Poetry Lit Terms

Aubade

a poem about dawn; a morning love song; or a poem about the parting of lovers at dawn

Ballad

A poem that recounts a story - generally some dramatic episode - and that has been composed to be sung; traditional ballads often have simple stanzas, abrupt transitions between stanzas, refrains, stock descriptive phrases, incremental repetition, dialogue and impersonal language

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter

Couplet

Two successive lines usually in the same meter, linked by rhyme

Elegy

Reflective, formal poem that laments death, sometimes loss

Foot

Basic unit used in the scansion or measurement of verse; one accented syllables and one-two unaccented syllables

Free Verse

Poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and use as a regular and sometimes very short line lengths

Lyric Poetry

A brief melodic and imaginative poem characterized by the fervent but structured expression of private thoughts and emotions by a single speaker in first person

Meter

The patterned repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables

Narrative Poetry

Verse that tells a story (Ex.

Ode

a lyric poem with a dignified tone in praise of someone, something, or an important occasion

Refrain

Line(s) that recur(s) throughout or a poem or lyrics of a song; may vary slightly but is generally exactly the same (like a chorus)

Rhyme

The repetition of sounds

End rhyme

repetition of the same sound at the end of the lines

Initial rhyme

repetition of the same sound at the beginning of the lines

Internal rhyme

rhyme that occurs within lines

Slant/off rhyme

inexact but close rhyme

Sight rhyme

words that look like they should rhyme but don’t

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhyme in a poem; a lower case letter is typically assigned to each new rhyming sound

Rhythm

A measured flow of words and signifying the basic beat or pattern in a language that is established by stressed syllables, unstressed syllables, and pauses

Scansion

the analysis of verse to show its meter

Sonnet

A lyric poem that almost always consists of 14 lines and that follows one of several conventional rhyme schemes; may address a range of issues/themes, but love is most common

Italian/Petrarchan sonnet

14 lines, 2 parts

Shakespearean/English sonnet

3 quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg

Stanzas

A group of set lines in a poem, usually physically set off from the other such clusters by a blank line

Sestina

A type of fixed form poetry consisting of thirty-six lines of any length divided into six sestets and a three-line concluding stanza called an envoy. The six words at the end of the first sestet's lines must also appear at the ends of the other five sestets, in varying order. These six words must also appear in the envoy, where they often resonate important themes.

Villanelle

a 19-line fixed form consisting of 5 tercets (3-line stanzas) rhymed aba and concluding quatrain rhymed abaa, with lines 1 and 3 of the first tercet serving as refrains in an alternating pattern through line 12 and then repeated as lines 18 & 19

Terza Rima

An interlocking rhyme scheme with the pattern aba bcb cdc, etc.