American Lit. Poetic Terms

Alliteration

repetition of similar initial consonant sounds: Seven silver swans swam silently.

Assonance

repetition of similar vowel sounds: Will crickets sing if it is winter?

Consonance

repetition of similar consonant sounds that aren’t initial: Bring the ringing gong along.

Euphony

words that sound pleasant and melodious (murmuring, elegy, luminous, wander)

Cacophony

 words that sound harsh or difficult (awkward, horrific, procrastinate, gaggle)

Onomatopoeia

a word that phonetically imitates or suggests the sound that it describes: hiss, hum, pop, buzz

End Rhyme

rhyme that occurs at the ends of two or more lines, though not necessarily consecutive lines:

Internal Rhyme

a rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than only at the ends of multiple lines

Simile

 indirect comparison of two unlike things using like, as, than, etc.: Their goalie is like an ox.

Metaphor

direct comparison of two unlike things: Their goalie is an ox or They have an ox playing goalie.

Personification

a type of metaphor in which a non-human object or creature is given human characteristics: The sun smiled down on us or The chameleon decided to turn a bold MLWGS green.

Extended Metaphor

 a direct comparison carried through multiple lines or stanzas or the whole poem

Conceit

 a metaphor using two extremely dissimilar things, extending the comparison over a passage or even the whole poem.

Symbol

a thing (object, color, person, etc.) that represents something larger than itself.

Synecdoche

using a part to represent a whole: He asked for her hand in marriage.

Metonymy

using a word associated with something instead of the actual word: The White House refused to comment on the matter or It was a bad day on Wall Street.

Hyperbole

intentional exaggeration for effect: Monday night I had a metric ton of homework.

Allusion

a reference to a literary, mythological, or historical event, place, or person. Allusions to the Bible, classical mythology, and Shakespeare are particularly common.

Apostrophe

a rhetorical device where a character or speaker addresses something or someone who cannot respond: Blow, wind, blow my baby back to me!

Rhythm

the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythmic patterns may be long or short, repeated or unrepeated.

Meter

a regular, repeated pattern of rhythm

Iamb

a common metric foot consisting of two syllables, the first unstressed and the second stressed: A senior class of great renown.

Trochee

a common metric foot of two syllables, the first stressed and the second unstressed: Maggie Walker has a statue.

Anapest

a common metric foot of three syllables, the first two unstressed and the third stressed: There's a guy in the booth in the back of the room.

Dactyl

a common metric foot of three syllables, the first stressed and the next two unstressed: Speaking of books, is there one you would recommend?

Iambic Pentameter

 a meter using five iambs (a unit of rhythm with two syllables, unstressed then stressed) in each line.

Blank Verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter

Free Verse

poetry that uses neither rhyme nor meter

Refrain

a word or group of words that is repeated, usually at the end of a stanza

Couplet

 a pair of rhymed lines

Heroic Couplet

a pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter

Stanza

a series of lines grouped together as a unit within a poem

Tercet

a stanza with three lines. The lines need not rhyme, but they often do.

Quatrain

 a stanza with four lines. The lines need not rhyme, but they often do.

Sestet

a stanza with six lines. The lines need not rhyme, but they often do.

Octave

a stanza with eight lines, usually written in iambic pentameter. The lines need not rhyme, but they often do.

Sonnet

a poem of fourteen rhyming lines, in English typically using iambic pentameter.

Caesura

a pause somewhere in the middle of a line, often shown by a gap (especially in Anglo-Saxon poetry) or a punctuation mark like a dash: To be, or not to be—that is the question.

End-stopped Line

a line with a pause at the end, indicated by a period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark: Is this a dagger which I see before me?

Enjambment

continuation of sense and grammatical construction from one line to the next:
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter, darker trees…

Diction

the writer’s choice of words

Syntax

the writer’s ordering of words into patterns or sentences

Didactic

intended to teach a lesson

Elegy

a poem with a mournful subject or tone

Imagery

writing that appeals to any of the five senses

Style

the way in which a writer expresses language

Theme

the message expressed in a work

Tone

the way in which a writer expresses an attitude