Tone

Definition:  Tone is the emotions and attitude when the speaker reads a poem.

Example:

Spread Your Wings

By Gregory Hudson

Close your eyes, open your heart
concentrate hard, get ready to start

It is almost time to lift off and fly.
Believe in yourself and you'll fly very high.
Open your wings, spread them out
This is what flying is all about.
I know you can make it through this test.
Come on now. Do your best.
Now that you can fly and soar,
you can enter that successful door.
You've spread your wings and lifted your voice.
It's now time for others to make the right choice.

The tone of this poem is inspiring and calm.

Significance:  Tone is important because it brings life to a poem, without it poems would be boring and monotone.  The speaker relies on tone to give poems more depth and to connect to the audience.

Interpretation

Definition: Interpretation is how you understand a poem.

Example:  I interpret the line "And lose, and start a again at your beginnings," in the poem If by Rudyard Kipling, as an obstacle course.  If you skip a tire on a tire cross, you can't continue on, you would have to start at the beginnig.

Significance:   Interpretation is important because it shows if you really understand something and can make something easier to understand.

                             

Metaphor and Extended Metaphor

Metaphor 

Definition:  A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things without using like or as.

Example:  The classroom is a circus.

This metaphor compares the loudness in some classrooms to the loudness in a circus.

Significance: Metaphors are important because it can be used to make something easier to understand by showing the similarities in two unlike things.

Extended Metaphor

Definition:  An extended metaphor is a comparison between a group and another group of words using multiple metaphors that usually relate to the first sentence in the extended metaphor.

Example: Emotions is weather.  Sadness is rain.  Happiness is a sunny day.  Anger is lighting. Confused is foggy.

Significance:  An extended metaphor is important because it gives more detail on the idea given.

Speaker

Definition:  The speaker of a poem is the voice in a poem that tells you what's going on.  It also doesn't have to be the author of the poem.

Example:
Dreams

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

By Langston Hughes

In this poem, Langston Hughes could be the speaker, telling us about dreams.


Significance: The speaker of a poem is important because it sets the mood and meaning for a poem.

Symbol

Definition: A symbol is a phrase or picture that represents something.

Example:
A dove is a symbol of peace and a heart is a symbol of love.

Significance:  Symbols are important because it makes the reader think and could be used as a more meaningful way of comunication.  A symbol can make a reader think outside of what the picture truley is.  For example, a dove might represent peace to some people, but it could mean serenity to others.

Couplet

Definition: Couplets are two lines of poetry that don't need to ryhme all the time, but usually do.

Example:

Silly Sally
When Silly Sally irons her clothes, they come out looking awful.
She did not read the label and her iron was meant to waffle.

By Denise Rodgers
Significance:  Couplets are important in poetry because the occasional rhymes makes it more fun to read and reading poetry should be fun.

Stanza

Definition:  A stanza is a group of lines in a poem that are separated with spaces.

Example:

End of April

Under a cherry tree
I found a robin’s egg,
broken, but not shattered.

I had been thinking of you,
and was kneeling in the grass
among fallen blossoms

when I saw it: a blue scrap,
a delicate toy, as light
as confetti

It didn’t seem real,
but nature will do such things
from time to time.

I looked inside:
it was glistening, hollow,
a perfect shell

except for the missing crown,
which made it possible
to look inside.

What had been there
is gone now
and lives in my heart

where, periodically,
it opens up its wings,
tearing me apart.

By  Phillis Levin

Significance:  A stanza is an important part of poetry because without it, poetry would be hard to understand.  Stanzas give the reader a break while you're reading to let you think about what you've just read.