Writing Poetry: Your Poetic Terms Assignment Here

Inside a Twilight


Inside a twilight garden bright with hydrangeas, fireflies.
Irene and I pried the weeds up, our fingertips wise

to their hold. Halfway between happiness and heartburn
Irene said, halfway between hope and the hard hit of her

last good kiss. This is not an aphrodisiac town, but a place
where fingers lace through other fingers and miss, by a sliver

really holding on. We’ve drawn the blinds, withdrawn our dearest
offers, played the cards we were dealt with a shuffle, an array,

a Chinese fan cascading out from our magic hands we draw shapes
in the air, then put the deck away.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


GLOSSARY of Poetic Terms
-----------------

Considering some of the ideas we discussed in class and any additional things you pick up from the glossary, your assignment is two-part:

1. Identify all the types of rhymes and devices in the above poem. Consider the couplets as a unit and see how they interact, but also, see if you might spot moves or terms across the couplets and over the poem as a whole.
Bring in a copy of the poem with your margin notes regarding terms and devices.

2. Write your own set of couplets and employ at least one use of internal rhyme, slant rhyme, exact rhyme and at least two cases of enjambment. Plus, a minimum of one simile or metaphor, one example of alliteration, assonance and consonance. Remember to favor concrete, sensory detail over abstractions.