Poetry Terms Study Guide

Accent

The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word. In the word poetry, the accent (or stress) falls on the first syllable.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words. Some famous examples of alliteration are tongue twisters such as “Betty Botta bought some butter” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”.

Antithesis

A figure of speech in which words and phrases with opposite meanings are balanced against each other. An example of antithesis is “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” (Alexander Pope) This placing can also be termed juxtaposition (the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect).

Apostrophe

Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea. The poem’s God’s World by Edna St. Vincent Millay begins withs an apostrophe: “World, I cannot hold thee close enough!/Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that role and rise!”

Assonance

The repetition or a pattern of similar sounds, especially vowel sounds, as in the toungue twister “Moses supposes his toeses are roses.”

Ballad

A poem that tells the story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an example of a ballad.

Blank verse

Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank verse.

Caesura

A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. There is a caesura right after the question mark in the first line of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

Consonance

The repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words, as in Jost and past or confess and dismiss.

Couplet

In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete though. Shakespearean sonnets usually end in a couplet.

Dactyl

A metrical foot of three syllables, one long (or stressed) followed by two short (or unstressed), as in happily The dactyl is the reverse of the anapest.

Elegy

A poem that laments the death of a person, or one that is simply sad and thoughtful. An example of this type of poem is Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

End-stopped line

A line that expresses a complete thought.

Enjambment

The continuation of a complete idea ( a sentence or clause) from one line or couplet of a poem to the next line or couplet without a pause. An example of enjambment can be found in the first line of Joyce Kilmer’s poem Trees: “I think that I shall never see/ A poem as lovely as a tree.” Enjambment comes from the French word for “to straddle.”

Envoy, or Envoi

The shorter final stanza of a poem, as in a ballad.

Epic

A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure. Two of the most famous epic poems are the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, which tell about the Trojan War and the adventures of Odysseus on his voyage home after the war.

Foot

Two or more syllables that goether make up the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem. For example, an iamb is a foot that has two syllables, one unstressed followed by one stressed. An anapest has three syllables, two unstressed followed by one-stressed.

Free verse (also vers libre)

Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set meter.

Haiku

A Japenese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Haiku often reflect on some aspect of nature.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is used for emphasis. Many everyday expressions are examples of hyperbole: tons of money, waiting for ages, a flood of tears, etc. Hyperbole is the opposite of litotes.

Iamb

A metrical foot of two syllables, one short (or unstressed) and one long (or stressed). There are four iambs in the line “Come live/with me/and be/ my love,” from a poem by Christopher Marlowe. (The stressed syllables are in bold.) The iamb is the reverse of the trochee.

Iambic pentameter

A type of meter in poetry, in which there are five iambs to a line. (The prefix penta- means “five”. Meter refers to rhythmic units. In a line of iambic pentameter, there are five rhythmic units thats are iambs.) Shakespeare’s plays were written mostly in iambic pentameter. An example of an iambic pentameter line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is “But soft!/ What light/ through yon/der win/dow breaks?”

Imagery

The images of any of our senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) produced in the mind by descriptive language. These images are often being compared with something else.

Litotes

A figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating its opposite. Some examples of litotes: no small victory, not a bad idea, not unhappy. Litotes, which is a form of understatement, is the opposite of hyperbole.

Lyric

A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. A lyric poem may resemble a song in for or style.

Metaphor

A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected. Some examples of metaphors: the world’s a stage, he was a lion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles.

Meter

The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of accented (or stressed) syllables.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. For example, in the expression, The pen is mightier than the sword, the word pen is used for “the written word,” and sword is used for “military power.”

Narrative

Telling a story. Ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative poems.

Neologism

A newly coined word or expression, usually by poets or writers to draw attention to the meaning they are conveying.

Ode

A lyric poem that is serious and a thoughtful in tone and has a very precise, formal structure. John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a famous example of this type of poem.

Onomatopoeia

A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, and tick-tock. Another example of onomatopoeia is found in this line form Tennyson’s Come Down, O Maid: “The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/ And murmuring of innumerable bees.” The repeated “m/n” sounds reinforce the idea of “murmuring” by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer day.

Paradox

Two apparently contradictory ideas placed together which makes sense when examined closely; for example, the child is father of the man (William Wordsworth). If the contradiction is expressed in words in close proximity, it is called an oxymoron.

Personification

A figure of speech in which nonhuman things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: the sky is crying, dead leaves danced in the wind, blind justice.

Quatrain

A stanza or a poem of four lines.

Refrain

A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza.

Rhyme

The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the ned of two or more words. When the rhyme occurs in a final stressed syllable, it is said to be masculine: cat/hat, behave/shave, observe/deserve. When the rhyme ends with one or more unstressed syllables, it is said to be feminine: vacation/sensation, reliable/viable. The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for each final found. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second, and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another.

Simile

A figure of speech in which two things are compared using the word “like” or “as”. An example of a simile using like occurs in Langston Hughes’s poem Harlem: “what happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a raison in the sun?”

Sonnet

A lyric poem that is 14 lines long. Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets are divided into two quatrains and a six-line “sestet,” with the rhyme scheme abba abba cdecde (or cdcdcd). English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are composed of three quatrains and a final couplet, with a rhyme scheme or abab cdcd efef gg. English sonnets are written generally in iambic pentameter.

Stanza

two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme.

Stress

The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. Stressed syllables usually stand out. because they have long, rather than short, vowels, or because they have a different pitch or are louder than other syllables.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part is used to designate the whole of the whole is used to designate a part. For example, the phrase “all hands on deck” means “all men on deck,” not just their hands. The reverse situation, which the whole is used for a part, occurs in the sentence “The U.S. beat Russia in the final game,” where the U.S. and Russia stand for “the U.S. team” and “the Russian team,” respectively.

Trope

A figure of speech, such as metaphor or metonymy, in which words are not used in their literal (or actual) sense but in a figurative (or imaginative) sense.

Verse

A single metrical line of poetry, or poetry in general (as opposed to prose).

Versification

The system of rhyme and meter in poetry.