Reading and Writing Poetry Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards generated from the lecture transcript covering poetry fundamentals, poetic forms, elements, meters, rhyming schemes, and nonconventional forms.

Poetry

Applied to the many forms in which human beings have given rhythmic expression to their intense perceptions of the world, themselves, and relation of the two; often reserved for verse of high merit.

Verse

A metrical composition, usually one with a regular rhyme and rhythm that does not indicate quality; refers to either a metrical line as a basic unit of poetry or any form of metrical composition.

Theme

The central idea, the thesis, the message a story conveys, or a generalization or an abstraction from it.

Tone

Refers to the intellectual and emotional attitudes of the poet towards his or her intended audience.

Mood

Refers to the emotional and intellectual attitudes of the author towards his or her subject matter in a given literary work.

Atmosphere

The dominant emotional aura or general feeling created in the readers or audience by a work at any given point.

Persona

The speaking voice of the poem, originally referring to the mask worn by a Greek actor when performing a role in a classical tragedy or comedy.

Vocabulario de la Lengua tagala

An 18th-century compendium (1754) by Juan de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlucar containing riddles, proverbs, short poetic forms, and sixteen species of Tagalog folk songs.

Tanaga

An indigenous Tagalog fixed poetic form composed of four heptasyllabic lines (7 syllables each) made of two couplets with an aabb rhyme scheme, traditionally without a title.

Diona

An indigenous Tagalog fixed poetic form composed of three octosyllabic lines (8 syllables each) with monorhyme; labeled as the Pinoy haiku and used as a courting or wedding song.

Haiku

A traditional Japanese fixed poetic form composed of three unrhymed lines comprising 17 syllables (5-7-5), containing a kireji and a kigo, traditionally focused on nature.

Kireji

A cutting word in a Japanese haiku, usually located at the end of one of the poem's three sections.

Kigo

A word in a Japanese haiku that indicates the season of the year or time of the year.

Tanka

A Japanese fixed poetic form composed of 31 syllables across five unrhymed lines (5-7-5-7-7), consisting of an upper phrase image and a lower phrase reflection.

Renga

A popular Japanese collaborative poetry following alternating 3 and 2 lines containing 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, ranging from 12 stanzas to 1,000 stanzas.

Narrative Poetry

Poetry that intends to tell a story through verses, such as a ballad, metrical tale, metrical romance, or epic.

Dramatic Poetry

Drama written in verse meant to be spoken or chanted, or modern poems like dramatic monologues and soliloquies that exploit dramatic situations.

Lyrical Poetry

Poetry that conveys extremely personal emotions, feelings, or nostalgic sentiments of the persona, typically expressed from a first-person perspective in a melodious manner.

Sonnet

A fixed lyrical form composed of 14 lines that follow a set pattern or rhyme scheme, typically focusing on love.

Italian / Petrarchan Sonnet

A sonnet distinguished by an octave (abbaabba) stating a problem and a sestet (cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce) resolving it, usually written in iambic hexameters.

English / Shakespearean Sonnet

A sonnet divided into three quatrains (abab cdcd efef) and a concluding couplet (gg) expressing the central theme, typically written in iambic pentameters.

Ode

A lyrical form of poetry exalted in tone and subject matter, characterized by solemnity, dignity, and emotional intensity, meant to elevate its subject.

Elegy

A lyrical form of poetry that laments the demise of a person or contemplates death, without following a required metrical form or rhyme scheme.

Villanelle

A fixed lyrical form composed of 19 lines (5 tercets and 1 quatrain) with an aba aba aba aba aba abaa rhyme scheme and specific repeating lines.

Rhyme

The repetitive occurrence of identical or similar sounding words usually found at the end of lines in poems or songs.

End Rhyme

Rhyming that occurs between words at the end of lines.

Internal Rhyme

Rhyming that occurs after the beginning but before the end of each line, or within a line between a middle word and its end word.

Leonine Rhyme

A special kind of internal rhyming between the last stressed syllable before the caesura and the last stressed syllable of the line.

Beginning Rhyme

Rhyming that occurs in the first syllable or first few syllables of several lines.

Slant Rhyme

Also known as imperfect, near, oblique, off-rhyme, or pararhyme; occurs when assonance or consonance are deployed instead of true rhyme.

Eye Rhyme

Also known as visual or printer's rhyme; occurs when words appear to rhyme on the printed page due to similar terminal letters, but do not sound the same when read aloud.

Rhyme Scheme

The deliberate arrangement of terminal words or syllables of certain stanzas or entire poems to form a set pattern.

Alternate Rhyme

Also known as open rhyme or cross rhyming; consists of the repeated alternation of two different rhymes in a series diagrammed as abab.

Enclosed Rhyme

A rhyme scheme diagrammed as abba.

Chain Rhyme

Also known as interlocking rhyme or chain verse; a set pattern seen in the Spenserian sonnet with the scheme abab bcbc cdcd dede ff.

Monorhyme

A rhyme scheme in which all the lines of the poem have an identical rhyme.

Couplet

A pair of lines in poetry that usually rhyme (aa).

Triplet

A tercet in which all three lines follow the same rhyme pattern (aaa).

Rhythm

The variation or alternation of strong and weak (stressed and unstressed) syllables in the flow of speech, derived from the Greek word rhythmos.

Meter

The regular recurrence or repetition of rhythmic patterns or the rhythm established by consistent occurrence of similar units of sound.

Quantitative Meter

Classical meter in which the rhythm is produced by recurring patterns of long and short syllables.

Accentual Meter

Also known as sprung rhythm; meter established by a strongly stressed syllable regardless of the number of unstressed syllables surrounding it.

Syllabic Meter

Meter in which the rhythmic pattern is created by a fixed number of syllables in a line regardless of accent placement.

Accentual-Syllabic Meter

Meter formed both by a fixed or nearly fixed number of accents and syllables per line.

Foot

The basic rhythmic unit within a line of poetry.

Iamb

A metrical unit containing an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.

Trochee

A metrical unit consisting of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable.

Anapest

A metrical unit comprising three syllables: two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable.

Dactyl

A metrical unit made up of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables.

Spondee

A metrical unit consisting of two consecutively accented or stressed syllables.

Pyrrhus

A metrical unit composed of two unaccented or unstressed syllables.

Free Verse

A poetry form derived from French vers libre that releases poetry from strict rhythm and rhyme, utilizing the rise and fall of the entire poem as its rhythmic unit.

Enjambment

The refusal to follow usual rules of lineation, where ideas run over from one line to the next without a major pause or punctuation.

Lineation

The length of poetic lines in relation to line breaks, which determines the overall visual silhouette or shape of a poem.

Typography

The style, arrangement, general character, or visual appearance of printed letters and matter on a page.

Prose Poetry

A hybrid literary form written in sentences and paragraphs rather than verse, while retaining poetic qualities like rhythm, figures of speech, tone, and mood.

Concrete Poetry

Poetry that deploys visual and typographical effects, such as the shape of words or symbols on the page, also known as shaped verse or pattern poetry.

Performance Poetry

A postmodern hybrid genre combining literary and dramatic elements (spoken word/poetry slam) centered on a direct, face-to-face encounter with an audience.

Caesura

A natural pause, break, or stop of one beat within a line of verse.