Poetry Terms

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Prose

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The ordinary language or writing and speaking

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Ballad

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A poem or song that tells a story, often uses a refrain

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Blank verse

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Unrhymed iambic pentameter

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Elegy

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A lament, particularly for the dead

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Epic

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A long narrative poem treating a theme of action in heroic style

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Free verse

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Poetry which has no regular rhyme or rhythm

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Lyric

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Poem that expresses a feeling rather than tells a story

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Narrative

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Poem that tells a story

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Ode

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A short dignified poem in an elevated style, especially the expression of a sustained noble sentiment

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Soliloquoy

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A monologue, talking to oneself regardless of the presence of others

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Sonnet

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Fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter: expresses two successive phrases of a single thought or idea

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Shakespearean sonnet

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Twelve lines followed by a couplet: rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg

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Stanza

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A division of a poem consisting of a group of lines, particularly when they follow the same metrical pattern and rhyme scheme

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Couplet

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A two line stanza

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Meter

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The recurrent rhythm in language, especially in poetry, created by the organized arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables.

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Metric feet

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Rhythmical units within a line of poetry. A line of poetry is named after the number of these units within that line.

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Rhythm

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Regular beat or cadence in poetry or music. The rhythmical unit within the line is called the foot.

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Rhyme scheme

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The pattern of the rhyming words at the ends of the lines, marked off alphabetically, with each letter corresponding to a new rhyme

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Feminine rhyme

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The last two syllables are rhymed between verses, creating a double rhyme

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Internal rhyme or assonance

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Rhyming of two or more words within a single line of poetry

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Figurative language

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The use of comparisons by the poet to convey ideas

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Alliteration

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Repetition of the first sound of words in close sequence

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Allusion

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A reference to a literary or history figure or event, may allude to myth, religion, etc

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Apostrophe

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Addressing directly some person or thing absent or present

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Hyperbole

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Overstatement: exaggerate what is literally true

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Imagery

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Use of language to create a physical sensation in the mind.
Senses of hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch.

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Metaphor

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An implied comparison in which one thing is described in terms of something else

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Metonymy

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Reference to something (the naming of it) by one of its attributes

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Onomatopoeia

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Words that imitate the sounds they designate

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Personification

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A kind of metaphor where a thing is given human characterisitcs.

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Simile

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An expressed comparison. Using the word like or as.