Poetry Terms: Stanzas, Rhyme, and Literary Devices

Couplet

a two line stanza

Triplet (tercet)

a three line stanza

quatrain

a four line stanza

Quintet

5 line stanza

Sestet (Sextet)

6 line stanza

Septet

7 line stanza

Octet

8 line stanza

Rhythm

the beat created by sounds of words in a poem

Meter

a pattern of stressed & unstressed syllables

End rhyme

a word at the end of one line rhymes with another

Eye rhyme

a similarity between words in spelling but not pronunciation

perfect rhyme

a type of rhyme where stressed vowel sounds in both words are identical, including sounds afterwards

internal rhyme

two rhymes in one line

imperfect rhyme

rhyme that is close to matching in vowel/consonant sounds

slant rhyme

a type of imperfect rhyme where end consonant sounds match but vowels differ

rhyme scheme

a pattern of rhyme

end stop

a metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or a break, which indicates the end of a phrase

enjambment

the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next

onomatopeia

words that imitate the sound they are making

consonance

similar to alliteration but the repeated consonant sound can be anywhere within the word

assonance

repeated vowel sounds in lines of poetry

refrain

a sound, word, phrase or line repeated regularly in a poem

shakespearean sonnet

a fourteen line poem with the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme, consisting of 3 stanzas and an ending couplet

narrative poem

a poem that tells a story