Poetry Terminology

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POETRY

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characterized by controlled patterns of rhythm and syntax (often using meter and rhyme); a particularly concentrated emphasis on the sensual, especially visual and aural, qualities and effects of words and word order; and especially vivid, often figurative language.

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SPEAKER

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: (1) the person who is the voice of a poem; (2) anyone who speaks dialogue in a work of fiction, poetry, or drama.

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DENOTATION

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A word’s direct and literal meaning, as opposed to its connotation.

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CONNOTATION

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What is suggested by a word, apart from what it literally means or how it is defined in the dictionary.

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ALLITERATION

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The repetition of usually initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words-for example, “while I nodded, nearly napping in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

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ASSONANCE

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The repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings-for example, “The death of the poet was kept from his poems: in W.H. Auden’s :In Memory of W.B. Yeats”

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ONOMATOPOEIA

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A word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes; buzz is a good example.

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PUN

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Puns are a very popular literary device wherein a word is used in a manner to suggest two or more possible meanings. This is generally done to the effect of creating humor or irony or wryness. Puns can also refer to words that suggest meanings of similar-sounding words. The trick is to make the reader have an “ah!” moment and discover 2 or more meanings.

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CACOPHONY

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in literature refers to the use of words and phrases that imply strong, harsh sounds within the phrase. These words have jarring and dissonant sounds that create a disturbing, objectionable atmosphere

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EUPHONY

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refers to the use of phrases and words that are noted for possessing an extensive degree of notable loveliness or melody in the sound they create. predominant in literary prose and poetry, where poetic devices such as alliterations, rhymes and assonace are used to create pleasant sounds.

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IMAGERY

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Broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object. may be described as auditory, tactile, visual, or olfactory depending on which sense it primarily appeals to-hearing, touch, vision, or smell. An image is a particular instance of imagery

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LYRIC

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Originally, a poem meant to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre; now any relatively short poem in which the speaker expresses his or her thoughts and feelings in the first person rather than recounting a narrative or portraying a dramatic situation.

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STANZA

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A section of a poem, marked by extra line spacing before and after, that often has a single pattern of meter and/or rhyme. Conventional stanza forms include ballad stanza, Spenserian stanza, ottava rima, and terza rima.

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COUPLET

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two consecutive lines of verse linked by rhyme and meter; the meter of a

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HEROIC COUPLET

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is iambic pentameter.

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TERCET

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a set or group of three lines of verse rhyming together or connected by rhyme with an adjacent

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ALLUSION

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A brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text (the bible, a myth, another literary work, a painting, or a piece of music) or any imaginary or historical person, place, or thing. Many of the footnotes in this book explain allusions found in literary selections

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METAPHOR

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A figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly-that is, without the use of a signal such as the word like or as-as in “love is a rose, but you better not pick it.” An extended metaphor is a detailed and complex metaphor that stretches across a long section of a work. If such a metaphor is so extensive that it dominates or organizes an entire literary work, especially a poem, it is called a controlling metaphor. In Linda Pastan’s “Marks,” for example, the controlling metaphor involves the use of “marks” or grades to talk about the speaker’s performance of her familial roles. A mixed metaphor occurs when two or more usually incompatible metaphors are entangled together so as to become unclear and often unintentionally humorous, as in “her blazing words dripped all over him.”

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METONYMY

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A figure of speech in which the name of one thing is used to refer to another associated thing. When we say, “the White House has promised to veto the bill,: for example we use the White House as a metonym for the president and his administration. Synecdoche is a specific type of metonymy.

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PERSONIFICATION

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A figure of speech that involves treating something nonhuman, such as an abstraction, as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities, as in “Death entered the room”

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SIMILE

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A figure of speech involving a direct, explicit comparison on one thing to another, usually using the words like or as to draw the connection, as in “My love is like a red, red rose.” An analogy is an extended simile

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HYPERBOLE (or OVERSTATEMENT)

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a literary device wherein the author uses specific words and phrases that exaggerate and overemphasize the basic crux of the statement in order to produce a grander, more noticeable effect. The purpose of hyperbole is to create a larger-than-life effect and overly stress a specific point. Such sentences usually convey an action or sentiment that is generally not practically/ realistically possible or plausible but helps emphasize an emotion

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UNDERSTATMENT

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language that makes its point by self-consciously downplaying it’s real emphasis, as in “Final exams aren’t exactly a walk in the park”; litotes is one form of understatement.

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PARADOX

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in literature refers to the use of concepts or ideas that are contradictory to one another, yet, when placed together hold significant value on several levels. The uniqueness of paradoxes lies in the fact that a deeper level of meaning and significance is not revealed at first glace, but when it does crystallize, it provides astonishing insight.

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BLANK VERSE

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The metrical verse form most like everyday human speech; consists of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. Many of Shakespeare’s plays are in blank verse, as is John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses.

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FREE VERSE (or OPEN FORM)

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Poetry characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines

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FIXED FORM

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A poem that may be categorized by the pattern of its lines, meter, rhythm, or stanzas. A sonnet must have fourteen lines. Other fixed forms include limerick, sestina, and villanelle.

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RHYME

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repetition or correspondence of the terminal sounds of words (“How now, brown cow?”). Internal rhyme occurs when a word within a line of poetry rhymes with another word in the same or adjacent lines, as in “The Dew drew quivering and chill: (Dickinson). When two syllables rhyme and the last is unstressed or unaccented, they create a feminine rhyme (“ocean” and “motion”); masculine rhyme involves only a single stressed or accented syllable (“cat” and “hat”)

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RHYME SCHEME

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The pattern of end rhymes in a poem, often noted by small letters, such as abab or abba

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END RHYME

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occurs when the last words in two or more lines of a poem rhyme with each other.

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EXACT RHYME

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satisfying the following conditions: The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent sounds.

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SLANT RHYME

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slightly “off” or only approximate, usually because words’ final consonant sounds correspond, but not the vowels that proceed them (“phases” and “houses”).

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EYE RHYME (or SIGHT RHYME)

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involves words that don’t actually rhyme but look like they do because of their similar spelling (“cough” and “bough”).

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METER

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The more or less regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. This is determined by the kind of foot (iambic or dactylic, for example and by the number of feet per line (five feet = pentameter, sex feet = hexameter).

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FOOT

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The basic unit of poetic mete, consisting of any of various fixed patterns of one to three stressed and unstressed syllables. may contain more than one word or just one syllable of a multisyllabic word. In scansion breaks between feet are usually indicated with a verticle line or slash mark, as in the following example (which contains five feet)

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IAMBIC PENTAMETER

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is a commonly used type of metrical line in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm that the words establish in that line, which is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet".

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SCANSION

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The process of analyzing (and sometimes also marking) verse to determine it’s meter, line by line.

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CAESURA

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A short pause within a line of poetry often but not always signaled by punctuation. Note the two caesuras in this line from Poe’s “The Raven”: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.”

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QUATRIAN

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A four-line unit of verse, whether an entire poem, a stanza, or a group of four lines linked by a pattern of rhyme (as in an English or Shakespearean sonnet).

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SESTET

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Six lines of verse linked by a pattern of rhyme, as in the last six lines of the Italian, or Petrarchan

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OCTET (or OCTAVE)

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Eight lines of verse linked by a pattern of end rhymes, especially the first eight lines of an Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet.

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SONNET

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A fixed verse form consisting of fourteen lines usually in iambic pentameter.

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ENGLISH or SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

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Consists of three quatrains (Four-line units) and a couplet and often rhymes abab cdcd efef gg

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ITALIAN or PETRARCHAN SONNET

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consists of eight rhyme-linked lines (an octave) plus six rhyme-linked lines ( a sestet), often with either an abbaabba cdecde or abbacddc defdef rhyme scheme. This type of sonnet is also called the Petrarchan sonnet in honor of the Italian poet Petrarch.

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HAIKU

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A poetic form, Japanese in origin, that consists of seventeen syllables arranged in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.