Poetry Terms

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Stanza:

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A unit of two or more lines of verse.

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Quatrain:

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4 lines

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Octave:

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8 lines, usually first 8 lines of Italian sonnet

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Sestet:

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6 lines, usually final 6 line section of Italian sonnet

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Couplet:

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2 lines, usually rhymed and of equal length

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Metrical Feet, Foot:

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One segment of a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, which is repeated in a line of poetry. A foot has only one (primary?) stressed syllable. If two (primary?) stresses, then two feet. This part doesn’t jive with Pyrrhic feet…?

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Meter:

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pattern of stressed syllables in verse following at regular intervals

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Free Verse:

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No consistent meter

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Iambic (Iamb):

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| u/ | Unaccented syllable then an accented syllable

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Trochaic (Trochee):

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| /u |Stressed syllable then an unstressed syllable (words: sum-mer, chor-us) (Also: Double, double, toil and trouble;)

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anapestic (Anapest):

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| uu/ | Two unstressed syllables then a stressed syllable

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Dactyllic (Dactylo):

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| /uu | One stressed syllable then two unstressed syllables

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Pyrrhic:

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| uu | Two unaccented syllables.

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Spondaic (Spondee):

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| // | Two stressed syllables, No English meters are spondaic.

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Inverted Foot:

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reversal of accented and unaccented syllables

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Dimeter:

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2 feet per line, uncommon

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Trimeter:

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3 feet per line

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Tetrameter:

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4 feet per line

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Pentameter:

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5 feet per line

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Hexameter:

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6 feet per line

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Scan: Is this Scansion?

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Measures the rhythms in a poem by separating and marking the metrical feet counting the syllables marking the accented syllables indicating pauses

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Lyric Poetry:

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Any poem that focuses upon a speaker’s feelings, as long as it doesn’t veer into narrative.

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Narrative Poetry:

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Tells a story

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Ballad:

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A song, or songlike poem, that tells a story.

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Sonnet:

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Fixed form. 14 lines. Iambic pentameter.

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English sonnet:

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3 quatrains (abab), turn (change in mood or argument), final couplet: abab cdcd efef gg

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Italian sonnet:

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1 octave, turn, final sestet: abba abba cdecde (variety of rhyme schemes for sestet)

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Elegy:

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a lament or meditative poem, usually about death or a solemn event or theme, usually a complete formal poem.

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Carpe diem poem:

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Latin, “Seize the day.” Lyric poem dealing with human striving and passage of time. Often a argument of a lover seducing his beloved.

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Parody:

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A mocking imitation of a literary work or style, usually for comic purposes.

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Pastoral:

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An idealized rendition of rural life.

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Dramatic monologue:

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A poem written as a speech made by a character, usually to a silent listener.

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Speaker:

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Imaginary speaker speaking the words of the poem. (Gardner, 82)

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Persona:

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Latin for, “mask.” A figure imagined by the author to be the speaker of a poem or story. A persona is the voice of the work, not a character in it.

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Rhyme:

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words that have same vowel sound followed by the same consonant sounds.

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Off Rhyme (Slant Rhyme):

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Just final consonant sounds the same: bean/bone, priestess/justice

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Internal Rhyme:

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Rhymes that occur within a line as opposed to at end of the line

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Rhyme Scheme:

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The pattern of rhyme in a poem, transcribed by small letters indicating rhyming lines: abab

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Personification:

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a thing, an animal, or an abstraction is endowed with human characteristics.

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Apostrophe:

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a direct address to an absent person or thing

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Alliteration:

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repetition of consonant sounds (cool cats, In kitchen cups concupiscent curds”)

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Assonance:

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repetition of two or more vowel sounds in successive words (“aw sound” all the awful auguries, or “I sound” white lilacs”)

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Image:

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an expression that describes a literal sensation, whether of hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and feeling.

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Metaphor:

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A figurative statement that asserts that one thing is something else, which it literally cannot be. “One must have a mind of winter,” “Children of an elder time” about trees.

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Simile:

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Comparison that finds similarities between two dissimilar things. Often made with "as," "like," or "than."

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Allusion:

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A brief, sometimes indirect, reference to a person, place or thing. This can bring up all the associated feelings of the reference. “As smoothly as if using a light-saber, he cut the apple with the pairing knife.”

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Symbol:

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A person, place, or thing in a narrative that suggests meanings beyond its literal sense.

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Conceit:

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extended, elaborate metaphor, intricate, pushing the metaphor

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Allegory:

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Literal elements in a text point to a recognizable parallel sequence of ideas, values, realities, etc. not in the text.

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Enjambment:

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When one verse flows into another without grammatical pause (opposite of end-stopped).

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End-Stopped Line:

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A line of verse that ends in a full jpause, usually indicated by a mark of punctuation.

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Caesura:

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a pause within a line of verse.

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Free verse:

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Line lengths are often irratic and dissimilar, long and short. No distinguishable pattern in the meter. It doesn’t sound like it has a rhythm