Poetry Terms

Alliteration

Repetition of initial sounds

Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds

Imagery

Description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste)

Rhyme scheme

the pattern of rhyme in a poem

Meter

pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line

Enjambment

The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next

Free verse

Poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme

Shakespearean sonnet

a sonnet consisting three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg

Petrarchan sonnet

a sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern cdecde or cdcdcd

Couplet

Two consecutive lines of poetry that often rhyme

Quatrain

Stanza of four lines

Octave

Stanza of eight lines

Sestet

Stanza of six lines

Iamb

unstressed, stressed (U /)

Trochee

stressed, unstressed (/ U)

Spondee

stressed, stressed (/ /)

Anapest

unstressed, unstressed, stressed (U U /)

Dactyl

stressed, unstressed, unstressed (/ U U)

Villanelle

five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain

Haiku

A Japanese verse form of three lines with a 5/7/5 syllable count

Limerick

A form of five anapestic lines rhyming AABBA

Cinquain

A poem or stanza of 5 lines

Ekphrastic poem

A poem that brings art to poem

Acrostic

A poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, name, or phrase when read vertically.

Abecedarian

A poem in which the first letter of each line or stanza follows sequentially through the alphabet.

Prose poem

A poem without line breaks

Univocalic

A poem using only one vowel sound

Stanza

A group of lines in a poem

Slant rhyme

words that have similar final sounds

Internal rhyme

words that rhyme within a poetic line