickinson's "Apparently with no Surprise" and Frost's "Design" explore the theme of a higher power governing nature's cruelty. In "Design," Frost attributes the spider's killing of a moth to a...

Vernon Scannell conveys his feelings about the nettle incident by using war imagery to personify the nettles as aggressive soldiers, contrasting them with the vulnerable boy. The poem uses harsh...

In "The Mother," Padraig Pearse employs several poetic devices. Alliteration is used with phrases like "strong sons" and "weary, weary," enhancing emphasis through repetition. Biblical allusion...

In "November Sun," the poet uses personification to create a tone of desolation, noting particularly the way the November sun abandons humanity and causes Canada to be pulled down into a dreary...

Figurative devices are used in poetry to enhance language and meaning by employing creative expressions. These devices include imagery, which appeals to the senses; simile and metaphor, which create...

For a sonnet incorporating personification, simile, metaphor, sensory images, and apostrophe in iambic pentameter, consider a Shakespearean format: 14 lines with an a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g...

The phrase "Now when the young Dawn showed again with her rosy fingers" is an example of personification. Personification occurs when non-human things are given human attributes. In this case, "Dawn"...

The poet associates soldiers and guns with nature to highlight the dominance of artificial, human-made forces over natural elements. In the poem, soldiers and guns are depicted as overpowering...

An example of personification in Bruno Frank's poem "Rejoice" includes the phrase "puts its mark upon our young hearts," where the war is described as marking individuals like a human would. Another...

Clarke conveys her thoughts about the woman's skeleton in "Lunchtime Lecture" through vivid imagery, metaphors, and personification, emphasizing the skeleton's past and its connection to the present....