Tools poets use

Type it in the shape of a heart? Your words can sprawl all over the page, be tightly contained, or be offset by occasional indentations. Learn more about formatting and spacing choices that make editors cringe. Imagery: Good imagery is mesmerizing. Bad imagery makes editors want to look away.

Line stop: When you end a line with a punctuation mark, you invite your reader to linger on that thought. Make your line-stop choices carefully to create moments of deep resonance and pause.

Be mindful of your personification tools and use them sparingly. Pronouns: Who is the subject of your poem? Each pronoun choice has its own particular resonance and connotation—in the same way that point-of-view choices distinctly affect readers.

Repetition: Free verse typically does not embrace the poetic repetition of some traditional forms—so a little bit of repetition can make a big impact. Often, free-verse poetry will make use of the cadences of natural speech to create rhythm. Understatement: While hyperbole shouts, understatement whispers, asking readers to lean in and listen closely. Know when less is more. Leave your answer in our comments section. Thank you for this information. Reading free vere poetry where each line starts with a capital I find very irritating.

Maybe not a tool, but something to think about. Choosing an adequate title. Not giving away all, but making the reader curious, still has to be relevant though. A well-chosen metaphor is a good title. Reason — there should be a reason for everything in free verse poetry. It is pointless to use, say, repetition if there is no need to — it just makes the poem look pretentious. Very useful information and definitions — thank you. I will share too. Is allusion the same as metaphors?

Hi, Fran, No, allusion and metaphor are different. An allusion is a statement that refers to something without mentioning it directly. Additionally, in the line, "And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes," the repetition of the double "e" sound creates assonance. Different kinds of rhyme -- masculine, feminine, triple and quadruple -- are commonly used by poets to produce a particular meter.

Single-syllable rhyming words, such as "loo" and "coo," are considered masculine, and double-syllable words, such as "camping" and "tramping," are considered feminine. Triple-syllable rhymes are rare and typically used for comic effect -- it's difficult to find rhyming words that are that long without being silly.

Among the tools available to the poet for creating sound, onomatopoeia imitates a specific audible effect. Bees buzzing, engines zooming and clocks ticking are examples of this device. Karen Clark has been writing professionally since Her work includes articles on gardening, education and literature. Allegories are tools that allow a writer to create a work that has a literal and a symbolic meaning. Poets use allegories by writing about something as seemingly simple as nature, which allows them to make a deeper statement about another subject.

For example, in Robert Frost's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," the literal subject is the inevitability of leaves turning from gold to green to decay. But Frost's use of allegorical language such as "But only so an hour," and "So dawn goes down to day, nothing gold can stay," indicates that the real subject is about mortality and the sadness of watching people that were once so bright and beautiful turning old and dying.

Metaphors are often used by poets to compare things that don't have an obvious connection. For example, a poet might describe a person's courage in this way: "Her courage was that of a lioness shielding her cubs from a hunter. The contrasting of the two dissimilar subjects creates an emotion or image in the reader's mind that makes the poet's words come alive.