Poetry Terms - SPRING 26

Agency

we use this term to refer to the subject of a sentence, as in who is the actor?, and also for noting how the actor in the poem might shift from one actor to another. such changes require our attention. by tracing this, we can “tell who is ruling” the poem as it moves from beginning to end.

Lyrical Situation

this phrase refers to the emotional story of the poem and how that changes throughout the poem. when we consider this, we are mostly concerned with the emotional urgency and stakes in the poem and how they are represented and developed. we examine this in conjunction with the dramatic situation.

Images

nouns or phrases that refer to something that can be represented graphically, and are used to describe or illustrate something abstract about experienced life; often used to create representation between 1) something understandable by way of the five senses and 2) something less concrete, often a feeling tied to common human experience.

Person

we use various pronouns to indicate this, particularly as we note the speaker of the poem and if/when this changes or not; such changes require our attention.

Dramatic Situation

this phrase refers to the very literal circumstances of the poem and how that changes throughout the poem. when we consider this, we are mostly concerned with “who is doing what when and where?” and how that shifts across the poem. we examine this in conjunction with the lyrical situation.

Poignancy

the relation between the dramatic situation of the poem and the lyrical situation of the poem that summons up a familiarity/connection between the reader and the poem; another way of saying the poem is “moving”. This is often traced as the poem develops and develops as the dramatic and the lyrical situations develop together

Syntax

the word we use for referring to sentences in poetry and how poets structure and locate sentences and the ways the sentences play with one another and support the poem. variations require our attention.

Tense

This term deals with temporal movement in a poem, as in how the poem moves in time and if/where it switches in the poem from past to present to future. such changes require our attention.

Spatiality

this is the term we use for talking about how the activity in the poem moves from one location to another. It can be directional, as in moving up to down, left to right, or even from room to room, or place to place, etc.

Volta

a significant moment in the poem signaling a change in the stability of the poem to an instability; this moment situates the poem so that it naturally arrives at the new stability that exists at the end of the poem.

Urgency

the emotional source of the poem, the need to tell the experience that leads to the poem, the compelling sense of the poem’s need to be told

Speaker

we use this term to describe who tells the poem/the perspective of the poem; we use this term to identify the point of view of the person telling the poem as one way to avoid naming the author as the person telling the poem

Wisdom

the mind in argument/conversation with itself, leaving a poem

some new knowledge is gained/understood.

Change in Discourse

sometimes a poem might begin as a narrative and turn toward an inner understanding; might begin as a story and turn toward direct address; might begin as a real situation and turn toward a dream, etc. This term is what we call that shift.

Metaphor

an image-based statement in two parts that claims two things that do not remotely appear to be alike are, in fact, the same thing. One part is based on image and the senses, the other part on something more abstract, often.

Pattern

Poems are based on syntax and careful use of language, sound, structures, etc. This term refers to the central organizing structure of a poem—it’s what builds poems and what we look for throughout a poem, particularly when it changes.

Lyrical Credibility

This term addresses the idea that the way a poem is told—its details, its lyrical and dramatic movements, specificity, and the size of the world in the poem is believeable as having happened the way the speaker tells it.

Temporality

This term addresses the way a poem moves across time—does it take place in a day, 64 years, a week, five minutes, for examples.

Typicality

This term has to do with the familiarity a poem has to its readers—a way of saying the nature of the situation, even if not the specifics, is enough like what happens in any life to be familiar to readers.

Persona

This is the term for when a speaker of a poem is clearly not anybody “like” the writer. For example, an animal or an inanimate object has a human voice. It’s when a poet adopts a mask to write a poem.