Poetry Terms List Comp 2

Alliteration

The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close proximity.

Example: pensive poets, nattering nabobs of negativism.

Allusion

Unacknowledged reference and quotations that authors assume their readers will recognize.

Example: 'This place is like the Garden of Eden.'

Anaphora

Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of a line throughout a work or the section of a work.

Example: 'I have a dream' speech by Martin Luther King Jr.

Apostrophe

Speaker in a poem addresses a person not present or an animal, inanimate object, or concept as though it is a person.

Example: Wordsworth- - "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England has need of thee"

Assonance

The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close proximity.

Example: deep green sea.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Example: Shakespeare's plays.

Caesura

A short but definite pause used for effect within a line of poetry. Carpe diem poetry: "seize the day." Poetry concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present.

Example: Herrick's "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time"

Chiasmus (antimetabole)

a "crossing" or reversal of two elements; antimetabole, a form of Chiasmus, is the reversal of the same words in a grammatical structure.

Example: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

Example: You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

Consonance

Is the counterpart of assonance; the partial or total identity of consonants in words whose main vowels differ.

Example: shadow meadow; pressed, passed; sipped, supped. Owen uses this "impure rhyme" to convey the anguish of war and death.

Couplet

Two successive rhyming lines. Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet.

Example: 'So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.'

End-stopped line

A line ending in a full pause, usually indicated with a period or semicolon.

Example: William Shakespeare's, Sonnet 18.

Enjambment (or enjambement)

A line having no end punctuation but running over to the next line.

Example: Something like William Shakespeare's Macbeth poem.

Foot

A measured combination of heavy and light stresses. The numbers of feet are given below.

Example: monometer (1 foot), dimeter (2 feet), trimeter (3 feet), tetrameter (4 feet), pentameter (5 feet), hexameter (6 feet), heptameter or septenary (7 feet).

Hyperbole (overstatement) and Litotes (understatement)

Hyperbole is exaggeration for effect; litotes is understatement for effect, often used for irony.

Example: 'I've told you a million times!'

Iambic Pentameter: lamb (iambic)

An unstressed stressed foot. The most natural and common kind of meter in English; it elevates speech to poetry.

Example: shall I com-PARE thee TO a SUM-mer's DAY?

Metaphor

A comparison between two unlike things, this describes one thing as if it were something else. Does not use "like" or "as" for the comparison.

Example: 'Time is a thief.'

Meter

The number of feet within a line of traditional verse.

Example: iambic pentameter.

Paradox

A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true.

Example: 'I must be cruel to be kind.'

Personification

Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions.

Example: 'The wind whispered through the trees.'

Rhyme

The repetition of identical concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines.

Example: June- - moon.

Eye Rhyme

Words that seem to rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently.

Example: bear/fear, dough/cough/through/bough.

Slant Rhyme

A near rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels.

Example: Sun/noon, should/food, slim/ham.

Exact Rhyme

A perfect rhyme between two words.

Example: fair/bear, fumble/mumble.

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyme at the end of a line of poetry.

Example: ABAB

Scan (scansion) (and types of meter)

The process of marking beats in a poem to establish the prevailing metrical pattern. Prosody, the pronunciation of a song or poem, is necessary for scansion.

Example: For the moon / never beams, / without bring / ing me dreams

Of the beau / tiful Ann/ abel Lee;

And the stars / never rise, / but I feel / the bright eyes

Of the beau / tiful Ann / abel Lee;

Anapest

Unstressed, unstressed, stressed.

Example: 'Twas the NIGHT before CHRISTmas, and ALL through the HOUSE/ Not a CREAture was STIRing, not EVen a MOUSE."

Dactyl (dactylic) stressed unstressed unstressed

This pattern is more common (as dactylic hexameter) in Latin poetry than in English poetry.

Example: GRAND go the YEARS in the CReScent aBOVe them/WORLDS scoop their ARCS/ and FIRMaments ROW (Emily Dickinson, "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers").

Iambic

Unstressed, stressed. A two-syllable foot with an unstressed then stressed syllable.

Example: That’s MY last DUchess PAINted ON the WALL.

Trochee (trochaic)

Stressed unstressed.

Example: "Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright"

Shakespearean Sonnet

A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, composed of three quatrains and a couplet rhyming.

Example: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

Simile

A direct comparison between two dissimilar things; uses "like" or "as" to state the terms of comparison.

Example: 'Her smile was as bright as the sun.'

Stanza

A group of poetic lines corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually repeating or systematic.

Example: paragraphs of a poem.

Syntax

Word order and sentence structure.

Example: 'Whose woods these are I think I now.'

Volta

The "turning" point of a Petrarchan sonnet, usually occurring between the octave and the sestet.

Example: Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun by William Shakespeare.