Great American Poets

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: Poetry Basics

• Poetry is a form of writing that expresses emotions or ideas using specific structures, styles, sounds, and rhythms.
• A simile is a comparison between two things using the words "like" or "as."
• Alliteration is the repetition of a sound at the beginning of words or stressed syllables in a poem.
• Onomatopoeia is a word that sounds similar to the thing it describes (like "buzz" or "hum").
• The end of a line of poetry is called a line break.
• A stanza is a group of lines of poetry (like a paragraph) separated from one another by a blank line.
• A couplet is a two-line stanza that often rhymes.
• A refrain is a line or lines that repeat in each stanza.
• Rhyme scheme is a lettering system (like AABB or ABAB) that describes the rhyming pattern of a stanza.
• Assonance is the repetition of similar vowel sounds, especially within the same line.
• Rhythm (or meter) is the effect caused by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

Lesson 2: Early American Poetry

• Tone is the attitude or feelings the speaker or narrator of the poem seems to have toward the subject of the poem.
• Mood is a feeling or emotion the reader has in response to a poem's details or descriptions.
• Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story, with characters, setting, and plot.
• The form of a story (poetry vs. prose, nonfiction vs. fictional account) influences its effect on the reader.

Lesson 3: Figurative Language

• A metaphor is a comparison between two seemingly unlike things; the comparison does not use the words "like" or "as."
• Hyperbole is using exaggeration for effect.
• Irony involves a contrast between how things are and how things appear to be (or between what is expected and what actually happens).
• An idiom is a figure of speech that doesn't mean what is literally says.
• Personification is giving human characteristics to animals or things.
• A concrete poem (also called a shape poem) is a specialized poetic form in which the poem as written or typed on the page looks like the subject the poem is about.

Lesson 4: Poetic Forms

• Lyric poetry is a class of poetic forms characterized by the poet's expression of feelings and the poem's song-like quality.
• Sonnets are lyric poems with a specific rhyme scheme and structure — traditionally fourteen lines split into three quatrains (sets of four lines) and one couplet.
• A ballad is a narrative poem that is song-like and shorter than most narrative poems; it also tends to be fast-paced, tells a sad story, and may have a lesson or moral.
• Blank verse describes a poem that doesn't rhyme but does have a rhythmic pattern to it, most often iambic pentameter.
• Iambic pentameter is a rhythmic pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable that appears five times in a line.
• Haiku is a traditional Japanese form of poetry that focuses on images in nature and has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables in the second line, and 5 syllables in the third line.
• A limerick is a humorous, five-line poem with an AABBA rhyme scheme and a specific rhythm.

Lesson 5: Edgar Allan Poe

• The American Romanticism movement emphasized the power of nature, imagination, solitude, creative energy, and fantasy.

Lesson 6: Meaning in Poetry

• A poem's literal meaning is a straightforward summary of what a poem is about or what is happening in the poem, while the symbolic meaning deals with what the words or ideas in the poem may refer to.
• A word's denotation is its literal, dictionary meaning; connotation describes the emotions and reactions associated with the word.
• A word's symbolic meaning is its reference to or representation of something else (for example, an eagle could symbolize freedom or represent the idea of America).

Lesson 7: Poetry Analysis

• Poetry analysis includes looking at the poem's layers of meaning, the poem's tone and mood, and the poet's use of figurative language and various sound-related devices.

Lesson 8: Robert Frost

• Hyphens are included in some compound words and to separate a word at the end of a line.
• Dashes are used to introduce, clarify, or set off information in a sentence.
• Cubism was an art movement from the early 20th century. Cubist art often featured geometric shapes, a two-dimensional look, and a representation of an object or scene from all sides at once.

Lesson 9: Memorizing Poetry

• Elegy and villanelle are two other forms of lyric poetry.

Lesson 10: Poems about Poetry

• The ellipsis is a set of three dots typically used to indicate omitted content.

Lesson 11: Editing Your Work

• The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that took place after World War I in which African-American poets and writers gathered in Harlem in New York City to freely express themselves artistically. Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen were all part of this movement.

Lesson 12: Reciting Poetry

• The Beat poetry movement took place in the 1940s. The Beat poets questioned and challenged politics, conformity, mainstream culture, and literary tradition.

Final Project: Poetry Journal

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