Devices of poetry

A metaphor transfers a feature of one thing to another ('golden silence'); a whole poem can be one long metaphor, as Carl Sandburg's 'Fog' arrives on little cat feet. A simile compares openly: Burns's love like a red, red rose.

Fresh images create atmosphere; avoid clichés. Irony says something whose effect runs opposite to expectation: Coleridge's sailor has water on every side and none he can drink.

Symbols must be new: Tagore's 'Golden Boat' takes the harvest and leaves the poet alone on the bank — nothing is permanent. Allegory uses many symbols: in Adrienne Rich's 'The Trees' the house plants struggle out towards the forest.

Personification gives human qualities to things (saucy dandelions laughing in the sun); alliteration and rhyme add music, as in Ogden Nash's dragon poem (rhyme scheme a-a-b-b) — but rhyme must not swallow the message.

Sylvia Plath wrote every morning about anything 'to keep the channels open' — writing as an exercise in flow. Kolatkar's 'Old Woman' and Neruda's 'Odes to Common Things' show painting with words; Larkin wanted the reader to 'hear' a poem; onomatopoeia (Drip drop) lets sound carry meaning.