most important to explain what you have understood a poet’s purpose to be. Just as it is impossible to give the meaning of the poem if you have read it carefully, it is
impossible to appreciate the poem if you are unable to define the poet’s intention. Finding meanings of a poem and intentions of the writer are simply the means.
2.3 Devices
L.G Alexander 1963 says that it’s hard to define exactly what a poem is and to state why it gives us pleasure. Every poem is unique and has special qualities of its
own so if we want to appreciate poetry, it is necessary to learn how to recognize these ‘special qualities’ which called devices and can be found when we analyze a
poem. Devices may be divided into three groups: structural, sense and sound devices. When writing an appreciation of poetry, it is not enough to be able to point out the
devices. You must always explain that effect they have and how they help the poet to fulfill his attention.
2.3.1 Structural Devices
Contrast, illustration, repetition: these indicate the way a whole poem has been built and become as soon as the meaning of the poem has been found.
1 Contrast
This is one of the most common of all structures devices. It occurs when we find two completely opposite pictures side by side. Sometimes the contrast is immediately
obvious and sometimes implied. 2
Illustration This is example which usually takes the form o a vivid picture by which a poet
may make an idea clear. Pictures of this sort occur in all the poems.
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3 Repetition
Poets often repeat single line or whole stanzas at intervals to emphasize a particular idea. Repetition is to be found in poetry which is aiming at a special effect
or when a poet wants us to pay very close attention to something.
2.3.1 Sense Devices
Sense devices divide into three: 1
Simile This is a direct comparison and can be recognized by the use of the words like
and as. 2
Metaphor This is rather like a simile except that the comparison is not direct but implied:
the words like and as are not used. The poet does not say that one object is like another; he says it is another. In the poem Lucy, Wordsworth does not say that the
girl was like a violet. He writes: A violet by mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye. Lucy, in these lines, is a violet. The metaphor vividly expresses the basic idea of
the poem; it represents a girl of rare beauty who ‘lived unknown’. A violet half hidden by a stone is similarly something rare and beautiful which, for most people,
‘live unknown’. 3
Personification
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This occurs when inanimate objects are given a human form, or when they are made to speak. For example, we can find personification in On his Eighty-Sixth
Birthday. The world ‘speaks’ these words: Many have loved me desperately
Many with smooth serenity While some nave shown contempt of me
Till they dropped underground By means of personification here the poet underlines the close relationship
that existed between himself and the world.
2.3.1 Sound Devices
