Poetry Terms

Logic

The study of the formal principles of verbal reasoning; a mode of reasoning concerned with linear and evidentiary argumentation

Experience

Observation or participation in phenomena by a subject, and the use thereof as a basis for knowledge; Something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through

Syllogism

A mode of deductive reasoning that makes a conclusion based on two true logical premises; the syllogism takes the form of major premise + minor premise → conclusion
Ex: "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man. Ergo, Socrates is mortal.

Poesis

From the ancient Greek for "to make"; the creation of something out of nothing; the presentation of a thing that did not previously exist; emergence or fabrication. The root word of "poetry"

Diction

The selection of individual words not only according to their sounds, rhythms, or meanings, but also according to their levels or types.

Alliteration

The repetition of like initial sounds, at the beginning of the word or syllable.
"Sensations sweet;" "I am a nun now, I have never been so pure"

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds at the end of a syllable.
"dawn yawning an unbridled itch."

Assonance

The repetition of the vowel sound, usually in stressed syllables.
Ex. "Lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er…beneath the trees" or "Postulate the wave nature"

Register

The level of a word's usage, as based upon its degree of formality (e.g sky vs firmament).

Address

Where a word generally "lives"; the environment in which a word is used (e.g. "microscope" belongs to a scientific address).

Etymology

The historical origin, meaning, and development of a word. Germanic words tend to be more concrete and monosyllabic. Latinate words tend to be more abstract and polysyllabic

Syntax

The arrangement of grammatical units like words, phrases, and clauses--including the punctuation marks--that, taken together, make those arrangements meaningful. The formal principles of linguistic arrangement

Diexis/Diectic

Words used to indicate or point out something readily apparent; things that indicate the presence of something
"This" and "that"; "here be dragons"

End-Stopped Lines

When the syntactic unit and line-ending correspond.

Enjambment

The excess of syntax over the end of the line.

Caesura

A mid-line pause that is usually a function of punctuation, like a comma or a period, but can also be a function of metrical switches.

Anaphora

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

Inversion

A reversal of standard word order/arrangement

Stanza

(e.g., quatrain, sestet) A unit of verse in poetry consisting of a group of lines

Parataxis

An arrangement in which elements (words, phrases, or clauses) are placed side by side without any subordination

Hypotaxis

An arrangement of phrases or clauses in a dependent or subordinate relationship (where one element is dependent on or subordinate to another).

Metaphor

A comparison in which some quality, attribute, or action associated with one thing is directly transferred to another. The two things are alike in the way the transferred quality suggests.

Simile

A comparison in which a marker (e.g., like, as, resemble, compare, etc.) makes the comparison explicit and is itself part of the image structure.

Personification

The granting or transferring of human qualities, feelings, actions or attitudes to an inanimate object or idea.
"lonely as a cloud"; "terrified fingers"

Synecdoche

The naming of a whole by its part(s).
"Hand" for worker; "wheels" for a car

Apostrophe

A direct address to an absent person or to a personified object or abstract quality

Blazon/Blason

A poem that catalogues the physical attributes of a person, conventionally a female, comparing parts of her body to precious, beautiful, or rare objects.

Metonymy

When one thing stands in for something it's closely related to it through contiguity, spatial relation, or some other conceptual association like cause for effect or a quality for an object
"The White House said today…"; "We drank the whole bottle", "lend me your ears"

Verbal Irony

Stated and intended meanings differ

Dramatic Irony

Reader knows information the speaker does not know

Situational Irony

An incongruity between what's expected and what happens

Paronomasia

Word play/pun

Oxymoron

A tight, oppositional, self-contradictory, and hence, paradoxical image.

Parapraxis

A slip of the tongue

Catachresis

The misapplication or misuse of a word: for example, misunderstanding the meaning of a word ("I'm literally starving"); the improper use of a word based on context ("Didn't you hear me? Are you blind?"); using a metaphorical transfer where no literal term exists ("the wing of a building," "feeding the fire," "night falling")

Chiasmus

A pattern of reversals of either sounds, words, or concepts in the sequence of abba
(e.g "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country")

Onomatopoeia

A word that imitates or suggests the action or object associated with it.

Parallelism

The structure of syntax, imagery, or other elements that parallel or reflect each other

Rhythm

The deliberate patterning of energy in time through the recollection of what's past (repetition) and the projection into the future (expectations); the alternation of build-up and release, movement and counter-movement, expectation and resolution.

Meter

The abstract norm of beats and off-beats that can be charted in a line of poetry

Syllabic Meter

A metrical format in which only syllables are counted without concern for accents.

Accentual Meter

A metrical format in which only accents/beats are counted without concern for the number of syllables.

Accentual-Syllabic Meter

A metrical format that accounts for both accents and syllables (e.g a perfect line of iambic pentamer is five stresses and ten syllables)

Etymological Stress

Word accent as it occurs in the dictionary or in regular speech

Syntactic Stress

Empasis on certain words based on their importance in understanding the meaning of a sentence

Rhetorical/Emphatic Stress

Deliberate stress added to a word, even if the word isn't necessarily stressed normally (e.g stressing the or a)

Conventional Stress

The attribution of stress to an otherwise unstressed syllable because of the established meter.
When a syllable is given this type of stress, it is called a "promotion"

Iamb

A metrical foot of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

Trochee

A metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable

Spondee

A metrical foot of two stressed syllables

Pyrrhic

A metrical foot of two unstressed syllables

Dactyl

A metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables

Anapest

A metrical foot of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable

Number of Feet per Line

Monometer (1), Dimeter (2), Trimeter (3), Tetrameter (4), Pentameter (5), Hexameter (6), Hepatameter (7), Octameter (8)

Catalexis

The absence of a syllable in the last foot of a line of verse.

Hypercatalexis/Duple Ending

An additional syllable at the end of a line when the line is already metrically complete

Acephalous/Headless Foot

The initial unstressed syllable in a line is dropped

Syncope

the omission of letters or syllables from the interior of a word (e.g., "flut[te]ring," "o'er," ne'er")

Synaeresis

the contraction of two vowel sounds into a single vowel sound (e.g., "Asia," "showers").

Apocope

the dropping of the final vowel sound or sounds before an initial vowel sound (e.g., "th'evening")

Full/Perfect Rhyme

rhyme in which the final syllable or syllables of a word have the same sound(s) as another word (prayed/afraid; falling/calling)

Slant/Off/Partial Rhyme

rhyming structures with words that share similar sounds but aren't exactly perfect rhymes (tan/sun, young/song)

Pararhyme

partial rhyme between words with the same consonants but different vowels (loads/lids, spoiled/spilled)

Eye/Sight Rhyme

Visually the words rhyme, but have different pronunciations (cough/rough, wind/find)

Apocopated Rhyme

a rhyme where the last syllable of one of the rhyme words is cut off (wind-strung/hunger, or Bantam/tan)

Rime-Riche

When two words are pronounced the same way but have different meanings; they include:

Homograph

spelled and sound the same, but have different meanings: lie [as in lie down] and lie [say something untrue]

Homonym

sound the same, but spelled differently: morning/mourning, poor/pour

End Rhyme

Rhymes that occur at the ends of the lines
accented last syllables are called masculine or rising rhymes
unaccented last syllables are called feminine or falling rhymes

Internal Rhyme

Rhymes that occur within a line of poetry

Blank Verse

A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentamer

Ballad/Common Meter

An accentual-syllabic verse form, written in quatrains, that alternates iambic tetrameter with iambic trimeter lines, rhyming abab or abxb.

Shakespearean Sonnet

A poem of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg, with the volta occurring in the final couplet (gg)

Petrarchan Sonnet

A poem of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter and structured into an octave and a sestet, with the volta occurring in the sestet. The octave has an ABBAABBA rhyme scheme and the sestet has a CDECDE scheme, or something similar

Spenserian Sonnet

A poem of fourteen lines written broken into four stanzas: three quatrains and a couplet, with the rhyme scheme ABABBCBCCDCDEE

Volta

A shift or turn in the poem's subject or logic

Elegy

The logic provides a logic of poetic action

1. Loss
2. Symbolic replacement
3. Ambivalence about the replacing object

Sestina

Six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoi. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoi contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines
Scheme
1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3)

Villanelle

"A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.
Scheme
A1 B A2
a B A1
a B A2
a B A1
a B A2
a B A1 A2