Literary and Poetic Terminology 36-50

Persona

The entity that is assumed to be speaking/experiencing the “world” of a poem.

Personification

Uses human traits to describe non-human things

Prose Poem

A poem printing as prose: with lines wrapping at the right margin rather than being divided through predetermined line breaks

Quatrain

A stanza of four lines or other four-line unit within a larger form, such as sonnet

Refrain

One or more identical or deliberately similar lines repeated throughout a poem

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of end rhymes in a poem or stanza usually represented by a letter to each word-sound

Satire

To make fun of some aspect of human nature or society - usually through exaggeration, ridicule, or irony

Simile

Draws resemblance between two things (using like or as)

Subtext

The deeper meaning lying beneath dialogue, actions, or narrative choices

Symbolism

To represent abstract concepts and ideas in their work

Sonnet

A fourteen-line poem usually written in iambic pentameter

Synesthesia

Description of one kind of sense experience in relation to another, such as attribution of color to sounds

Tercet

A three line stanza in a poem

Theme

The main idea or meaning the writer explores in their piece

Zoomorphism

When you take animal traits and assign them to anything that’s not an animal