Poetry annotating terms

Alliteration

• Repetition of the same sounds or kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables.

ex. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes..."The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, / The furrow followed free..."

any tongue twister

Assonance

• the repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words, creating an internal rhyming pattern within a phrase or line of poetry.

ex. “asleep under a tree” “each evening” “Go slow over the road”

Consonance

• repetition of the same consonant sound in nearby words. Unlike alliteration, which only occurs at the beginning of words, consonance can happen anywhere—at the end, in the middle, or throughout words.

ex. "The black cat snacked on a cracker.",

"He strood through the street at night."

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

End rhyme

• Most common form of rhyme in poetry, rhyme comes at the end of a line.

ex. It runs through the reeds, away it proceeds.

Enjambment

• when a sentence or thought carries over from one line of poetry into the next without any punctuation (like a period, comma, or dash) at the end of the line.

Instead of pausing at the line break, the reader is forced to keep reading into the next line to finish the thought.

ex. I walked slowly down the quiet

street, where autumn leaves fell around

my feet.

Hyperbole

• An exxageration

ex. He ate the entire house

Iambic parameter

A 10-syllable line of poetry following a da-DUM heartbeat rhythm (5 beats: unstressed / stressed).

ex. Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

Imagery

• An appeal to the five senses to describe something

ex. The dry leaves crunching beneath our boots sounded like crackling paper.", the brown fluffy dog jumped over the fence.

Internal rhyme

• A word withen a line rhymes with the word at the end of that line.

ex. I silently laugh at my own cenotaph.

Metaphor

• A comparison between two unlike things without using like or as.

ex. Time is money, she was a beast, life is a rollercoaster.

Meter

• The rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry (the poem's "beat").

ex. "I WAN-dered LONE-ly AS a CLOUD", "ONCE up-ON a MID-night DREA-ry..."

Onomatopoeia

• The use of a word that resembles the sound it describes

ex. Boom, pow, slam, swish, whoosh

Personifiction

• Gives inanimate objects human characteristics

ex. The wind whispered through the trees, the sunlight danced between the curtains,. My alarm screamed at me.

Quatrain

• a four line stanza in a poem

repetiton

• repeating a word, phrase, or line for emphasis or order. (ideas count too if they are continously repeated)

Simile

• a comaprison between two things using like or as.

ex. She runs like the wind, he is as blind as a bat.

Stanza

• A grouping of lines set off by spaces in a poem, similar to a paragraph.

Verse

• Poetic lines composed in a measurble rhythymic pattern.