DeviceA
Alliteration
What is alliteration in poetry? It's the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of closely situated words in a line. A fun…
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Read the entryThe Craft Atlas · Reference
Poetic DevicesThe figures of speech and the moves that make poetry move.
70 short reference entries on the named techniques poets use — metaphor, enjambment, irony, anaphora and the rest. Each entry holds a clean definition, annotated examples from the corpus, and the famous poems that turn on it.
Collection I · Sound & music
Sound & music.
The aural devices — how a line feels in the ear before the meaning lands.
DeviceA
Assonance
What is assonance in poetry? This question often pops up when you notice a line has a musical quality, but you can't quite put your finger o…
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Cacophony
What is cacophony in poetry? This question often arises when someone reads a line aloud and it feels like gravel in their mouth — harsh, jag…
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Consonance
What is consonance in poetry? It's when the same consonant sound is repeated in nearby words — often in the middle or at the end of words, n…
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End Rhyme
What is end rhyme in poetry? It’s the most recognizable sound in verse: when the last words of two or more lines share the same sound. "Shal…
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Euphony
What makes a line of poetry feel smooth, almost musical, when you read it aloud? That quality has a name: euphony. The term comes from the G…
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Internal Rhyme
What is internal rhyme in poetry? It’s that intriguing moment when you spot a line that seems to resonate within itself—two words rhyming in…
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Onomatopoeia
What is onomatopoeia in poetry? It’s a question that pops up when someone reads a line that seems to *echo* the sound it describes — like a…
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Rhyme
What is rhyme in poetry? Simply put, rhyme occurs when two or more words end with the same sound — think "cat" and "hat," "moon" and "June,"…
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Rhyme Scheme
What is a rhyme scheme in poetry? It's the pattern of end rhymes in the lines of a poem — essentially, how certain endings resonate with eac…
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Sibilance
What is sibilance in poetry? It's that moment you notice a line that hisses or whispers to you, and you can't help but wonder why. Sibilance…
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Slant Rhyme
What is slant rhyme in poetry? It's the question that arises when you notice two words at the end of lines that *almost* rhyme — but don’t q…
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Collection II · Figurative language
Figurative language.
The devices that say one thing and mean another — image, comparison, the leap from the literal.
DeviceA
Allegory
What is allegory in poetry? Simply put, allegory is a poem that operates on two levels simultaneously: the surface story and a deeper meanin…
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Analogy
What is an analogy in poetry? Simply put, an analogy is a comparison that helps clarify something unfamiliar or abstract by relating it to s…
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Anthropomorphism
What does it mean when a poem gives human traits to something non-human — like a storm that "rages," a river that "sighs," or a sun that wat…
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Conceit
What is a conceit in poetry? You might have come across that term in a classroom or a footnote and wondered if it simply indicates that the…
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Extended Metaphor
What is an extended metaphor in poetry? It’s the technique you notice when a poet makes a comparison in the first line and then continues to…
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Hyperbole
What is hyperbole in poetry? Simply put, it’s an intentional exaggeration — stating that something is much bigger, smaller, older, faster, o…
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Imagery
What is imagery in poetry? Simply put, imagery refers to language that engages the senses — sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. When a po…
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Kenning
What is a kenning in poetry? This question often arises when someone first encounters Old English or Norse verse and stumbles upon a phrase…
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Metaphor
What is a metaphor in poetry? Simply put, a metaphor claims one thing *is* another thing — not that it's *like* another thing, but that it *…
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Metonymy
What is metonymy in poetry? It's when a poet uses one term to represent something closely related. Unlike symbols or metaphors, metonymy rel…
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Motif
What is a motif in poetry? That’s a great question! The term can be a bit fuzzy — sometimes it’s used interchangeably with theme, sometimes…
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Pathetic Fallacy
What does it signify when the storm breaks just as the hero crumbles, or the sun shines brightly the moment two lovers reunite? That’s an ex…
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Personification
What is personification in poetry? It's when a poet gives human qualities—like feelings, actions, voices, and intentions—to something non-hu…
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Simile
What is a simile in poetry? This question often arises when a teacher points to a line like "my love is *like* a red, red rose" and asks you…
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Symbolism
What is symbolism in poetry? Simply put, symbolism occurs when a poet uses a tangible object, person, place, or event to represent something…
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Synecdoche
What is synecdoche in poetry? It's a question that comes to mind when a poet talks about a ship as "sail" or a soldier as "sword" and you re…
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Collection III · Rhetorical turns
Rhetorical turns & paradox.
The devices that swerve — addresses, ironies, contradictions held in the same line.
DeviceA
Antimetabole
What is antimetabole in poetry? It's a technique where a phrase is repeated in reverse order — the words return, but flipped, so the second…
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Aporia
What is aporia in poetry? At its core, aporia occurs when a speaker takes a moment to express real — or feigned — doubt. The term originates…
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Apostrophe
What does it mean when a poet suddenly turns and speaks directly to something that isn’t there — a deceased person, an abstract idea, the wi…
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Chiasmus
What is chiasmus in poetry? It’s the question you find yourself asking when you come across a line that seems to fold back on itself — where…
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Irony
What is irony in poetry? Simply put, irony refers to the difference between what is said and what is meant, or between what we expect and wh…
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Juxtaposition
What is juxtaposition in poetry? Simply put, it involves placing two unlike things next to each other, allowing their contrast to speak for…
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Litotes
What is litotes in poetry? It’s a question that arises when a line seems to express something positive by denying its opposite — saying "not…
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Oxymoron
What is an oxymoron in poetry? It's that question that pops up the moment you read a phrase like "sweet sorrow" and think — wait, can someth…
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Paradox
What is a paradox in poetry? It's that intriguing moment when a poem presents something that seems utterly impossible or self-contradictory…
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Pun
What is a pun in poetry? Simply put, a pun is a word or phrase that has two (or more) meanings at the same time, and a poet uses it so that…
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Rhetorical Question
What is a rhetorical question in poetry? It's a question a poet poses without expecting a direct answer — or more accurately, the answer is…
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Understatement
What is understatement in poetry? It’s when a poet intentionally says less than they mean, often to striking effect. For example, if someone…
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Zeugma
What is zeugma in poetry? It's a literary device where a single word — usually a verb — links two or more other words in the same sentence,…
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Collection IV · Structure & rhythm
Structure, rhythm & reference.
The devices that work at the level of the line and the stanza — repetition, line breaks, allusion to the canon.
DeviceA
Allusion
What is allusion in poetry? It's the question you might ask when a poem mentions a figure or place you partly recognize — like Icarus, Eden,…
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Anadiplosis
What is anadiplosis in poetry? It’s a technique where the last word (or phrase) of one line or clause is repeated at the beginning of the ne…
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Anaphora
What is anaphora in poetry? It's the technique of repeating the same word or phrase at the start of consecutive lines or clauses. That's the…
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Antanaclasis
What is antanaclasis in poetry? You might be wondering about this after noticing a word used twice in a poem, but with a completely differen…
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Asyndeton
What is asyndeton in poetry? It's a technique where conjunctions — like "and," "or," and "but" — are omitted from lists or between clauses.…
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Caesura
What is a caesura in poetry? It's the pause that exists within a line — not at the end, where you'd typically take a breath, but somewhere i…
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Diacope
What is diacope in poetry? This question often arises when you notice a poet repeating a word or phrase, with just a few other words in betw…
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End-Stopped Line
What happens when a line of poetry ends with a pause — like a period, a comma, or a question mark — causing the line and the sentence to sto…
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Enjambment
What does it mean when a poem's sentence continues past the end of a line? That's called enjambment. The term comes from the French word for…
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Epanalepsis
What is epanalepsis in poetry? It’s a figure of speech where a line or clause ends with the same word or phrase it started with. The word lo…
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Epigraph
What is an epigraph in poetry? It's a brief quotation — a line or two from another poem, a novel, a song, a letter, or a sacred text — that…
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Epistrophe
What is epistrophe in poetry? If you've ever noticed a poem repeating the same word or phrase at the end of several lines, you've encountere…
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Epizeuxis
What does it mean when a poet repeats the same word two or three times in succession, with no other words in between? That’s called epizeuxi…
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Hypotaxis
What is hypotaxis in poetry? It's what you notice when a sentence in a poem seems to stretch on endlessly — clauses folding into each other,…
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Line Break
What is a line break in poetry, and why does it matter? A line break is the point where a poet concludes one line and starts the next. While…
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Parallelism
What is parallelism in poetry? It's a technique that involves repeating the same grammatical structure across two or more lines or phrases.…
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Parataxis
What does it mean when a poem presents things in a series, one after another, without clarifying how they relate? This technique is known as…
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Polyptoton
What is polyptoton in poetry? It’s a technique where a root word is repeated in different grammatical forms within the same line or passage.…
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Polysyndeton
What is polysyndeton in poetry? It's a technique where a conjunction — typically "and," "or," or "but" — is repeated between each item in a…
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Refrain
What is a refrain in poetry? It's the line—or a small group of lines—that repeats throughout the poem. You've probably heard it countless ti…
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Repetition
What is repetition in poetry? It's just what it sounds like: a poet intentionally repeats a word, phrase, line, or sound. But that straightf…
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Volta
What is a volta in poetry? If you've ever encountered a poem that seemed to be heading in one direction and then abruptly changed — whether…
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Collection V · Meter & measure
Meter & measure.
The named feet and metrical patterns — the units of stress that give a line its pulse.
DeviceA
Anapest
What is an anapest in poetry? It’s the foot that gives a line its gallop. An anapest consists of three syllables: two unstressed syllables f…
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Common Meter
What is common meter in poetry, and why does so much of it feel instantly familiar? Common meter is a pattern of alternating line lengths: a…
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Dactyl
What is a dactyl in poetry? Simply put, a dactyl is a rhythmic unit, also known as a foot, consisting of one stressed syllable followed by t…
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Iamb
What is an iamb in poetry? It's the most natural rhythm in English, and you’ve probably been using it your entire life without even realizin…
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Meter
What is meter in poetry? Simply put, meter is the rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse. Imagine it as th…
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Spondee
What is a spondee in poetry? It might sound like a fancy term, but it actually describes a feeling you already experience when you read. A s…
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Trochee
What is a trochee in poetry? It's one of the most instinctive rhythms in the English language, and you've probably been using it your whole…
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Anatomy of an entry
What you’ll find inside each device.
A clean definition
What the device is, in plain English. Two sentences, no glossary required, and a note on the family it belongs to.
Examples in poetry
Short lines from the corpus with the device marked and a one-sentence why-it-works. Built so you can quote them in an essay.
Famous poems that turn on it
Three to five poems where the device is doing the heavy lifting, each one a link to the full text and analysis.
Common confusions
Metaphor vs simile, assonance vs consonance, irony vs sarcasm — the lines students keep slipping on, drawn clearly.
Companion atlas
Devices are tools.Forms are containers.
A poem uses a device in the way a carpenter uses a chisel — to make one specific cut. Metaphor, anaphora, enjambment: all moves. A form, by contrast, is the shape the whole piece sits inside. A sonnet, a haiku, a villanelle — each one a pre-tuned room the poet decided to write in.
You can use any device in any form. Knowing both is what lets you read a poem architecturally — to see why a particular tool sits where it does, in the room it ended up in.
Open the forms atlas →Postscript
Questions about the index
A device is a single move — a metaphor, an enjambed line break, a piece of anaphora. A form is the whole structural plan of the poem — sonnet, haiku, villanelle. You use devices inside a form; the form is the room, the devices are the furniture.
A simile names the comparison out loud (‘her eyes were like stars’); a metaphor does the comparison silently (‘her eyes were stars’). Both put two things together; the simile keeps the seam visible. Every entry that has a near-twin includes a ‘common confusions’ section flagging exactly where the line is.
These are the devices that turn up most often in school syllabi, editorial criticism, and real reader questions. We started with the core glossary of GCSE / AP Lit / Leaving Cert / IB, then added the rarer rhetorical figures and the metrical feet readers kept asking for — zeugma, polyptoton, and antimetabole among them. What we deliberately leave out are prose and drama terms (plot, characterization, soliloquy): this index sticks to poetry.
Search for the closest related entry — most rarer devices live as a family member of a broader one (epizeuxis and diacope sit beside repetition; antanaclasis beside pun). If you still can’t find it, it’s likely a prose or drama term we’ve left out on purpose. Tell us what’s missing.
Every example is from a poem we already host in the Storgy corpus — meaning you can click through and read the whole poem, with our line-by-line analysis, on the same site. We don’t quote excerpts we can’t back up with the full text.
Yes. We recommend treating Storgy the way you’d treat any online reference — name the entry, the URL, and the access date. If your school uses a specific citation style (MLA, APA, Harvard), the format on the entry page works as a starting point.
The Storgy editorial desk drafts each entry, Claude Sonnet 4.6 extends it under a strict structured-output schema, and the result is humanised to remove machine-writing tells. The example selections and the common-confusion notes are all human-edited.
Yes, though more slowly now. The second edition added everything from the founding edition’s waiting list — zeugma, polyptoton, antimetabole, parataxis, and hypotaxis all ship in it — plus the metrical feet and a fuller sound-and-rhyme family. What’s queued now is mostly cross-referencing: tighter links between near-twin entries.