Poetry Terms

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Poetry Terms
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Free Verse

• Poetry that does not have a regular meter or
  rhyme scheme. This poetry imitates the natural
  rhythms of speech.

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Blank Verse

• Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
  Blank means not rhymed.
• Verse used by William Shakespeare.

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Iambic Pentameter

• Five iambs - The most important verse in poetry
  form in the English epic and dramatic poetry.

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Sonnet

• A fourteen line poem, a lyric, and usually in
  iambic pentameter.

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Ballad

• A fairly short narrative poem written in a
  songlike stanza form.

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Lyric

• Poetry that does not tell a story but aims at
  expressing an authors thoughts or emotions.

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Imagery

• Word pictures that appeal to the five senses

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Catalog Poem

• A catalog poem is built on a list of images.
• Sometimes it builds into a rolling rhythm.

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Scene

• A setting which includes time and place
• Setting may be implied or stated directly

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Haiku

• A Japanese poetry form
• 17 syllables, 5-7-5
• presents images from everyday life
• Contains seasonal word or symbol
• Presents a moment of discovery or enlightenment

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Extended Imagery

• Images that continue through several lines of
  poetry.

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Example of Extended Imagery

• Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach
• Three fields to cross till a farm appears,
• A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
• And blue spurt of a lighted match.
• Robert Browning
• From Meeting at Night

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Cliche

• An overused word, worn-out expression or phrase

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Allusion

• A reference to a statement, person, place, event,
  or thing that is known from literature, history,
  religion, myth, politics, sports, science, or pop
  culture.

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Symbolism

• A person, place, thing, or event that stands for
  itself and something beyond itself.

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Figures of Speech
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Simile

• A figure of speech in which an explicit
  comparison is made between two things essentially
  unlike, using such words or phrases as like, as,
  than, similar to, resembles, or seems.

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Metaphor

• A figure of speech in which an implicit
  comparison is made between two things essentially
  unlike.

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Personification

• A figure of speech in which human attributes are
  given to an animal, an object, or a concept.

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Hyperbole

• An exaggeration for effect

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Rhyme

• Repetition of similar sounds or words, within a
  line or at the end of a line

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Half-rhyme

• Also called near rhyme or slant rhyme
• Words are alike in some sound but do not exactly
  sound the same
• Example now and know

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Approximate RhymesNear RhymesSlant Rhymes

• Two words are alike in some sound but do not
  rhyme exactly
• Example
• now and know

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Stanza

• Group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a
  single unit
• Couplet 2
• Tercet 3
• Quatrain 4
• Cinquain 5

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Stanza Continued

• Sestet 6
• Heptastich 7
• Octave 8

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Rhyme Scheme

• Applying the letters of the alphabet to new
  sounds of words at the end of each line.
• I will go a
• To the show a
• We will eat b
• At our seat b

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Meters

• Monometer 1
• Dimeter 2
• Trimeter 3
• Tetrameter 4
• Pentameter 5
• Hexameter 6

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Meter continued

• Heptameter 7
• Octameter 8

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Sound Words
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Alliteration

• Repetition of consonant sounds in words that are
  close together

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Consonance

• Repetition of consonant sounds within the words
  in a line of poetry

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Assonance

• Repetition of similar vowel sounds that are
  followed by different consonant sounds
• Example base and fade
• young and love

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Repetition

• Words, phrases, or lines that repeat in the poem

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Internal Rhyme

• Words that rhyme within one line of poetry.

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Internal Rhyme

• Rhymes in the middle of a line
• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered,
  weak and weary.
• Edgar Allan Poe, from The Raven

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Onomatopoeia

• Words that sound like their meaning

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Rhythm

• Alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables
  in language

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Meter

• Poetic feet
• A generally regular pattern of stressed and
  unstressed syllables

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Kinds of Feet Meter or Rhythm

• Iamb da Dah
• Trochee Dah da
• Anapest da da Dah
• Dactyl Dah da da
• Spondee Dah Dah
• These sounds are syllables or words.

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Scansion

• Reading in an exaggerated way to find the rhythm
  (meter).

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Theme

• The underlying meaning or idea of the poem

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Oxymoron

• A figure of speech that combines apparently
  contradictory ideas.
• Example jumbo shrimp

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Apostrophe

• A figure of speech in which a writer directly
  addresses an absent or dead person, an abstract
  quality, or something non-human as if it were
  present and capable of responding.

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Implied Metaphor

• Comparison that suggests rather than directly
  states that one think is something else.
• Words suggest the nature of the comparison.

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Narration

• Type of writing or speaking that tells about a
  series of related events. (The other types of
  writing are description, exposition, and
  persuasion.)

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Style

• The choice of words, phrases, and sentences
• Placement on the page
• Dialect or regional speech
• Poetic forms, such as ode, ballad, sonnet, or
  lyric, to name a few

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Diction

• Choice of words

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Speaker

• The voice that is talking to us in a poem.

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Pun

• Play on multiple meanings of a word or two words
  that sound alike but with different meanings.
  Shakespeare was a great punster.

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Dialect

• Way of speaking that is characteristic of a
  particular region or a particular group of people.

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Rhetorical Question

• A question asked but not intended by the speaker
  to be answered.

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Understatement

• To represent as less than is the case

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Epithet

• A short descriptive phrase pointing out an
  outstanding quality of a character.

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Implied Ideas

• Information in a poem that implies meaning, but
  it does not say explicitly.
• Many poems ask the reader to read between the
  lines.

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Irony

• Verbal - The difference between what one says
  and what one means
• Situational The difference between what seems
  appropriate and what really happens, or when what
  we expect to happen is in fact quite
  contradictory to what really does take place.

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Irony Continued

• Dramatic Irony When the audience or the reader
  knows something important that a character in a
  play or story does not know.

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Extended Metaphor

• A comparison developed over several lines or the
  entire poem.

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Analogy

• An analogy is a comparison of two pairs of words.
  The words in each pair have the same
  relationship to each other.

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Paraphrase

• A restatement of the content of a poem designed
  to make its prose meaning as clear as possible.

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Tone

• The authors attitude toward his/her material.
  Tone depends on word choice.

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Conflict

• Struggle or clash between opposing characters or
  between opposing forces.
• External conflicts
• Man vs. Man social
• Man vs. Nature physical
• Man vs. Fate metaphysical

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Conflict Continued

• Internal Conflict
• Man vs. Himself- psychological

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Rhyme Scheme

• Assigning letters of the alphabet to rhyming
  lines in order to establish the kind of poem.

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Rhymed Couplet

• Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.

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End-stopped Line

• Punctuation at the end of the line.

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Run-on Line

• No punctuation at the end of the line, which
  means that the reader continues the phrases
  without pausing or stopping.

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Shakespearean Sonnet

• Three, four line stanzas, plus a couplet.Each
  stanza reflects a thought and the couplet give an
  answer or a conclusion.
• Abab, cdcd, efef, gg

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Italian Sonnet

• Also called Petrarchan Sonnet
• One octave, one sestet
• The octave establishes a problem, the sestet
  gives a solution
• Abba, abba, cde, cde

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Prose Poem

• A prose poem is a compact and rhythmic
  composition written in the form of a prose
  paragraph.
• Like any poem, a prose poem often presents its
  message by means of a vivid figure of speech.

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Denotation

• Dictionary definition of a word

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Connotation

• All the meanings, associations, or emotions that
  a word suggests

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Dramatic Monologue

• A dramatic monologue is a poem in which a
  character speaks to one or more listeners. The
  reactions of the listener must be inferred by the
  reader.