Verse Terms

Definitions of verse terms for the study of poetry.

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds in nearby stressed syllables.

Aside

A speech or short comment that a character delivers directly to the audience.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in words that are close to each other in a sentence or phrase.

Ballad

A poem with a musical quality.

Blank verse

Poetry that lacks rhymes but does follow a specific meter.

Caesura

A pause in a line of poetry formed by the rhythms of natural speech rather than by metrics.

Colloquial language

Used as a way to convey personality and authenticity to characters.

Connotation

The use of a word to suggest a different association than its literal meaning.

Couplet

Two lines of poetry that rhyme.

Denotation

A literal framing of a term or sign/definition.

Dramatic monologue

A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader.

End stopped line

A complete word or phrase (or a single love), causes reactor to pause.

Enjambment

Continuation of a phrase or sentence from one line to the next without punctuation.

Form

How a work is constructed and organized; its structure.

Free verse

Poetry that doesn't use any strict meter or rhyme.

Iambic pentameter

A rhythmic pattern in poetry that consists of ten syllables with stress every other syllable.

Lyric poem

A short poem, often with songlike qualities, that expresses the writer's emotion.

Meter

The systematic arrangement of words involving stressed and unstressed syllables.

Mood

The general atmosphere or emotional complexion.

Narrative poem

A longer form of poetry that tells an entire story with a beginning, middle and end.

Onomatopoeia

A figure of speech where the word sounds like the noise being described.

Parallelism

Where two or more elements of a sentence have the same grammatical structure.

Personification

A type of figurative language that gives human characteristics to non-human things.

Refrain

A line, phrase, or single word that is repeated periodically within the poem to build dramatic emphasis.

Repetition

Involves using the same word or phrase over and over again in writing or speech.

Rhyme

The repetition of syllables, especially at the end of verse lines.

Rhyme scheme

The pattern of lines that rhyme with other lines in a poem or stanza.

Rhythm

The use of stressed and unstressed syllables to create a beat.

Soliloquy

When a character in a dramatic work speaks directly to the audience alone.

Sonnet

A lyric poem usually with 14 lines of iambic pentameter and a set rhyme scheme.

Speaker

The author's persona or perspective.

Stanza

A division of a poem consisting of two or more lines arranged together.

Terza rima

A rhyme scheme that uses tercets, or 3-line stanzas and a pattern of interlocking end rhymes.

Tone

The mood implied by an author's word choice and the way the text makes a reader feel.