English Poetry Terms

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Dramatic Situation

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A situation, in a narrative or dramatic work, in which people (or "people") are involved in conflicts that solicit the audiences empathetic involvement in their predicament.

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Occasional Verse

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A poem expressly written for or inspired by a specific, typically significant, event.

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Persona

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Derived from the Latin word for mask, the term "persona" refers to any speaker or narrator of a literary text.

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Auditor

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An imaginary listener within a literary work, as opposed to the reader or audience outside the work.

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Confessional Poetry

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A poem which focuses on its narrators state of mind, often describing that state of mind in less than flattering terms.

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Genres

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The literary form that an author chooses to follow, assuming that the reader or viewer will enter into the agreed upon pattern.

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Lyric Poetry

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A type of emotional song like poetry, distinguished from dramatic and narrative poetry.

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Narrative Poetry

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A class of poem that tells a story

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Ballads

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A song or poem that tells a story and often features a repeated refrain

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Dramatic Poetry

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Drama written in verse

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Dramatic Monologue

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A poem narrated by an individual speaker who addresses either the reader or an implied listener

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Idiom

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A particular means of expression used in a particular language

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Denotation

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The legal or explicit meaning that a word or image carries as distinct from its implied or figurative meaning.

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Connotation

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The implied or figurative meaning that a word or image carries, as distinct from its literal or explicit meaning

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Paraphrase

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Restatement of the meaning or sense of a passage in different words often with the intention of clarification

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Syntax

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The way words are put together in sentences

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Inversion

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Also known as anastrophe, is a literary technique in which the normal order of words is reversed in order to achieve a particular effect of emphasis or meter.

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Concrete Diction

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Language that describes qualities that can be perceived with the five senses

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Abstract Diction

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Language that describes qualities that cannot be perceived with the five senses.

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Onomatopoeia

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The attempt to label a thing by forming a word from the sounds associated with it.

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Pun

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A mind of word play that depends upon identical or similar sounds among words with different meanings

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Figures of Speech

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In image that relies on the comparative imagination of the reader or listener

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Metaphor

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A figure of speech, not meant to be factually true, in which one thing is compared or substituted for something else

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Simile

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A figure of speech whereby two unlike objects are compared to each other with the words like or as

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Hyperbole

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An overstatement used to stress a point

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Understatement

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A figure of speech making something appear less important or true than it really is

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Allusion

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A reference, often to a historical figure, myth, or artwork, that exists out of the literary work

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Personification

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The attribution of human characteristics to an inanimate object or phenomenon

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Paradox

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A statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self contradictory

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Oxymoron

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A concerned paradox combining two contradictory terms, such as bittersweet

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Allegory

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A narrative in which the characters, action, and dialogue work to represent an abstract concept.

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Free Verse

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Has no prescribed form or meter, but free verse does have form, often a form found by the poet while composing.

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Stanzas

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The basic unit of a poem typically comprised of two or more lines.

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Refrain

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Sometimes called the chorus, the refrain is a recurring line or set of lines in a poem or song.

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Open Form

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Free verse without any formal scheme including meter, rhyme, or stanza pattern.

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Closed Form

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Closed form refers to any poem that conforms to established conventions for rhyme, meter, or stanza form, such as a sonnet or haiku.

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Blank Verse

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Unrhymed verse written in iambic pentameter.

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Fixed Form

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Fixed forms are those in which the poet decides to follow a particular form both for the effect on the reader and for the challenge of expressing the meaning through a controlled rhythm and rhyme scheme.

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Haiku

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An unrhymed form derived from Japan, requiring 17 syllables in a set 5, 7, 5 form and using imagery from nature; the poem often resolves into an observation about nature and meaning in the last line.

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Limerick

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A short form of poetry including five anapestic lines (two unaccented and one accented syllables) rhymed aabba.

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Sonnet

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Meaning little sound or song, one of the most popular poetic forms, particularly for poems dealing with love.

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Euphony

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A grouping of words that produces a pleasant, soothing sound, as opposed to the harsh sounds of cacophony.

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Cacophony

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A series of discordant or harsh sounds used to jar the senses of the audiences.

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Alliteration

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The repetition of a sound, usually the initial sound, in a sequence of words, such as "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen."

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Assonance

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A pattern of identical or similar vowel sounds, usually in stressed syllables of words with different end sounds.

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Consonance

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A pleasant combination of sounds; also, the repetition of consonants or groups of consonants, particularly at the ends of words.

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Masculine Rhyme

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Rhyme consisting of single stressed syllables or of stressed final syllables in polysyllabic words.

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Feminine Rhyme

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In poetic metrical feet, a foot that ends in an unaccented syllable is said to have feminine meter. Feminine rhyme occurs when two lines with feminine meter rhyme.

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Triple Rhyme

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occurs when the rhyming stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed syllables.

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Slant Rhyme

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Also referred to as near rhyme, in slant rhyme the sound of the words is nearly alike. This is because such rhymes share the same vowel sound but have different consonant sounds.

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End Rhyme

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Rhyme occurring in the final words or syllables of two or more lines of poetry, as opposed to internal rhyme, which occurs within a line.

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Internal Rhyme

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Within the line of a poem, words will rhyme, affecting the ear more than the rhythm, as does a rhyme at the end of a line.

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Anaphora

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the use of a word referring to or replacing a word used earlier in a sentence, to avoid repetition

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Epistrophe

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the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences.

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Symbol

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A symbol in a work of art is an element that stands for something beyond its literal meaning in the text.

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Symbolist Movement

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A literary movement that began in France during the late nineteenth century with writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, focusing on the mysteriousness of life, and relying on suggestion and symbol rather than explicitness and description.

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Tone

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Tone signifies the mood of a work of literature.

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Irony

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Occurs in a literary work when the text operates on at least two levels of meaning.

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Sarcasm

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an ironic or satirical remark that seems to be praising someone or something but is really taunting or cutting.

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Verse Satire

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a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement.

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Situational Irony

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A type of irony in which an action differs markedly from audience expectations, resulting surprise and sometimes discomfort.