Poetry terminology

Alliteration

The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants.

Blank Verse

Unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called heroic verse.

Cacophony

Harsh or discordant sounds, often the result of repetition and combination of consonants within a group of words. The opposite of euphony.

Cadence

The patterning of rhythm in natural speech, or in poetry without a distinct meter.

Connotation

Referring to secondary, implied, or associative meanings and emotions that word carries beyond its literal definition.

Consonance

A resemblance in sound between two words, or an initial rhyme.

Couplet

A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length.

Dramatic Monolgue

A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener usually not the reader.

End-stopped line

A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break-such as a dash or closing parenthesis-or with punctuation such as a colon, a semicolon, or a period.

Enjambment

The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation;

Epic

A long narrative poem in which a heroic protagonist engages in an action of great mythic or historical significance.

Euphony

Euphony is, in. essence, the musicality of poetry can contribute to the overall mood or atmosphere of a poem.

Foot

A measured combination of heavy and light stresses

Free Verse

Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech.

Iamb

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

Imagery

Using vivid or figurative language to represent ideas, objects, or actions.

Lyric

Originally a composition meant for musical accompaniment.

Meter

The rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse.

Pentameter

A line made up of five feet. It is the most common metrical line in English.

Persona/Speaker

A dramatic character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem.

Quatrain

A four-line stanza, often with various rhyme schemes.

Refrain

A phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem, especially at the end of a stanza.

Repetiton

A literary device in which a word or phrase is repeated two or more times.

Rhyme: External

rhyme that occurs in the last words of each line in a poem

Rhyme: Internal

Rhyme that occurs in the middle of lines of poetry.

Rhyme: Feminine

consists of a rhymed stressed syllable followed by one or more identical unstressed syllables, as in butter, clutter; gratitude, attitude; quivering, shivering.

Rhyme:Masculine

occurs when the rhyme is in the stressed final syllable of the words. Some examples include fair and compare, dog and log, and collect and direct.

Scansion

The analysis of the metrical patterns of a poem by organizing its lines into feet of stressed and unstressed syllables and showing the major pauses, if any.

Shakespearean Sonnet

The variation of the sonnet form that Shakespeare used—comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet.

English Sonnet

A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England in the 16th century.

Stresssed vs. Unstressed syllables

Stressed: is the emphasis that falls on certain syllables and not others Unstressed

Unstressed: part of the word that you don't emphasize or accent, like the to- in today, or the -day in Sunday.

Stanza

A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the stanza, like a prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought.

Metaphor

A comparison that is made without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”

Personification

A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person

line

A line in a poem is a set of words that ends for a specific reason, which may include rhythm, meaning, syllable count, pacing, or rhyme.

Speaker

The speaker in a piece of poetry is the narrator of the work. It could be the poet, an imagined character, a creature or even an object.

Rhythm

An audible pattern in verse established by the intervals between stressed syllables.

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a figure of speech in which a word imitates the sound associated with an action or an object, effectively mimicking the sound it describes.

Hyperbole

figure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration.

Simile

A comparison made with "as," "like," or "than."

Organic/ Free Verse

Free Verse: Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech

Organic: A form that is dictated by its specific content and not by a mechanic or pre-determined system.

Iambic pentameter

iambic pentameter, in poetry, a line of verse composed of ten syllables arranged in five metrical feet (iambs), each of which consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.