Poetry Terms

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Poetry Terms

• Everything you ever wanted to know about poetry,
  but didnt know you wanted to know
• so, now youll know.

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ALLITERATION

• The repetition of the initial sounds (usually
  consonants) in neighboring words or at short
  intervals within a line or passage, usually at
  word beginnings, as in "wild and woolly" or the
  line from Shelley's "The Cloud,"
• I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

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ASSONANCE

• A form of ALLITERATION that can be described as a
  repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by
  different consonants in two or more words.
  Assonance differs from RHYME in that rhyme is a
  similarity of vowel and consonant. "Lake" and
  "fake" demonstrate a rhyme "lake" and "fate"
  demonstrate assonance.

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BALLAD

• A short narrative poem that relates the details
  of a story through stanzas of two or four lines
  and usually contains a repeating refrain. The
  story of a ballad can originate from a wide range
  of subject matter, but most frequently deals with
  folklore or popular
• legends. They are written in straight-
• forward verse, seldom with detail,
• but always with graphic simplicity
• and force. Most ballads are suitable
• for singing.

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BLANK VERSE come on, you know this from
Shakespeare

• Poetry written without rhymes, but which retains
  a set metrical pattern or rhythm of sound,
  usually iambic pentameter (or five iambic feet
  per line) in English verse.

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COUPLET

• Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal
  length and rhythmic correspondence, with
  end-words that rhyme

A SMALL COUPLE ? A COUPLET
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FREE BIRD oops!
FREE VERSE

• Poetry that does not follow a fixed rhythm or
  rhyme scheme. Free verse poems have an irregular
  rhythm scheme or irregular meter. Free verse
  relies on the recurrence, with variations, of
  phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather
  than the conventional use of METER. RHYME may or
  may not be present in free verse, but when it is,
  it is used with great freedom.

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RHYME SCHEME

• The pattern established by the arrangement of
  rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described
  by using letters of the alphabet to denote the
  recurrence of rhyming lines, such as ababbcc.

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RHYTHM

• the pattern of stresses and pauses in a poem
  also called a poems METER.

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Last one! STANZA

• A group of lines in a poem, separated from others
  by a blank space on the page, that forms a unit
  of thought, mood, or meter. Common stanzaic
  forms include the COUPLET (two lines), quatrain
  (four lines), and octave (eight lines).