Poetic Devices

Rhyme:
They put me in the oven to bake.
Me a deprived and miserable cake.
Feeling the heat I started to bubble.
Watching the others I knew I was in trouble

They opened the door and I started my life.
Frosting me with a silver knife.
Decorating me with candy jewels.
The rest of my batch looked like fools.

Lifting me up, she took off my wrapper.
Feeling the breeze, I wanted to slap her.
Opening her mouth with shiny teeth inside.
This was the day this cupcake had died

Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/the-life-of-a-cupcake#ixzz3P9FkPk3L
Personification:

Take a Poem to Lunch by Denise Rodgers

I'd love to take a poem to lunch

or treat it to a wholesome brunch

of fresh cut fruit and apple crunch.

I'd spread it neatly on the cloth

beside a bowl of chicken broth

and watch a mug of root beer froth.

I'd feel the words collect the mood,

the taste and feel of tempting food

popped in the mouth and slowly chewed,

and get the smell of fresh baked bread

that sniffs inside and fills our head

with thoughts that no word ever said.

And as the words rest on the page

beside the cumin, salt and sage,

and every slowly starts to age,

like soup that simmers as it's stirred,

ingredients get mixed and blurred

and blends in taste with every word

until the poet gets it right,

the taste and smell

and sound and sight,  

 the words that make it fit.

 Alliteration:

Betty Botter by Mother Goose

Betty Botter bought some butter, but, she said, the butter’s bitter; if I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter, but a bit of better butter will make my batter better.

So she bought a bit of butter better than her bitter butter, and she put it in her batter and the batter was not bitter. So ’twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.

Symbolism:

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky 

Spring and daisies means youth in Sara Teasdale’s “Wild Asters”:

In the spring, I asked the daisies

If his words were true,

And the clever, clear-eyed daisies

Always knew.

Brown and barren means growing old in Sara Teasdale’s “Wild Asters”:

Now the fields are brown and barren,

Bitter autumn blows,

Bitter autumn means death in Sara Teasdale’s “Wild Asters”:

Now the fields are brown and barren,

Bitter autumn blows,

And of all the stupid asters

Not one knows.

Onomatopoeia:

Mom & Dad Are Home

Slam! Slam!
Go the car doors.
Jangle! Jangle!
Go the house keys.
Jiggle! Jiggle!
Go the keys in the door.
Squeak!
Goes the front door!
Thump! Thump!
That is me running down the stairs.
Guess what?
Mom and Dad are home!!

Simile and metaphor:

Storm At Sea

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CRASHING waves... SMASHING seas...
Bringing sailors to their knees.
As they struggle to save their lives
Hoping and praying, help arrives.

The stormy seas as dark as coal,
Preventing the sailors from reaching their goal.
Battered and bruised, but still they fight...
Staring ahead, into the dead of night.
Rocking and rolling as they try to stand...
Hoping against hope, that they soon reach land.

Bleary eyed from lack of sleep.
Down in their cabins, huddled like sheep.
As they're rocking and rolling down beneath
Weary sailors above, resist with gritted teeth.

Hours later, as the storm starts to dissipate,
It leaves a calm tranquil sea in it wake.
The veteran sailors know the battle is over, and they have won...
As contemplate, other storms yet to come...

Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/storm-at-sea#ixzz3P9JN0Gl1
Family Friend Poems 

Hyperbole:

Appetite

In a house the size of a postage stamp
lived a man as big as a barge.
His mouth could drink the entire river
You could say it was rather large
For dinner he would eat a trillion beans
And a silo full of grain,
Washed it down with a tanker of milk
As if he were a drain.

Imagery and Free verse:

An image is a visual picture like a snapshot or photograph. Creating visual imagery is a powerful way to compose a poem, bringing it to life, recreating an experience, communicating in ways that entertain.

Poets use imagery to compose free verse poetry. They create interesting images with description, vivid details, and by showing the reader, not telling them.

Poets also convert the abstract into something concrete, something that can be understood. This understanding evokes an emotional response in the reader.

Here’s a good example of how poet, Gary Soto, creates a powerful, compelling, entertaining poem with imagery:

Who Will Know Us? by Gary Soto

for Jaroslav Seifert

It is cold, bitter as a penny.

I’m on a train, rocking toward the cemetery

To visit the dead who now

Breathe through the grass, through me,

Through relatives who will come

And ask, Where are you?

Cold. The train with its cargo

Of icy coal, the conductor

With his loose buttons like heads of crucified saints,

His mad puncher biting zeros through tickets.

The window that looks onto its slate of old snow.

Cows. The barbed fences throat-deep in white.

Farm houses dark, one wagon

With a shivering horse.

This is my country, white with no words,

House of silence, horse that won’t budge

To cast a new shadow. Fence posts

That are the people, spotted cows the machinery

That feed Officials. I have nothing

Good to say. I love Paris

And write, “Long Live Paris!”

I love Athens and write,

“The great book is still in her lap.”

Bats have intrigued me,

The pink vein in a lilac.

I’ve longed to open an umbrella

In an English rain, smoke

And not give myself away,

Drink and call a friend across the room,

Stomp my feet at the smallest joke.

But this is my country.

I walk a lot, sleep.

I eat in my room, read in my room,

And make up women in my head —

Nostalgia, the cigarette lighter from before the war,

Beauty, tears that flow inward to feed its roots.

The train. Red coal of evil.

We are its passengers, the old and young alike.

Who will know us when we breathe through the grass?

Rhythm: Flow of beat in a poem