Poetry Challenge 13: Postponement/Figures of Speech
I see I accidentally posted the wrong link. “Rhetorical terms” is full of things one shouldn’t do, as well as things one might do! Since I had the real list all along, and you didn’t, I’m going to extend the challenge for another week and give everyone a chance to write using “Figures of Speech,” which is the list I had been using, and had in mind.
Figures of speech in this sense are actually rhetorical devices – they are ways of arranging or “figuring” language to get at a specific rhetorical (and sometimes poetical) effect.
If anyone already made a poem using the “rhetorical terms,” you are still free to post that poem – just wait a week till September 20th, 2016.
In case anyone is struggling with a theme, here are several suggestions.
- An orator making a speech upon a dramatic occasion
- Someone who is lost, and how they feel
- An object or character descending into depths
- A deliberation between two or more options or causes
- A dance being viewed
- Someone enjoying his favorite food, drink, or sensual pleasure
Or anything else you may think of.
Another possibility is to follow the link, mosey around among the figures of speech, and use one of the literary examples as a springboard to a whole new poem. For instance, one of the examples under the section “antimetabole” (when you click on the word and go to the page devoted entirely to that figure) is Samuel Johnson’s, “For we that live to please, must please to live.” A poem could be built upon that sentiment or phrase.
Good luck, and let’s meet again in a week.
Slow Literature 