poetry concepts and terminology

Image

a word or sequence of words that refers to any sensory experience. (In a Station of the Metro")

visual imagery

relating to sight

auditory imagery

relating to sound

tactile imagery

relating to touch (texture, heat, cold, wetness, hardness etc.)

organic

relating to an internal sensation, such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, nausea, etc.

gustatory

relating to taste

olfactory

relating to smell

synaesthesia

the description of the perception of one sense in terms of another: the singer’s voice was sweet, smooth, and velvety

figures of speech

expressions that are meant to be interpreted imaginatively not literally

metaphor

implied or explicit comparison of two things

mixed metaphor

an error that results from combining two or more incompatible metaphors resulting in ridiculousness or nonsense

implied metaphor

a comparison that uses neither connectives nor the verb to be: john crowed over his victory (we imply metaphorically that john is a rooster but do not say so specifically)

simile

explicit comparison using like, as, than, just, so “hungry as a lion”

personification

a specific kind of metaphor in which human qualities are ascribes to a non human thing

apostrophe

addressing someone absent or dead or something nonhuman as if that person or thing were present and alive and could reply to what is being said

paradox

an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true e.g., “less is more” “where ignorance is bliss,/ ‘Tis folly to be wise”

overstatement (hyperbole)

a type of verbal irony in which you use outrageous exaggeration for purposes of emphasis and often humor: “i could eat a horse”

understatement

a type of verbal irony in which you use deliberate understatement for purposes of intensification or affirming the negative e.g., after a huge rainstorm: “what a delightful spring shower”; the phrase “not bad” when intended as a high compliment.

verbal irony

when there is a discrepancy between what one says and what one means e.g., while returning a perfect test, I might say, “Libby, you have so much potential as an English student—if only you would apply yourself”

dramatic irony

(drama) when there is a discrepancy between what the audience knows and what the character(s) know; (poetry) when there is a discrepancy between what the speaker says and what the poem means

irony of situation

when there is a discrepancy between what one anticipates and what actually comes to pass, or between the actual circumstances and those that would seem appropriate. e.g., dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean— “Water, water, everywhere,” but nota “drop to drink”

cosmic irony, irony of fate

when misfortune is the result of some fate, chance, orGod with a cruel sense of humor. dIscrepancy between a character’s aspiration and the treatment he or she receives at the hands of fate

oxymoron

a form of condensed paradox, oxymoron is a figure of speech which combines two seemingly contradictory elements : “O heavy lightness! serious vanity/ Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!/ Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

metonymy

figure of speech in which the name of thing is substituted for that of another closely associated with it “the white house decided” when we mean the president did

synecdoche

the use of a significant part of thing to stand for the whole of it, or vise versa: “nice wheels” to comment on ones cars

symbol

an object or image that suggests some further meaning in addition to itself

allegory

clost to symbolism, a description - usually narrative - in which persons, and things are employed in a continuous and consistent system of equivalents

archetype

a basic image, character, situation, or symbol that appears so often in literature or legend that it evokes a deep universal response (jesus figure, cruel stepmother, trickster figure”

diction

choice of words

concrete diction

words that refer to what we can immediately perceive with our senses (dog, actor, chemical)

abstract diction

words that express ideas or concepts (time, love, truth)

colloquial diction

casual conversational or informal language

general english diction

more studied than colloquial but not pretentious

formal english diction

formal

dialect

a particular variety of language spoken by an identifiable regional group or social class of persons

allusion

an indirect reference to any person or thing—fictitious, historical, or actual (nothing gold can stay”, “grass”)

denotation of a word

the dictionary definition

connotation

overtones or suggestions of additional meaning that it gains from all the contexts in which we have met it in the past. some words mean the same thing but have very different connotations

exact rime

when the sound pattern in two or more words repeat. the repittion may be monosyllabic, disyllabic, or trisyllabic or more.

slant rime (near rime, off rime, imperfect rime)

when words rime approximately substituting either assonance (comb/coat) or alliteration (hope/heap) in place of exact rime.

internal rime

when there is rime within a single line of verse

masculine rhyme

rhyme of one syllable words (jail,bail) or (in words with more than one syllable) stressed final syllables (divorce, remorse)

feminine rhyme

rhyme of two or more syllables with stress on a syllable other than the last (tur-tle, fer-tile or in-tel-ect-u-al, hen-pecked you all) often lends itself to comic verse, but can also appear in serious poems

alliteration

repetition of consonant sounds (sometimes defined as repetition of initial sounds; sometimes defined as repetition of initial consonant sounds; S and S distinguishes between a. and consonance: repetition of internal or final consonant sounds)

assonance

repetition of vowel sounds

onomatopeia

"formation or use of words which imitate sounds, such as hiss, snap, buzz, clash, murmur; also, combinations of words in which any correspondence is felt between sound and sense," e.g., the mournful repetition of the sound "ore" in "The Raven." Or,

"The surf crashed against the sand on the seashore" onomatopoetically suggests the sound the sentence actually describes through the alliterating "s" and "sh" sounds.

consonance

a kind of slant rhyme, occurs when the rhymed words or phrases have the same beginning and ending consonant sounds but a different vowel, as in chitter and chatter

doggeral

1. verse that's intentionally or unintentionally clumsy, irregular in rhythm, and often uses forced or simplistic rhymes, typically for comic, satirical, or sentimental effects, mimicking bad poetry with cheap sentiment and trivial meaning, unlike structured formal verse.

It features monotonous rhythm, easy rhymes (like simple AABB or ABAB), and can feel overly emotional or artificial, even appearing in popular song lyrics or as a deliberate artistic choice

Prosody

the study of metrical structures in poetry!

meter

when stresses recur at fixed intervals in the lines of a poem or play

foot

a unit of two or three syllables that contains ONE strong stress - the building block of the metered line

iamb/iambic

most common metric feet in poetry written in english, (unstressed syllable /stressed syllable [u ‘ ]): attack, decide

trochee/trochaic

(‘ u): Panther, apple

anapest/anapestic

(u u ‘ ): interfere, underneath, and the moon

dactyl/dactylic

(‘ u u ): alphabet, oxidize, piggy bank

spondee/spondaic

( ‘ ‘ ): "No, no" "Bright star"

unstressed feet that contain no unaccented syllables:

1. monosyllabic foot: /

(one stress)

2. spondee: //

(2 stressed syllables)

meter is not made up of these, it would sound like hammering nails into a wall. They are inserted now and then for emphasis or variety.

metric line lengths

1. trimeter (3 feet)

2. tetrameter (4 feet)

3. pentameter (5 feet

4. hexameter (6 feet)

rising meter

iambic and anapestic are rising meter because their movement rises from an unstressed syllable(s) to stress

falling meter

trochaic and dactylic are falling meter because they go from stressed to

accentual meter

meter in which the poet does not write in feet, but instead keeps the number of accents (stresses) per line consistent

When scanning a line for its meter, say each word as you would normally say it, don't try to fit it into what you expect the meter to be. Good poets throw variants into their meter for some effect.

caesura

break or pause in the middle of a line of poetry, often created

through the use of a forceful piece of punctuation (period, dash, colon, semi-colon).

run-on line (enjambment*):

when the sense and grammatical structure of a

clause or phrase extend beyond the end of a line or stanza into the one following. E.g., Williams enjambs the first three lines of "The Red Wheelbarrow": "so much depends / upon// a red wheel / barrow."

end-stopped lines

when the sense and grammatical structure of a clause or

phrase stops at the end of a line or stanza; the fourth line of Williams' poem is end-stopped.

couplet

two lines (usually rhymed)

(heroic couplet (closed couplet): rhymed, iambic pentameter couplet; usually complete syntactically)

tercet

three lines

quatrain

four lines

sestet

six lines

octet/octave

eight lines

blank verse

when a poet establishes a pattern of a certain number of syllables to a line.

acrostic

a poem in which the initial letter of each line, read downward, spells out a word or words

epigram

a short poem ending in a witty or ingenious turn of thought, to which the rest of the composition is intended to lead up. Often a malicious gibe with a stinger at the end.

limerick

5 anapestic lines usually rhyming A A B B A

haiku

Japanese form dependent on imagery - captures the intensity of a particular moment, usually by linking two concrete images: 3 line poem arranged by syllables: 5, 7, 5.

the sonnet

a. 14 lines

b. iambic pentameter

c. rhymed according to some more or less regular pattern

d. usually organized into two parts. In the first part, the poet presents a problem

or question or idea or situation or image. In the second part, marked by the "turn," the poet offers a solution, answer, or response to the first part. The turn is often indicated with a conjunction suggesting contrast or contradiction: "But, yet, still, etc."

english or Shakespearean

a. three quatrains of open rhyme, followed by a rhyming couplet (rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efe gg)

b. turn normally occurs at the beginning of line 13.

italian or petrarchan

a. an octave made up of two quatrains of enveloping rhyme. In its purest,

traditional form, the enveloping rhyme repeats (abbaabba). Some poets change the rhyme in the second quatrain (abba cdc).

b. the octave is followed by a sestet of (usually) interlocking rhyme. A couple of

the most common rhyme schemes are cdcdcd, cde cde.

c. turn normally occurs at the beginning of line 9.