What is a Personification Poem?
A personification poem gives human attributes to nonhuman things, such as animals, objects and nature.
For example:
- Snow is an element of nature that takes many forms, from violent blizzards to light dusting, making it a fruitful subject for personification.
- By considering human attributes like emotions, senses and actions, you can write a poem that brings snow to life in a way that surprises and delights readers.
What are Elements of Personification?
1. Actions
Humans show their characters through various attributes, including their actions.
- According to Champaign Schools' website, active verbs are a key component of personification poems.
To come up with actions for snow:
- Think about the way it moves under different circumstances.
- When brainstorming, try to avoid obvious words like "blows," "falls" and "piles up."
- Instead, think about human actions that the snow seems to perform.
- If you're writing about a blizzard, you might think of verbs like "thrashes," "attacks" and "writhes."
- A light snowfall, though, might bring to mind "dances," "twirls" and "gambols."
2. Emotions
Another distinguishing trait of humans is their capacity to feel emotions.
For a snow poem:
- You can imagine what feelings snow might experience.
- To brainstorm, you can make a list of common emotions like fear, jealousy and happiness.
- Then, you can imagine which of these emotions snow might feel and why.
- Thinking about snow in multiple dimensions will help you come up with a wide range of feelings.
For example:
A snowflake might feel happy when children use it to make a snowman or fear the day when it will inevitably melt.
3. Senses
As a personification poet, you can make your objects experience sensations the same way humans do.
- Using the five senses as a guide, you can brainstorm sensory experiences snow might have.
- Like brainstorming emotions, this may require you to think about snow differently than you have before.
For example:
Snow may feel cold to us, but you might consider whether snowflakes experience the cold since it's their normal environment. You might describe the intense heat a snowflake feels when it melts or the slight weight they feel as they pile on top of each other.
Structuring Your Poem
Since the goal of a personification poem is to portray something nonhuman in a surprisingly human way, your poem can be as long or short as it has to be to accomplish this goal.
- You can write an epic about the snowflakes as they journey from the sky, but your poem can also be very brief, capturing a single picture of the subject.
- For example, Carl Sandburg's famous poem "Fog" is only six lines long, but its description of how "The fog comes on little cat feet" gives readers an instant, powerful image.