Poetry

Stanza

A grouped set of lines in a poem

Couplet

Two consecutive lines of poetry that typically rhyme and form a unit.

Quatrain

A stanza of four lines

Speaker / Persona

The narrative voice of the poem; the perspective through which the poem is delivered.

Free Verse

Poetry without a fixed meter or rhyme scheme; relies on natural rhythms and line breaks.

Metered Poetry

Poetry written with a consistent rhythmic pattern (meter).

Lyric Poetry

A short non-narrative poem that expresses the personal emotions, feelings, or state of mind of a single speaker, often using a first-person perspective

Lineation

The deliberate arrangement of lines in a poem

Enjambment

A line break that carries a sentence or phrase into the next line without punctuation.

End-Stopped

A line that ends with punctuation

Compression

Condensing meaning into very few words through precision and omission.

Caesura

A deliberate pause within a line

Catalog

A poetic list or accumulation of images

Elegy

A poem of mourning or reflection

Refrain

A repeated line or phrase appearing at intervals in a poem.