English - Poetry Literary Terms

Image

a word or sequence of words that refers to any sensory experience. (“In a Station of the Metro”)

visual

relating to sight

auditory

relating to sound

tactile

relating to touch (texture, heat, cold, wetness, hardness, etc.)

organic

relating to an internal sensation, such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, nausea, etc.

kinesthetic

relating to movement or tension in the muscles or joints

gustatory

relating to taste

olfactory

relating to smell

synaesthesia

the description of the perception of one sense in terms of another: “The singer’s voice was sweet, smooth, and velvety.”

figures of speech

expressions that are meant to be interpreted imaginatively not literally.

Metaphor

implied or explicit comparison of two things: “The clouds galloped ...”

mixed metaphor

an error that results from combining two or more incompatible metaphors resulting in ridiculousness or nonsense

implied metaphor

a comparison that uses neither connectives nor the verb to be: “John crowed over his victory,” we imply metaphorically that john is a rooster but do not say so specifically.

simile

explicit comparison using like, as, than, just … so: “hungry as a lion”

personification

a specific kind of metaphor in which human qualities are ascribed to a non-human thing: “The tree reached into the night sky.”

apostrophe

addressing someone absent or dead or something nonhuman as if that person or thing were present and alive and could reply to what is being said.

paradox

an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true. e.g., “less is more” (Browning); “where ignorance is bliss, / ’Tis folly to be wise.” (Gray)

overstatement/hyperbole

a type of verbal irony in which you use outrageous exaggeration for purposes of emphasis and often humor: “I could eat a horse.”

understatement/litotes

a type of verbal irony in which you use deliberate understatement for purposes of intensification or affirming the negative, e.g., after a huge rainstorm: “What a delightful Spring shower.”; the phrase “not bad” when intended as a high compliment.

verbal irony

hen there is a discrepancy between what one says and what one means. e.g., while returning a perfect test, I might say, “Libby, you have so much potential as an English student—if only you would apply yourself.”

dramatic irony

a. (Drama) when there is a discrepancy between what the audience knows and what the character or characters know. e.g., Oedipus’ curse of Laius’ murderer in Oedipus Rex.

b. (Poetry) when there is a discrepancy between what the speaker says and what the poem means. e.g., in “The Raven,” speaker unwittingly reveals his insanity.

irony of situation

when there is a discrepancy between what one anticipates and what actually comes to pass, or between the actual circumstances and those that would seem appropriate. e.g., dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean—“Water, water, everywhere,” but not a “drop to drink” (Coleridge)

cosmic irony/irony of fate

when misfortune is the result of some fate, chance, or God with a cruel sense of humor. Discrepancy between a character’s aspiration and the treatment he or she receives at the hands of Fate. (“Convergence of the Twain,” “Hap”)

oxymoron

from the Greek, meaning “pointedly foolish”): a form of condensed paradox, it is a figure of speech which combines two seemingly contradictory elements: “O heavy lightness! serious vanity! / Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! / Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!” (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 1.1)

metonymy

figure of speech in which the name of thing is substituted for that of another closely associated with it: “The White House decided” when we mean the president did.

synecdoche

the use of a significant part of thing to stand for the whole of it, or vice versa: “Nice wheels” to comment on one’s car.

symbol

an object or image that suggests some further meaning in addition to itself. (“Anecdote of the Jar”)

allegory

close to symbolism, a description - usually narrative - in which persons, places, and things are employed in a continuous and consistent system of equivalents.

archetype

a basic image, character, situation, or symbol that appears so often in literature or legend that it evokes a deep universal response. (ex: Jesus figure, the coming-home tale, the coming-of-age tale, the trickster figure, the cruel stepmother, etc)

Sound: (“Upon Julia’s Clothes,” “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town”)

concrete diction

words that refer to what we can immediately perceive with our senses (dog, actor, chemical)

abstract diction

words that express ideas or concepts (love, time, truth)

Ezra Pound: “Go in fear of abstractions”

colloquial diction

casual conversational or informal language

general english diction

more studied than colloquial but not pretentious

formal english diction

a sophisticated, precise style of language used in professional, academic, or serious contexts

dialect

a particular variety of language spoken by an identifiable regional group or social class of persons (“The Ruined Maid”)

allusion

an indirect reference to any person, place, or thing—fictitious, historical, or actual. (“Nothing Gold Can Stay”, “Grass”)

denotation

the dictionary definition of a word

connotation

overtones or suggestions of additional meaning that it gains from all the contexts in which we have met it in the past. Some words mean the same thing but have very different ____s. (“perspire” and “sweat”) (“Desert Places”)

exact rime

when the sound the sound pattern in two or more words repeat. The repetition may be monosyllabic (hand/sand), disyllabic (master/disaster), or trisyllabic (serious/deleterious) or more.

slant/near/off/imperfect rime

when words rime approximately, substituting either assonance (comb/coat; moot/room) or alliteration (hope/heap; talk/weak; thank/link) in place of exact rime;

internal rime

when there is rime within a single line of verse

masculine rhyme

rhyme of one-syllable words (jail, bail), or (in words of more than one syllable) stressed final syllables: (di-VORCE, re-MORSE, or even horse, re-MORSE)

feminine rhyme

rhyme of two or more syllables with stress on a syllable other than the last: (TUR-tle, FER-tile, or in-tel-LECT-u-al, hen-PECKED you all). Often lends itself to comic verse, but can also appear in serious poems.

aliteration

repetition of consonant sounds (sometimes defined as repetition of initial sounds; sometimes defined as repetition of initial consonant sounds; S and S distinguishes between a. and consonance: repetition of internal or final consonant sounds)

assonance

repetition of vowel sounds.

onomatopoeia

“formation or use of words which imitate sounds, such as hiss, snap, buzz, clash, murmur; also, combinations of words in which any correspondence is felt between sound and sense,” e.g., the mournful repetition of the sound “ore” in “The Raven.” Or, “The surf crashed against the sand on the seashore” onomatopoetically suggests the sound the sentence actually describes through the alliterating “s” and “sh” sounds.

consonance

a kind of slant rhyme, occurs when the rhymed words or phrases have the same beginning and ending consonant sounds but a different vowel, as in chitter and chatter

doggeral

verse that's intentionally or unintentionally clumsy, irregular in rhythm, and often uses forced or simplistic rhymes, typically for comic, satirical, or sentimental effects, mimicking bad poetry with cheap sentiment and trivial meaning, unlike structured formal verse. It features monotonous rhythm, easy rhymes (like simple AABB or ABAB), and can feel overly emotional or artificial, even appearing in popular song lyrics or as a deliberate artistic choice

prosody

the study of metrical structures in poetry

meter

when stresses recur at fixed intervals in the lines of a poem or play (p. 174)

foot

a unit of two or three syllables that contains ONE strong stress – the building block of the metered line

iamb/iambic

(unstressed syllable /stressed syllable [ u ` ]): attack, decide

trochee/trochaic

stressed, unstressed; ( ` u ): Panther, apple

anapest/anapestic

( u u ` ): interfere, underneath, and the moon

dactyl/dactylic

( ` u u ): alphabet, oxidize, piggy bank

spondee/spondaic

“No, no” “Bright star”

monosyllabic foot

1/1 stressed syllable

spondee

2/2 stressed syllables

trimeter

3 feet per line

tetrameter

4 feet per line

pentameter

5 feet per line

hexameter

6 feet per line

rising meter

iambic and anapestic are _____ because their movement rises from an unstressed syllable(s) to stress

falling meter

trochaic and dactylic are ____ because they go from stressed to unstressed

accentual meter

meter in which the poet does not write in feet, but instead keeps the number of accents (stresses) per line consistent

caesura

break or pause in the middle of a line of poetry, often created through the use of a forceful piece of punctuation (period, dash, colon, semi-colon).

run-on line/enjambment

when the sense and grammatical structure of a clause or phrase extend beyond the end of a line or stanza into the one following. E.g., Williams enjambs the first three lines of “The Red Wheelbarrow”: “so much depends / upon// a red wheel / barrow.”

end-stopped lines

when the sense and grammatical structure of a clause or phrase stops at the end of a line or stanza; the fourth line of Williams’ poem is end-stopped.

couplet

two lines in a stanza (usually rhymed)

heroic/closed couplet

rhymed, iambic pentameter couplet; usually complete syntactically

tercet

three lines in a stanza

quatrain

four lines in a stanza

sestet

six lines in a stanza

octet/octave

eight lines in a stanza

blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter (most common in English: Shakespeare’s plays and Milton’s Paradise Lost, “Ulysses”)

syllabic verse

when a poet establishes a pattern of a certain number of syllables to a line.

acrostic

a poem in which the initial letter of each line, read downward, spells out a word or words

epigram

a short poem ending in a witty or ingenious turn of thought, to which the rest of the composition is intended to lead up. Often a malicious gibe with a stinger at the end.

limerick

5 anapestic lines usually rhyming A A B B A

haiku

Japanese form dependent on imagery – captures the intensity of a particular moment, usually by linking two concrete images: 3 line poem arranged by syllables: 5, 7, 5.

sonnet

a. 14 lines

b. iambic pentameter

c. rhymed according to some more or less regular pattern

d. usually organized into two parts. In the first part, the poet presents a problem or question or idea or situation or image. In the second part, marked by the “turn,” the poet offers a solution, answer, or response to the first part. The turn is often indicated with a conjunction suggesting contrast or contradiction: “But, yet, still, etc.”

english/shakespearean sonnet

a. three quatrains of open rhyme, followed by a rhyming couplet

(rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg)

b. turn normally occurs at the beginning of line 13.

italian/petrarchan sonnet

a. an octave made up of two quatrains of enveloping rhyme. In its purest, traditional form, the enveloping rhyme repeats (abbaabba). Some poets change the rhyme in the second quatrain (abba cddc).

b. the octave is followed by a sestet of (usually) interlocking rhyme. A couple of the most common rhyme schemes are cdcdcd, cde cde.

c. turn normally occurs at the beginning of line 9.

villanelle

French fixed form: a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines. (the key to writing a good villanelle is writing two good lines); (“Do not go gentle into that good night” and “One Art”)

sestina

a tricky form, (“song of sixes”) In 6 six-line stanzas, the poet repeats six end-words (in a prescribed order), then reintroduces the six repeated words (in any order) in a closing envoy of three lines. End-words are arranged: ABCDEF, FAEBDC, CFDABE, ECBFAD, DEACFB, BDFECA, 3 lines w/ 6 words in any order, 2 per line. (Elizabeth Bishop: “Sestina”)

open form

a poem with no rhyme scheme nor basic meter informing the whole of it. (“Buffalo Bill’s” – e. e. cummings)