Poetry Building Blocks
Our students enter our classrooms daily with the most critical building block of poetry: their own imagination. It is our job to help them capture the essence of that childhood imagery on paper. The table below highlights the additional building blocks for writing great poetry.
Poetry Building Blocks
| Genre Purpose | To communicate the poet's innermost thoughts and feelings; writing that uses the poet's imagination to create an intimate emotional link between the writer and the reader |
| Building Block | 1. Rhyme: repetition of similar sounds at given intervals |
| 2. Meter: a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry | |
| 3. Poetic Diction: the poet's use of vocabulary and writing style to communicate meaning | |
| 4. Form: the arrangement of words on the written page such as line, verse, and stanza | |
| Genre Writing Techniques (elements of poetry) | 1. Similes: making a comparison using words like or as |
| 2. Metaphors: comparison of two objects that are completely different | |
| 3. Alliteration: repeating consonants in words that are adjacent in a line | |
| 4. Personification: giving animals or inanimate objects human characteristics | |
| 5. Rhyme Scheme: understanding the pattern of rhyme in a type of poem and using that pattern when writing in that style | |
| Genre Format and Voice | 1. Concise wording to communicate meaning |
| 2. Understanding the various formats or forms of each type of poetry | |
| 3. Painting a mood or feeling with words |
Excerpted From:
Excerpt from Blueprint for Exceptional Writing , by J.A. Fontenot & K.J. Carney, 2009 edition, p. 188.
© 2009, Allyn & Bacon , an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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