Terminology

One key element of poetry is describing a situation, person, event, or thing. How you describe a thing tells us how you feel about it. Consider the following sentences.

1. She felt sad.

2. She felt as though she’d just lost her best friend.

3. She turned away and looked out the window. The world outside became blurry.

They could all be used to describe the same woman, but they feel different from each other. The first sentence is simple. The second sentence is figurative, because presumably she didn't actually lose her friend, but it feels heavy. The third sentence doesn't tell us how she feels, and we have to infer it. All three sentences are usable, and your job when writing poetry is to pick and choose the words that capture whatever you're trying to express.

Below are some technical terms of descriptive techniques commonly used in poetry. You've probably seen all of these in action, in books, poems, or music, but perhaps you haven't encountered some the terminology before.

• Metaphor – A figure of speech in which one thing (often simple) stands for another thing (often complex).

  • Alfred Noyes: The moon was a ghostly galleon.

  • Emily Dickinson: Fame is a bee. It has a song— It has a sting— Ah, too, it has a wing.

  • William Shakespeare: It is the East, and Juliet, the sun!

• Simile – A comparison, similar to a metaphor, that uses like or as.

  • Amy Lowell: You are beautiful and faded, like an old opera tune.

  • Langston Hughes: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

  • William Wordsworth: I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high…

• Hyperbole – Vastly exaggerating.

  • John Keats: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

  • Andrew Marvell: A hundred years should go to praise thine eyes.

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson: Here once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world.

• Personification – Ascribing the qualities of a human being to an inanimate object or an abstraction. This is similar to anthropomorphism.

  • Lewis Carroll: The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all his might.

  • Carl Sandberg: The fog comes on little cat feet.

  • Emily Dickinson: Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me.

• Symbolism – Using a verbal object or quality to represent something else.

  • Fire → Destruction. Water → Life.

  • Lion → Leader. Butterfly → Transformation.

  • White hats → Good guys. Black hats → Bad guys.

• Metonymy – Substituting the name of an object for something usually found close to it.

  • Joe’s new ride was expensive. → Joe’s new car was expensive.

  • The Oval Office released a statement. → The President released a statement.

  • Hollywood is using more CG these days. → The movie industry is using more CG these days.

• Synecdoche – Using a part of a thing to represent the whole thing, or (the opposite) representing a thing by referring to something it's a part of.

  • Nice wheels. → Nice car.

  • The law is after me. → The police are after me.

  • We have fourteen trunks on our property. → We have fourteen trees on our property.

The above poem uses simile four times in the second stanza. There is also symbolism in the last few lines. Dreams aren't the kinds of things that could explode, but if you never get your dream, perhaps your feelings could be overwhelming.

For a good example of metaphor, see The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

References

• Hughes, L. (1951). Harlem. Montage of a Dream Deferred.

• Kearney, D. (n.d.). Sharpened Visions: A Poetry Workshop [MOOC]. Coursera. Retrieved 2024.

• Lindsay, A., Bergstrom, C., & Weal, J. (2019). Introduction to Poetry. Pressbooks. CC BY 4.0. Some of the above content was copy/pasted from here.