Poetic Term

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Alliteration

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Repetition of initial consonant sounds

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Allusion

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Reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art

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Analogy

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Comparison between 2 or more things that are similar in some ways but otherwise not

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Assonance

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Repetition of a vowel would followed by different consonants in two or more stressed syllables

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Ballad

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Song-like poem that tells a story, often one dealing with adventure and romance

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Blank Verse

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Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pantameter

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Caesura

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A complete pause in a line of poetry and/or in a musical composition

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Connotation

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A word in the set of ideas associates with it in addition to it's explicit meaning

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Couplet

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A pair of rhyming lines, usually of the same length and meter

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Denotation

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A word's dictionary meaning, independent of other associations that the word may have

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Dialect

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Form of language spoken by people in a particular region or group, may involve changes to the pronunciation, vocabulary, and sentence structure or standard English

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Diction

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Author's choice of words

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Dramatic monologue

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A poem in which a character reveals himself or herself by speaking to a silent listener

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Dramatic poetry

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Poetry that utilizes the techniques of drama

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End-stopped line

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Occurs when the rhyming words come at the ends of lines

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Extended metaphor

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A writer speaks or writes of a subject as though it were something else. Sustains the comparison for several lines or for an entire poem

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Figurative language

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Writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally. Often used to create vivid impressions by setting up comparisons between dissimilar things

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Free verse

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Poetry not written in a regular pattern of meter or rhyme

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Hyperbole

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A deliberate exaggeration or overstatement

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Idiom

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An expression that is characteristic of a language, region, community, or class of people

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Image

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A word or phrase that peals to one or more of the five senses

Visual - sight

Auditory - hearing

Tactile - touch

Gustatory - taste

Olfactory - smell

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Literal language

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Uses words in their ordinary senses

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Lyric poem

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A highly music very that expresses the thoughts, observations, and feelings of a single speaker

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Metaphor

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A figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of a though it were something else

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Meter

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The rhythmic pattern of a poem

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Metonymy

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A type of metaphor in which an object is used to describe something that's closely related to it

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Mood

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Feeling created in the reader by a literary work or passage

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Narrative poem

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Poem that tells a story

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Octave

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Eight lined stanza

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Onomatopoeia

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The use of words that imitate sounds

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Oxymoron

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Combination of words, or parts of words, that contradict each other

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Paradox

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A statement that seems contradictory but actually may be true

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Parallelism

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The repetition of a grammatical structure in order to create a rhythm and make words more memorable

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Personification

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A type if figurative language in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics

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Pun

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Humorous use of a word or phrase to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words

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Quatrain

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A stanza or poem made up of four lines, usually with a definite rhythm and rhyme scheme

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Repetition

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The use of any element of language more then once

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Rhyme

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The repetition of sounds at the ends of words

End rhyme - rhythming words come at the ends of lines

Internal rhyme - rhyming words appear in the same line

Exact rhyme - same vowel and consonant sounds

Slant rhyme - sound alike but do not rhyme exactly

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Rhyme scheme

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A regular pattern of rhyming swords in a poem

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Rhythm

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The pattern of beats, or stresses, in spoken or written language

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Run-on line

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The meaning runs-over from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation

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Sestet

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Six lined stanza

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Simile

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A figure of speech in which the words like or as are used to compare two apparently dissimilar items

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Sonnet

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Fourteen-line poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter

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Elizabethan/Shakespearean sonnet

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Composed of three quatrains and a terminal couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg

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Italian/Petrarchan sonnet

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Consisting of an octave rhyming abba abba and a sestet rhyming in any of various patterns

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Speaker

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The imaginary voice assumed by the writer of the poem

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Stanza

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A repeated grouping of two or more lines in a poem that often share a pattern and rhyme

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Symbol

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Anything that stands for something else

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Theme

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A central message or insight into life revealed through literary work

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Tone

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The writer's attitude toward his or her audience and subject

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Understatement

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A figure of speech in which the stated meaning is purposely less than what is really meant