List of Literary Devices a Modern Poem Definitely, Absolutely, Does Not Have (But Yours Can!)

We never knew thee

“In the Forest of Arden”, John Collier, 1892

Note: This is meant to be a semi-playful/satirical takedown of the average poem found in an average literary journal today. Please do not read it as more serious than intended.

Let’s talk the standard lit journal poem today! Not the Hudson Review poems, the Ploughshares poems, the Threepenny Review poems, which are generally fantastic (or if they’re not, there’s a different set of afflictions that applies to top-tier poetry). I’m speaking specifically of most of the poems found today in the several thousand lower to mid-tier journals that make up the broader lit journal landscape, which I’ve spent many hours perusing. After those hours spent in that somewhat less-than-rewarding exercise, here are 10 devices that the standard modern lit journal poem absolutely has never heard of and does not possess.

1. Literary allusions. C’mon people. That would require, not just the writer, but also the reader, to catch the literary reference, to be part of a broader conversation that engages with the eternal conversation with great works of the past and present. C’est impossible!

2. Rhetorical questions. Aren’t questions just kind of, outdated as a literary device? We’re here to tell the audience what’s going on and what to think, not ask them. And as aforementioned, there is no broader literary culture we’re trying to address!

3. Repetition. Repetition is so rare in modern poetry that I’ll admit immediately that even I, dear reader, consistently completely forget to use it. For emphasis, for musicality or rhythm, anadiplosis (thanks to J. Tullius for pointing that one out specifically); these forms and uses of reptition are all dead and buried and cold in the ground with their cousins rhyme and meter.

4. Personification. Sorry: the world around us is dead, killed by our post-modern disbelief in transcendence. We love nature, but we’re so human-focused we’ve stopped being able to conceptualize the world around us as alive with agency, or possessed of the kind of true and alive magic that inspires the ability to picture the world around us as purposeful or filled with meaning.

5. Rhyme. End rhyme? HAH. Slant rhyme, internal rhyme? We barely know thee, friends. Once and anon, we used thee, pert, then moved on.

6. Meter. There’s actually something of an emerging renaissance of formal verse in academia and some lit journal publishing but it hasn’t yet filtered down, generally speaking, from high-end journals to the mid and lower tiers yet. Good luck finding formal, metered poetry in anything except a handful of journals! (Note that I largely don’t place the blame for this on editors, many of whom I believe would be happy to publish a sonnet; however, few poets are writing and submitting sonnets, and MFA professors and programs aren’t teaching or emphasizing formal poetry).

7. Synecdoche. In synecdoche, one word is used to replace a longer phrase with the same meaning, most commonly a part of something being used to refer to the whole, but can also be the opposite in which a whole is used to refer to a part. Modern lit poems, though? Let’s keep our feet on the ground, darling - don’t bring in the abstraction of synecdoche!

8. Elision (thank you to A Stream of Words for pointing this one out!). I wouldn’t say that *I*, personally miss elision - which is when an apostrophe is substituted for a letter in a world, almost always for the purpose of maintaining the meter by making the word shorter. But the fact remains that it’s a very useful tool for poets writing extensively in meter, and it’s died out mainly because we’ve stopped writing in meter. Its literary history is vast and storied; Shakespeare absolutely could not have done without it.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream -

“But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport
The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain”

9. Apostrophe (thanks to Kate Bluett for this one!). Apostrophe (addressing a poem to a speaker or thing that is not present) actually fits in well with contemporary poetry’s trend towards prose poems, but it’s much under-used, perhaps because of modern poetry’s tendency to write from first person (God forbid we put the focus on someone else), or simply because classic modes of poetry aren’t being well-taught in most MFA programs.

10. Epic poetry. We’re all writing short little things of 12-20 lines intended for lit journals, so we’re both out of practice and unaccustomed to the ambition required to write epic poetry. Strange to think that the literary tradiotn has moved all the way from Beowulf to now. Poetry is extremely far from dead, it beats on well - but I do think we’re in a strange transitional time.

These points are partly tongue in cheek, and I won’t use them to analyze too much the contemporary literary landscape (many others already have), but I actually do really miss, especially as a reader, having a literary scene full of wonder and differentiation and a multitude of forms.

On a bright note, the consistent absence of the above devices in the average modern poem, gives you, the likely writer reading this, an ample chance to incorporate these and instantly make your voice more unique. Does it mean you will get published in the wide swathe of beginner and mid-level journals all publishing exactly the same type of poem with the same type of form? No - but there’s inherent value to developing your own voice, and the highest-level, most competitive journals, do publish a broader range of styles and forms of poetry.

Ultimately, adopting the above elements could, over time, assist you in getting published at that higher level. And if not - at least you won’t sound like everybody else.

What other elements are missing in modern poetry? And conversely, what’s being used the most?

P.S. James Matthew Wilson has a guide here to 3 good books teaching historical poetic craft, ranging from beginner-appropriate to more experienced levels.