Poetic Devices

Tone

The emotional spin or attitude a poet puts on their words.

Octave

An 8-line stanza.

Villanelle

A 19-line poetic form made up of five tercets and a quatrain, with a specific rhyme and repetition pattern.

Ars Poetica

A poem that explains or reflects on the art of poetry and how it should be written.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Caesura

A pause or break in the middle of a line.

Meter

The rhythmic structure or measure of a line of verse.

Narrative Poem

A poem that tells a story.

Foot

A unit of measure in a metrical line.

Haiku

A Japanese poetic form with three lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables.

Image

A mental picture or sensory impression.

Couplet

A pair of rhymed lines.

Epitaph

A poem in memory of someone who has died.

Attitude (Theme/Tone)

The poet’s feeling or viewpoint toward the subject.

Stanza

A grouped set of lines in a poem, like a paragraph in prose.

Quatrain

A stanza or poem of four lines.

Sensory Language

Language that appeals to the five senses.

Slant Rhyme

Also called approximate rhyme; similar but not identical sounds.

Prosody

The study of rhythm, stress, and intonation in poetry.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words.

Cadence

The natural rise and fall of the voice in reading or speaking.

Iambic Pentameter

A line of verse with five iambs (unstressed-stressed syllables).

Free Verse

Poetry without regular meter or rhyme.

Metonymy

A figure of speech where something is referred to by something closely related to it (e.g., "The White House" for the president).

Epigram

A short, witty, and often satirical poem.

Cinquain

A five-line stanza.

Anaphora

The repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words.

Denotation

The literal dictionary definition of a word.

Enjambment

When a sentence or phrase runs over from one line to the next without a pause.

Figurative Language

Language using similes, metaphors, and other figures of speech.

Found Poem

A poem composed by taking words, phrases, or passages from other sources and re-framing them as poetry.

Voice

The distinct personality or style of the poem's speaker (not necessarily the poet).

Stichic

Poetry written in continuous lines rather than stanzas.

Onomatopoeia

A word that imitates a sound (e.g., buzz, sizzle).

Simile

A comparison using “like” or “as.”

Tercet

A stanza of three lines.

Theme

The central idea, message, or insight of a poem.

Emblematic Verse

A poem in which the words form a visual image that reflects the poem’s content (also called concrete poetry).

Epic

A long narrative poem that tells the story of a hero and reflects cultural values (e.g., The Odyssey).

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part stands for the whole (e.g., “wheels” for “car”).

Sonnet

A 14-line poem usually in iambic pentameter, often dealing with love or philosophical ideas.

Oxymoron

A phrase combining contradictory or opposite ideas (e.g., “bittersweet”).

Elegy

A reflective poem that mourns the loss of someone or something.

Scansion

The analysis of a poem’s meter through marking stressed/unstressed syllables and feet.