Poetry Study Goals

-Review the different forms of poetry like an ode, sonnet, lyric, etc.

-Become more familiar with different rhythm schemes and how to distinguish them such as iambic pentameter and iambic tetrameter.

-Learn more terms like the types of literary devices or types of rhyme, like cacophony, apostrophe, masculine rhyme, or feminine rhyme.

-Try to understand the main idea of the poem so it’s easier to find the theme.

-Try to read the poem slower, so it’s easier to understand.

After doing the practice questions, I realized that many of the questions are technical questions about the type of poem, how the poem is structured, what types of literary devices are used, etc. It’s just as important to be able to identify these characteristics as it was to understand the poem. I wasn’t very familiar with the technical wordings for the types of rhyme, rhythm, and literary devices, so brushing up on those terms is definitely important. Also, the poems were tricky to understand when just reading it through quickly, so I think reading it slower will make it easier to understand.