Simile

Definition: To compare two or more things using like or as

Example:

“Friends are like chocolate cake

You can never have too many.

Chocolate cake is like heaven -

Always amazing you with each taste or feeling.

Chocolate cake is like life with so many different pieces.

Chocolate cake is like happiness, you can never get enough of it.”

Significance: Similes help the reader understand the poem better.

Repetition

Definition: To do the same thing over and over again, in this case to write the same line multiple times.

Example:
Fish

Inside the ocean
I see fish.
Inside the waves
I hear a splash.
Inside the water
I felt a fish.
It seems so big,
as big as a whale.
It has to be,
But then I see,
It's a tuna fish.

Significance: Repetition in poetry can be used to emphasise a moral or message. It can also be part of the poem style.

 

Tone

Definition: The way something is said, the pitch in which something is said, the attitude of a poem.

Example:

From one thousand mountains the birds' flights are gone;

From ten thousand byways the human track has vanished.

In a single boat, an aged man, straw cloak and hat,

Fishes alone; snow falls, cold in the river

Significance: Tone is important in poetry because it dictates the way people interpret the poem. Changing the poem's tone can completely change it's meaning or feel.

Interpretation

Definition: The way someone perceives something.

Example:

A slumber did my spirit seal,
            I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
            The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
            She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
            With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Significance: One of the great things about poems is that they can be interpreted in different ways, it's not the same experience for everyone.



                            

Symbols

Definition: Something or someone that represents an idea that is more than the symbol itself.

Example: I'd close my eyes and start to see,
Which was not yet in front of me.
Ill start to type, form a rhyme.
Then continue with my pouting.
These beats I form start to mourn


And show a cried out ego
Hear my tempo slow to time
Then ill march on forward proudly
You've seen my tears, you've heard me cry
But now I'm done with trying


Importance: Symbolism is important to poetry because it can supplement the poem's feeling or mood without directly stating it. It can make the poem more sophisticated.

Couplets

Definition: A group of two sentences. Basically a stanza with only two lines.

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

Importance: The importance of the couplet is exactly the same as that of the stanza's.

Stanzas

Definition: A group of sentences within a poem, like a paragraph.  

Example: ...I shrugged off the great weight that was my pack
               Just a few miles later I wanted it back
               Now without food and water
               The weather getting ever hotter

               Then my legs were blocks of lead
               The bare skin of my neck had long since turned red
               I didn't give up, I guess it's just how I was wired
               But I stumbled and fell, finding myself literally
               Dead Tired.

Importance: Stanzas are groups of sentences meant to be read together in a poem. The spaces in between   stanzas are meant to allow the reader to ponder the information they just read.