Poetry Terms

Alliteration

Repetition of the words with the same first consonant sound that occur close together in a series.

Line

A unit of language into which a poem is divided

Stanza

A division of 4 or more lines.
Can sometimes have a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme.

Rhyme

Repetition of similar sounding words occurring at the end of lines in a poem.

Rhythm

Literary device that demonstrates the long and short patterns through stressed and unstressed syllables.
Gives writing its flow.
Patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

assonance

Repetition of the same vowel sound, but start with different consonant sounds

Consonance

Repetition of sounds produced by consonants within a sentence of phrase.

Enjambment

To move over from one line to another without a terminating punctuation mark.
The running on from line to line without a major pause or syntactical break

Refrain

Verse, set of line, or group of lines that appears throughout the poem.
Repetition may contain minor variations as the poem or theme progresses.

Caesura

A rhythmic pause in a poetic line. Can occur in beginning, middle, or end. Can be with punctuation, and sometimes it is without.

Apostrophe

When the speaker is directly addressing someone who is not present, who is dead, or an inanimate object.
Can be addressed and connected to personification of an object, theme, or idea.

Free Verse

Poetry that is free from limitations of regular meter, rhythm, fixed rhyme schemes.
Provides poet opportunity for poet to shape poem however they desire.
Does not mean it is devoid of other elements (such as meter, rhythm, rhyme, etc.)

Perspective

Readers see and experience the events and feelings about the characters through a certain point of view point of view, which is called a "perspective."
Perspective is the lens readers observe characters, events, and emotions

Speaker

The voice that speaks behind the scene.
Explains the events, describes the objects.
It is their words in the poem