Poetry

Alliteration

the repetition of beginning consonant sounds.

Allusion

a reference to a mythological. literary. or a historical person. place or thing

Apostrophe

a form of personification in which the absent or dead are spoken to as if present and the inanimate \n as if animate.

Assonance

the repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words.

Blank Verse

iambic pentameter unrhymed.

Consonance

the repetition of a consonant sound with a series of words to produce a harmonious effect.

Diction

word choice. Is the poet using formal or informal language? Does the poetry hinge on slang or a dialect? If so, what is the purpose?

Enjambment

the running-on of one line of poetry into another.

Free Verse

verse free of meter and, generally, rime. Depends on rhythmical units, repetition, and parallelism.

Hyperbole

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

Iambic Pentameter

a line of ten syllables using the pattern of unstressed/stressed.

Imagery

the use of words to represent things, actions, or ideas by sensory description.

Verbal irony

is the result of a statement saying one thing while meaning the opposite. Its purpose is usually to criticize.

Situational irony

occurs when a situation turns out differently from what one would normally expect, though often the twist is oddly appropriate.

Dramatic irony

occurs when a character says or does something that has more or different meanings from what he thinks it means, though the audience and/or other characters do understand the full ramifications of the speech or action.

Metaphor

an implied comparison.

Onomatopoeia

the use of words in which the sounds seem to resemble the sounds they describe.

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.

Paradox

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

Personification

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

Rhyme

similarity of sounds, usually at the end of lines.

Perfect rhyme

rhyme: identical sounds (dead/red)

Slant rhyme (near, off)

rhyme: sounds that are close but not identical (down/then)

Eye rhyme

rhyme: words that look as if they sound alike (move/love)

Rhyme scheme

the rhyming pattern found in a poem

Sonnet

a fixed form of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter

English (Shakespearean) sonnet

Sonnet: four-part structure consisting of three quatrains and a couplet (determined by rime scheme)

Simile

a comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of the words like, as, or than.

Symbolism

the use of one object which stands for something else.

Understatement

the opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is.