What are poetic devices? That’s a good, pure and curious question, but it’s not as useful as you may think. The important thing from a craft or appreciation perspective isn’t so much what a poetic device is but what it does.
Poetic devices form patterns, and these patterns do various things: describe, persuade, inform, inspire, illustrate, elevate, sing and inscribe words into memory.
You can break things down into general categorical functions. Each device you’ll find or use in a poem probably serves at least one of these roles:
Rhetoric: Persuading someone to feel or do something
Prosodic: Creating a sound or rhythm
Semantic: Establishing a meaning
Aesthetic: Creating beauty
This article is not a complete poetic devices list, but it’s a good one. Anyway, at the risk of being abrupt, here goes.
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Answer:
What are poetic devices? That’s a good, pure and curious question, but it’s not as useful as you may think. The important thing from a craft or appreciation perspective isn’t so much what a poetic device is but what it does.
Poetic devices form patterns, and these patterns do various things: describe, persuade, inform, inspire, illustrate, elevate, sing and inscribe words into memory.
You can break things down into general categorical functions. Each device you’ll find or use in a poem probably serves at least one of these roles:
Rhetoric: Persuading someone to feel or do something
Prosodic: Creating a sound or rhythm
Semantic: Establishing a meaning
Aesthetic: Creating beauty
This article is not a complete poetic devices list, but it’s a good one. Anyway, at the risk of being abrupt, here goes.