Poetry Terms

Petrachan Sonnet (Italian Sonnet)

14 line poem with an octave rhyming abbaabba and a sestet rhyming cdecde (avoides couplets).

Spencerian Sonnet

14 line poem with three quatrains and one couplet. The quatrains are joined through linking rhymes abab bcbc cdcd ee

Shakespearian Sonnet

14 line poem, three quatrains, one couplet. abab cdcd efef gg

Kenning

Old Germanic figurative compound phrase that replaces a single word. ex. Whale road is the sea

Anaphora

Repeating word/phrase at the beginning of two or more sentences/lines

Epanalepsis

Repetition or a word or phrase at the end of a sentence/line that was used at the beginning. “an eye for an eye”

Enjambment

The continuation of the sense and grammatical construction of a line to the next.

End-Stopping-Lines

Lines in which both sense and grammatical construction reach an end

Asyndeton

Elements customarily joined by conjunctions are presented without conjunctions

Conceit

elaborate and often unusual extended comparison of two dissimilar things to create deeper meaning.

Petrarchan Conceit

a hyperbolic comparison most often made by a suffering lover of his beautiful mistress to some physical object

Polysyndeton

The use of more conjunctions to link elements than normal

Assonance

Similar vowel sounds within stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds

Consonance

Final stressed consonants agree but preceding vowel sounds different.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed, regular verse. Often iambic pentameter

Foot

Unit of rythym in a verse - Dactyl, Iamb, Trochee

Dactyl

^ - - accented, unaccented, unaccented. Mannnikin, Poetry

Free Verse

Lacks rhyme and meter

Heroic Couplet

Iamic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs

Hexameter

A line of six feet

Trimeter

A line of three feet

Tetrameter

A line of four feet

Pentameter

a line of five feet, the staple measure

Iamb

• ^ Unaccented, accented. Untamed, above

Trochee

^ - , accented, unaccented. Happy, garden, highway

Internal Rhyme

Rhyme that occurs before the last syllables in a line.

Rhyme Royal

Seven line iambic pentameter stanza - ababbcc

Terza Rima

Three line stanza, aba bb cdc ded…

Villanelle

Nineteen line form that repeats two lines according to a set pattern. aba aba aba aba aba abaa