Literary Devices

Sonnet: “A lyric poem that typically consist of fourteen lines (usually printed as a single stanza) and that typically follows one of several conventional rhyme schemes” (Murfin, Ray; The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms)

Example: From the Dark Tower by Counter Cullen

“We shall not always plant while others reap/
The golden increment of bursting fruit, /
Not always countenance, abject and mute/
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;/
Not everlastingly while others sleep/
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,/
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;/
We were not made eternally to weep./ The night whose sable breast relieves the stark/
White stars is no less lovely being dark,/
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all/
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;/
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,/
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.” (Boland, Strand; The Making of a Poem)

Function: This particular poem is an example of an Italian sonnet. The story of the poem is about slaves during the Harlem Renaissance. The reader is reading the poem from the worker’s point-of-view. Cullen expresses that African-Americans will not always stay slaves, muted and quite under oppression. So they are going to wait until they cannot anymore, but until that day comes they will hide their anger. The overall theme of the poem is that relief is still a long way off.

Simile: “A figure of speech (more specifically a trope) that compares two distinct things by using words such as like or as to link the vehicle and the tenor” (Murfin, Ray; The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms)

Example: Easter Wings by George Herbert

“O let me rise/ As larks, harmoniously” (Boland, Strand; The Making of a Poem)

Function: The poem Easter Wing, is about a man who falls from his gracefulness though sin and attempts to redeem himself through God’s devotion. The overall theme of the poem is of transformation from evil to...