Terms To Know In The Study Of Poetry

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Imagery

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language that appeals to the senses, descriptions of people or objects stated in terms of our senses, forming in the reader's heads

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Simile

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a figue of speech which involves a direct comparison between two unlike things, using the words "like" or "as" Example: The muscles on his brawny arms are strong as iron bands.

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Metaphor

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a figure of speech which involves an implied comparison between two relatively unlike things using a form of "be". The comparison is not announced by "like" or "as"

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Alliteration

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repeated consonant sound occurring at the beginning of words or within words. Alliteration is used to create melody, establish mood, call attention to important words, and point out similarities and contrasts. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, of some sweet wood."

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Assonance

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the repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the following lines; "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself."

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Personification

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a figure of speech which gives the qualities of a person to an animal, an object, or an idea. It is comparison which the author uses to show something in an entirely new light, to communicate a certain feeling or attitude towards it and to control the way a reader perceives it. Example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze."

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Onomatopoeia

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the use of words that mimic sounds. They appeal to our sense of hearing and they help bring a description to life. A string of syllables the author has made up to represent the way a sound really sounds. Example: Caarackle!

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Hyperbole

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an exaggerated statement used to heighten effect. It is not used to mislead the reader, but to emphasize a point. Example: She's said so on several million occasions.

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Apostrophe

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speaking to someone who is absent or to some abstract idea as if the abstraction were indeed real and present. Example: Friendship, why have you betrayed me?

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Refrain

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repetition of whole words, phrased,lines, or groups of lines according to some fixed pattern

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Rhythm

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the sense of movement attributable to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of prose or poetry

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Rhyme

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the similarity or likeness of sound existing between two words

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(External) End Rhyme

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the similarity occurs at the end of two or more lines or poetry

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Internal Rhyme

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the similarity occurs between two or more words in the same line verse

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Slant Rhyme

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a near rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels. Example: sun/moon, should/food, slim/ham

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Rhyme Scheme

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the pattern of rhyme, usually indicatred by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyme at the end of a line of poetry

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Enjambment

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a run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line. In the opening lines of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," for example, the first line is end-stopped and the secound enjambed:
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now....

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Free Verse

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poetry without regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad.

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Stanza

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a group of poetic lines corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually repeating or systematic

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Couplet

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a two-line stanza, usually rhymed

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Triplet

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a three-line stanza or poetic unit

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Quatrain

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a four-line stanza or poetic unit

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Sesstet

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a six-line stanza or unit or poetry

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Allusion

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a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work. For example, in Edgar Allan Poe's "The City in the Sea," he uses the phrase "up Babylon-like walls" to illustrate the doomed city of death.

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Scansion

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the process of identifying the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables and the rhyme scheme of poem