AP Lit and Comp--Poetry

Poetry terms for the AP English Lit and Comp Exam

alliteration

the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginnings of words. Gnus never know pneumonia

allusion

a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work.

antithesis

a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, as in "Man proposes; God disposes." It is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness.

apostrophe

a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present.

assonance

the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. "A land laid waste with all its young men slain" repeats the same 'a' sound in "laid," "waste," and "slain."

ballad meter

a four-line stanza rhymed abcd with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four.

blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter. It is the meter of most of Shakespeare's plays, as well as that of Milton's "Paradise Lost."

cacophony

a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. It may be an unconscious flaw in the poet's music, resulting in harshness of sound or difficulty of articulation, or it may be used consciously for effect, as Browning and Eliot often use it.

caesura

a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause. For example, one would naturally pause after 'human' in the following line from Alexander Pope...

conceit

an ingenious and fanciful notion or conception, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things. It may be a brief metaphor, but it also may form the framework of an entire poem. A famous example occurs in John Donne's poem "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," in which he compares his soul and his wife's to legs of a mathematical compass.

consonance

the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words. The term usually refers to words in which the ending consonants are the same but the vowels that precede them are different. It is found in the following pairs of words... 'add and read,' 'bill and ball,' and 'born and burn.'

couplet

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

Sound Devices

Examples are rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. They are used for many reasons, including to create a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, to imitate another sound, or to reflect a meaning.

diction

the use of words in a literary work. It may be described as formal (the level of usage common in serious books and formal discourse), informal (the level of usage found in the relaxed but polite conversation of cultivated people), colloquial (the everyday usage of a group, possibly including terms and constructions accepted in that group but not universally acceptable), or slang (a group of newly coined words which are not acceptable for formal usage as yet).

didactic poem

a poem which is intended primarily to teach a lesson. Identifying one involves figuring out the author's purpose on the part of the critic or the reader. Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism is a good example.

dramatic poem

a poem which employs a this type of form or some element or elements of these techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends. This type of monologue is an example.

elegy

a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations upon death or another solemn theme. Examples include Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam; and Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

end-stopped

a line with a pause at the end because they end with a period, a comma, a colon, a semicolon, an exclamation point, or a question mark.

enjambment

the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next. Milton's Paradise Lost is notable for its use of this, as seen in the following lines...

. . . .Or if Sion hill

Delight thee more,

and Siloa's brook that flow'd

Fast by the oracle of God, . . . .

extended metaphor

an implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem. In "The Bait," John Donne compares a beautiful woman to fish bait and men to fish who want to be caught by the woman throughout the whole poem.

euphony

a style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate. Its opposite is cacophony. The following lines from John Keats' Endymion are this...

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

feminine rhyme

a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as "waken and forsaken" and "audition and rendition." It is sometimes called double rhyme.

figurative language

writing that uses figures of speech (as opposed to literal language or that which is actual or specifically denoted) such as metaphor, irony, and simile. It uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning.

free verse

poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. The poetry of Walt Whitman is perhaps the best-known example of this.

heroic couplet

two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit.

hyperbole

a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for either serious or comic effect.

imagery

the images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. It has several definitions, but the two that are paramount are the visual, auditory, or tactile images evoked by the words of a literary work or the images that figurative language evokes. When an AP question asks you to discuss it, you should look especially carefully at the sensory details and the metaphors and similes of a passage. Some diction is also it, but not all diction evokes sensory responses.

irony

the contrast between actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning. The verbal kind is a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning. It is likely to be confused with sarcasm, but it differs from sarcasm in that it is usually lighter, less harsh in its wording though in effect probably more cutting because of its indirectness. The ability to recognize it is one of the surer tests of intelligence and sophistication. Among the devices by which it is achieved are hyperbole and understatement.

internal rhyme

rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end.

lyric poem

any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings. Love ones are common, but these types of poems have also been written on subjects as different as religion and reading. Sonnets and odes are examples.

masculine rhyme

rhyme that falls on the stressed and concluding syllables of the rhyme-words. Examples include "keep and sleep," "glow and no," and "spell and impel."

metaphor

a figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like as, like, or than.

meter

the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry. It emphasizes the musical quality of the language and often relates directly to the subject matter of the poem. Each unit of it is known as a foot.

metonymy

a figure of speech which is characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself. In this way we commonly speak of the king as the crown, an object closely associated with kingship.

mixed metaphors

the mingling of one figure of speech with another immediately following with which the first is incongruous. Lloyd George is reported to have said, "I smell a rat. I see it floating in the air. I shall nip it in the bud."

narrative poem

a non-dramatic poem which tells a story, whether simple or complex, long or short. Epics and ballads are examples of these.

octave

an eight-line stanza. Most commonly, it refers to the first division of an Italian sonnet.

onomatopoeia

the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Examples are "buzz, hiss, or honk."

oxymoron

a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. This combination usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness. Examples include "wise fool, sad joy, and eloquent silence."

paradox

a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense.

parallelism

a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry. It is characteristic of Asian poetry, being notably present in the Psalms, and it seems to be the controlling principle of the poetry of Walt Whitman.

paraphrase

a restatement of an ideas in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form. It is often an amplification of the original for the purpose of clarity.

personification

a kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics.

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 type are as follows:

iambic

u /

trochaic

/ u

anapestic

u u /

dactylic

/ u u

pyrrhic

u u

spondaic

/ /

pun

a play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings. They can have serious as well as humorous uses. An example is Thomas Hood's..." They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.�

quatrain

a four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes.

refrain

a group of words forming a phrase or sentence and consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.

rhyme

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

rhyme royal

a seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets.

rhythm

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

sarcasm

a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it. Its purpose is to injure or to hurt.

satire

writing that seeks to arouse a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule. It is usually comedy that exposes errors with an eye to correct vice and folly. It is often found in the poetry of Alexander Pope.

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

heptameter

seven feet per line

octameter

eight feet per line

sestet

a six-line stanza. Most commonly, it refers to the second division of an Italian sonnet.

simile

a directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with "like, as, or than." It is easy to recognize because the comparison is explicit: my love is like a fever; my love is deeper than a well.

sonnet

normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrarchan one is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, one is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

stanza

usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.

strategy (or rhetorical strategy)

the management of language for a specific effect. This thing of a poem is the planned placing of elements to achieve an effect. The one of most love poems is deployed to convince the loved one to return to the speaker's love. By appealing to the loved one's sympathy, or by flattery, or by threat, the lover attempts to persuade the loved one to love in return.

structure

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

style

the mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author. Many elements contribute to it, and if a question calls for a discussion of it or of its techniques, you can discuss diction, syntax, figurative language, imagery, selection of detail, sound effects, and tone, using the ones that are appropriate.

symbol

something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else. For example, winter, darkness, and cold are real things, but in literature they are also likely to be used as these of death.

synecdoche

a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole. For example, we refer to "foot soldiers" for infantry and "field hands" for manual laborers who work in agriculture.

syntax

the ordering of words into patterns or sentences. If a poet shifts words from the usual word order, you know you are dealing with an older style of poetry or a poet who wants to shift emphasis onto a particular word.

tercet

a stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme.

terza rima

a three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc,etc. Dante's Divine Comedy is written in this.

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.

tone

the manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning. (Remember that the "voice" need not be that of the poet.) It is described by adjectives, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Often a single adjective will be enough, and this may change from stanza to stanza or even line to line. It is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, and style.

understatement

the opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is. For example, Macbeth, having been nearly hysterical after killing Duncan, tells Lenox, " 'Twas a rough night."

villanelle

a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain. It uses only two rhymes which are repeated as follows: aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa. Line 1 is repeated entirely to form lines 6, 12, and 18, and line 3 is repeated entirely to form lines 9, 15, and 19; thus, eight of the nineteen lines are refrain. Dylan Thomas's poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" is an example of a one.

eye rhyme

rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is half-rhyme or slant rhyme from the pronunciation. Examples include "watch" and "match," and "love" and "move."