Poetry Terms 3rd Test

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couplet

a two-line stanza, usually with end-rhymes the same.

heroic couplet

two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit. See the following example from Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock:
But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

meter

the repetition of a rhythmic unit in a line of poetry. The [term] of a poem emphasizes the musical quality of the language and often relates directly to the subject matter of the poem. Each unit of [term] is known as a foot.

octave

an eight-line stanza. Most commonly, [term] refers to the first division of a Petrarchan/Italian sonnet.

Petrarchan sonnet/Italian sonnet

a sonnet divided into two sections: the octave, which follows rhyme scheme ABBAABBA and usually presents a question or issue; and the sestet, which follows rhyme scheme CDCDCD or CDECDE and offers a solution to the question.

poetic foot

a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it. The most common types of feet are as follows:
Iambic u /
Trochaic / u
Anapestic u u /
Dactylic / uu
Pyrrhic u u
Spondaic / /
The following poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge illustrates all of these feet except the pyrrhic foot:
Trochee trips from long to short.
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
lambics march from short to long;
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

quatrain

a four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes.

rhyme

close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse. For a true [term], the vowels in the accented syllables must be preceded by different consonants, such as "fan" and "ran."

rhythm

the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. The presence of [term]ic patterns lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response to the listener or reader.

scansion

a system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the type(s) of feet per line. Following are the most common types of meter:
Monometer one foot per line
Dimeter two feet per line
Trimeter three feet per line
Tetrameter four feet per line
Pentameter five feet per line
Hexameter six feet per line
Septameter seven feet per line
Octameter eight feet per line
Using these terms, then, a line consisting of five iambic feet is called "iambic pentameter," while a line consisting of four anapestic feet is called "anapestic tetrameter."
In order to determine the meter of a poem, the lines are "scanned," or marked to indicate the stressed and unstressed syllables which are then divided into feet. The following line has been scanned:
u / u / u / u / u /
And still she slept an az ure-lid ded sleep

sestet

a six-line stanza. Most commonly, [term] refers to the second division of a Petrarchan/Italian sonnet

Shakespearean sonnet/English sonnet

made popular by William Shakespeare in Elizabethan England, this sonnet follows rhyme scheme ABAB/CDCD/EFEF/GG, with three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet, entirely written in iambic pentameter. The quatrains usually present problems or situations, with the couplet presenting an answer or solution. The change in thought between the quatrains and the couplet is called the volta, or turn.

sonnet

normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem.

structure

the arrangement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical division of a work. The most common units of [term] in a poem are the line and stanza.

theme

the main thought expressed by a work. In poetry, it is the abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person, action, and image in the work.