The poetic function , also known as aesthetic, is one of the six functions of language and focuses on the form of the message, as it is used to produce an aesthetic effect. For example:The moon shone in your eyes.
The same content can be communicated in different ways, using different words, expressions, and intonations. In the poetic function, priority is given to the way in which what is intended to be conveyed is expressed.
Thus, this function is widely used in literature, which is why it prevails in poems , dramatic texts , novels , stories , songs, rhymes , among many other genres. Furthermore, it is common in proverbs , word games , tongue twisters , and even colloquial speech , where playful and creative turns characteristic of this function can be found. For example:When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Please note :When using the poetic function, rhetorical figures are often used , such as metaphor , metonymy , synecdoche , simile , and hyperbole , among many others. For example:Your eyes light up my path like two stars.
Examples of the poetic function
- In the blacksmith’s house, a wooden knife.
- Pablito hammered a nail, what nail did Pablito hammer?
- The master loves the housekeeper, but the housekeeper does not love the master.
- The early bird catches the worm.
- Three sad tigers were eating wheat in a wheat field.
- A chip off the old block.
- A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
- Every cloud has a silver lining.
- The gold and the Moor promise in the golden tower.
- When there is hunger there is no hard bread.
- Whenever it rained, it stopped.
- They sold him a pig in a poke.
- The moon shines in the night sky.
- What is it?
What is it?
It runs fast and has no feet. - R and R, guitar;
R and R, barrel.
The cars roll fast;
the railroad fast. - How do you expect me to love you if the one I want to love me doesn’t love me the way I want to be loved?
- You will find loves like stones in the river, but you will never have
a love like mine. - I love you deeply and I don’t want to kiss you. It’s enough for me to see you close, to follow the curves your hands trace as they move, to fall asleep in the transparencies of your eyes, to listen to your voice, to see you walk, to record your phrases.
Alfonsina Storni, “The Dream,” IX
- The beautiful princesses
are very much like you;
they cut lilies, they cut roses,
they cut stars. That’s how they are.The beautiful girl went,
under the sky and over the sea,
to cut the white star
that made her sigh.Rubén Darío, excerpt from “A Margarita Debayle”
- In the trembling lands that exhale summer,
the day is invisible, pure white. The day
is a cruel streak in a lattice,
a glow on the shores and a fever on the plain.Jorge Luis Borges, excerpt from “Manuscript Found in a Book by Joseph Conrad”
- I seek a lover for the ungrateful who leaves me;
I leave a lover who follows me ungrateful;
I constantly adore those whom my love mistreats;
I constantly mistreat those whom my love seeks.Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, excerpt from the sonnet “I Seek a Lover for the Ungrateful Who Leaves Me”
- I am a sincere man
from where the palm tree grows,
and before I die I want
to pour forth my soulful verses.José Martí, excerpt from “I am a Sincere Man”
- Sing, O goddess, of the wrath of Achilles of Pelides; the wrath of the son of Pelides, which brought countless evils to the Achaeans and cast many valiant souls of heroes into Hades, making them prey for dogs and fodder for birds—Zeus’s will being fulfilled—since Atreus, king of men, and divine Achilles, strife, parted.
Homer, beginning of The Iliad
- That in May, it was in May,
when it is warm
, when the wheat stalks
and the fields are in bloom,when the lark sings
and the nightingale answers,
when lovers
go to serve love.Excerpt from “Romance del prisionero” (Romance of the Prisoner), anonymous
- What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the greatest good is small;
for all life is a dream,
and dreams are dreams.Pedro Calderón de la Barca, excerpt from Life is a Dream
- Time when old furniture takes the opportunity to spill its lies, and when the pipes emit strangled screams, as if suffocating inside the walls.
Oliverio Girondo, excerpt from “Nocturno”
- Transparent the air, transparent
the morning sickle,
the warm white mountains, the gestures of the waves,
all that sea, all that sea fulfilling
its profound task,
the self-absorbed sea,
the sea, at that honeyed hour when instinct
buzzes like a sleepy bee…
Sun, love, dilated marine lilies,
blond branches sensitive and tender like bodies,
vast pale sands.Idea Vilariño, fragment from “Midday”
- Suddenly I became aware of the sun. A hot, metallic sun, pure midday. Dazed, still not fully recovered, I looked at my watch. It was twelve o’clock.
Gabriel García Márquez, excerpt from A Shipwrecked Sailor’s Tale - Oh, oh, oh, oh, sing and don’t cry,
because singing makes
hearts happy, my sweet little sky.
Quirino Mendoza y Cortés, excerpt from “Cielito Lindo” - The cups on the tablecloth,
the spilled rain.
A little honey, a little honey
isn’t enough.The eclipse wasn’t partial
and it blinded our gaze.
I saw you crying, I saw you crying
for him.
