Poetry Flashcards

May God strike me down

Lyric Poetry

Comparatively short,non-narrative poem in which a speaker presents a state of mind or an emotional state.
Retains some elements of song: i.e. rhythm
Often, but not always, written in 1st person

Elegy

a formal lament for the death of a particular person/passing of earlier times

Ode

formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. - long poem with a serious subject, written in an elevated style

Sonnet

A fixed-verse 14-line poem that tends to follow a set rhyme scheme and meter. ____ propose a problem in their opening section and resolve it later. The moment in the sonnet where the poem shifts into resolution is called the volta, or “turn.” These poems often address themes like love, nature, religion, morality, and politics. Means, “little song”

Pastoral Poetry

A literary work dealing with the lives of shepherds or rural life in general & drawing a contrast between simple life and city life.

Narrative Poem

a form of poetry that is used to tell a story. The poet combines elements of storytelling—like plot, setting, and characters—with elements of poetry, such as form, meter, rhyme, and poetic devices.

Epic Poem

large-scale both in length and topic. Elevated style of language

Ballads

storytelling songs, usually follows a form of rhymed (abcb) quatrains alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. Folk (or traditional) ballads are anonymous and recount tragic, comic, or heroic stories with emphasis on a central dramatic event. These are literary ballads- not meant for singing

Dramatic Poem

poem that employs a dramatic form or some elements of dramatic techniques to achieve poetic ends. no narration by author, characters speak directly. describes any verse written for the stage

Dramatic Monologue

a poem written as a speech made by a character at a critical moment.

denotation

literal word meaning

connotation

overtones and contextual meaning....i.e....corpse..means dead body, but in context can make one think of death or morbidity

euphony

the sound of words working together with meaning pleases the mind and ear.

• sound of letters without meaning (connotation & denotation) lacks a memorable effect

• sound of consonants and vowels contributes to effect of poetry

cacophony

opposite of euphony, harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. “explosive consonants,”can create chaos, dark emotions, violence, mystery

alliteration

repetition of the same consonant sounds at the beginning of successive words

assonance

The repetition at close intervals of vowel sounds

consonance

near rhyme, consists of identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds (anywhere in the word, typically the end)

rhyme

repetition of similar sounds in two or more words, is particularly common in many types of poetry, especially at the ends of lines, and is a requirement in formal verse.

masculine rhyme

rhyming single-syllable words or end-syllables rhyming

feminine rhyme

is an unstressed two syllable rhyme followed by another unstressed syllable rhyme, used between the stressed rhyme to create a rhythm - also a double rhyme.

ex: in the rhyming words fashion and passion the first syllables are stressed rhyming while –‘sion’ sound similar and are unstressed

English/Shakespearean Sonnet

14-line poem with 3 quatrains and a couplet

Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet

14-line poem with an octave and a sestet

Quatrain

a four-line stanza

Sestet

six-line stanza

octave

eight-line stanza

sapphic

verse form composed of quatrains with specified syllables following a prescribed metrical pattern

sestina

poetry consisting of 36 lines of any length divided into six sestets and a 3-line concluding stanza

rhythm

recurrence of stresses and pauses in a poem

Stress/Accent

greater force given to one syllable over another.

Cadence

refers to measured, rhythmical movement in either poetry or prose

meter

stresses that occur at fixed intervals

Poetic Foot

a group of syllables in verse usually consists of 1 accented and 1 or 2-3 unaccented syllables associated with it.

iamb/iambic

unstressed syllable followed by stressed. U/S: most common meter, capture natural rhythms

anapestic

U U /S: a metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable... fast/gallop, slowed down with iambic feet

trochaic

S / U: Stressed Unstressed...songs, chants, magic spells

dactylic

S/U U, a foot with one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables

rising meters

iambic and anapestic

falling meters

trochaic and dactylic

pyrrhic

U U, Two Unstressed

Spondaic

S S Two Stressed

Blank Verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter. Ex: most of Shakespeare’s plays, Paradise Lost.

free verse

Poetry organized by stanza, not written in verse...nonconformity to meter, rhyme, stanza

end-stop

A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break—such as a dash or closing parenthesis—or with punctuation such as a colon, a semicolon, or a period. A line is considered ______ too, if it contains a complete phrase

Enjambment

The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped

Couplet

Two Successive lines, usually same meter, linked by rhyme

Heroic Couplet

Two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines, rhymed aa, bb, cc, thought is usually completed in the 2-line unit