40 Poetry Terms to Know

Vocabulary flashcards defining all 40 poetry terms listed in the handout for Art of Poetry and Fiction.

Allegory

A narrative or visual representation with an underlying meaning, moral message, or political significance.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds, particularly at the beginnings of words.

Allusion

A reference to a person, event, or literary work outside the poem.

Anaphora

A technique in which successive phrases or lines begin with the same words, often resembling a litany.

Apostrophe

A direct address of an inanimate object, abstract qualities, a god, or a person not living or present.

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds.

Blank Verse

Poetry that does not rhyme but follows a regular meter, most commonly iambic pentameter.

Caesura

A pause for a beat in the rhythm of a verse, often indicated by a line break or by punctuation.

Connotation

The implied or suggested meaning associated with a word or phrase.

Consonance

The repetition of similar consonant sounds.

Couplet

A two-line stanza, or two lines of verse, rhymed or unrhymed.

Denotation

The dictionary meaning of a word.

Ekphrasis

The use of vivid language to describe or respond to a work of visual art.

Elegy

A form of poetry in which the poet or speaker expresses grief, sadness, or loss.

End-Stopped Line

A metrical line containing a complete phrase or sentence, or a line of poetry ending with punctuation; the opposite of enjambment.

Enjambment

The continuation of a sentence or clause across one poetic line break.

Epigraph

A quotation set at the beginning of a literary work or one of its divisions to suggest its theme.

Epistolary Poem

Also known as an epistle, a poem of direct address that reads as a letter.

Free Verse

Open form poetry not dictated by an established form or meter and often influenced by the rhythms of speech.

Hyperbole

Exaggeration for emphasis.

Iambic Pentameter

A rising meter form consisting of five pairs of unstressed and stressed or accented syllables as five iambic feet per line.

Imagery

Language in a poem representing a sensory experience, including visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory.

Lyric Poetry

A non-narrative poem, often with songlike qualities, that expresses the speaker's personal emotions and feelings.

Metaphor

A comparison between essentially unlike things, or the application of a name or description to something to which it is not literally applicable.

Meter

The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse.

Metonymy

A word or phrase that replaces the name of an object or concept for another to which it is related.

Ode

A poem celebrating an event, a person, or a thing that is not present.

Onomatopoeia

The use of language that sounds like the thing or action it describes.

Paradox

A situation or phrase that appears to be contradictory but that also contains some measure of truth.

Persona Poem

A poem also known as a dramatic monologue in which the poet assumes the voice of another person, fictional character, or identity.

Personification

The endowment of inanimate objects, animals, or abstract concepts with animate or human-living qualities.

Pun

A play on words or the humorous use of a single sound or word with two or more implied meanings.

Quatrain

A four-line stanza, or unit of four lines of verse, rhymed or unrhymed.

Simile

A comparison between two essentially unlike things using words "such as," "like," and "as."

Slant Rhyme

A rhyme formed with words with similar but not wholly identical sounds; also called an off rhyme, half rhyme, and imperfect rhyme.

Speaker

The voice of the poem, similar to a narrator in fiction.

Stanza

A grouping of lines that forms the main unit in a poem.

Symbol

An object or action that stands for something beyond itself.

Synecdoche

A word for part of an object or idea used as a substitution to describe the whole.

Tercet

A three-line stanza, or unit of three lines of verse, rhymed or unrhymed.