what are the common devices used in poetry?

Answer 1

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In traditional English poetry (NOT in all other languages), verse forms are the most common devices: (1) rhythm (the pattern of accents or long syllables in each beat; e.g., iambic, trochaic, etc.), meter ( the number of beats per line; e.g., pentameter, or five beats, tetrameter, four, trimeter, three, etc.), and rhyme scheme (e.g., ABAB or ABBA, etc.), stanza forms, (such as quatrains, couplets, terza rima, ottava rima, etc.), blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), and poetic forms (such as Shakespearean and Spenserian sonnets, ballads, hymns, refrains, limericks, etc.).

The most common and most noticeable figures of speech are metaphor, simile, personification, apostrophe (address to a person or abstraction), paradox, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, oxymoron, and the like.

The most common and most noticeable figures of sound are alliteration, consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and various kinds of rhyme, including internal rhymes, half (or slant) rhymes and the like.

If you come forward to modern poetry (post-Walt Whitman), the most common form is free verse or experimental forms (like Gerard Manley Hopkins' sprung rhythm, or e e cummings' experimenting with language, or Marianne Moore's syllabic verse, concrete poetry, or traditional haiku).

In free verse, perhaps the most important and noticeable device involves end-stopped or run-on lines or enjambment (that is, where the line ends is not where a sentence or clause ends, or even where there is a logical grammatical break).

Perhaps the most important generic distinctions in modern verse are whether the poem is oblique (that is, its meaning implied or "between the lines," requiring "close textual analysis," such as the poetry of T. S. Eliot, and his followers, patterned largely on the metaphysical poets of the 17th century, like John Donne) or direct (that is, poetry of direct statement, accessible to most good readers, as advocated and modeled by recent US poet laureate, Billy Collins).

Obviously all these devices (and there are many more) can be defined and used in different ways. You may want to ask a more specific question if these responses don't meet your needs. You will find definitions and examples of most of these terms in Wikipedia. For example, for the term oxymoron, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron

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Answer 2

imagery to help other see personification to help relate metaphor and simile ar things that you may have experienced already, again to relate to the message more or wield you in alliteration (gee) I am going to say look this up

Answer 3

I'll add to the list above:
rhyme, slant rhyme, meter, anaphora, refrain, irony, dramatic monologue, enjambment, concrete forms, and other form.

Answer 4

Similies, metaphors, personification, assonance, consonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, hyperbole....

Answer 5

similie,imageries,metaphor,alliteration,diction,assonance,monologue,oxymoron,paradox,personification,rhyme scheme,rhythm,euphemism,synedoche,metonymy,allusions,symbolism etc