Poetry Textbook Terms

Speaker

The character who is currently delivering lines. In poetry, the speaker is the person who is expressing a point of view in the poem, either the author or a persona created by the author.

Persona

Character who is currently delivering lines. In poetry, the speaker is the person who is expressing a point of view in the poem, either the author or a persona created by the author.

Denotation

A word's explicit meaning.

Connotation

Meanings or associations readers have with a word or an item beyond its dictionary definition; may reveal another layer of meaning, affect the tone, or suggest symbolic resonance in a work of literature.

Diction

A writer's choice of words. In addition to choosing words with precise denotations and connotations, an author must choose whether to use words that are abstract or concrete, formal or informal, or literal or figurative.

Juxtaposition

Placing two things side by side for the sake of comparison or contrast. Authors sometimes use incongruous juxtapositions to produce verbal irony.

Antithesis

Contradictory ideas that are juxtaposed, often using parallel grammatical construction.

Paradox

A statement (or juxtaposed ideas) that seems contradictory but actually reveals a surprising or hidden truth.

Oxymoron

A paradox made up of two seemingly contradictory words.

Shifts

A paradox made up of two seemingly contradictory words.

Tone

A speaker's attitude or stance as exposed through style choices.

Mood

Similar to atmosphere, mood is the feeling created for the reader by a work of literature. Many things can generate it — especially character, dialogue, setting, style, and tone.

Irony

An incongruity between expectation and reality.

Verbal Irony

There is a difference between what the speaker says and what he or she means.

Situational Irony

There is a discrepancy between what seems fitting and what actually happens.

Dramatic Irony

The contrast is between what a character or speaker says or thinks and what the audience (or readers) know to be true.

Hyperbole

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or an ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point.

Understatement

Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or to produce a comic or an ironic effect; an overstatement to make a point.

Conceit

A complex comparison developed through the juxtaposition or association of unexpected or paradoxical ideas. Poets sometimes use conceit to illustrate the complex relationship between the speaker and the natural world.

Allusion

A reference to another work of literature, a piece of art, a famous person or place, history, or current events.

Symbol(s)

A setting, an object, or an event in a story that carries more than literal meaning and therefore represents something significant to understanding the meaning of a work of literature.

Imagery

A description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds. The verbal expression of a sensory experience: visual (sight), auditory (sound), olfactory (scent), gustatory (taste), tactile (touch), or kinesthetic (movement/tension). Imagery may use literal or figurative language.

Stanza

Lines in a poem that the poet has chosen to group together, usually separated from other lines by a space. Stanzas within a poem usually have repetitive forms, often sharing rhyme schemes or rhythmic structures.

Syntax

the arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences

Inversion

Also called an inverted sentence, it is created by alteration of the standard English word order of a subject (S) being followed by a verb (V) and its object (O) in a declarative sentence.

Enjambment

A poetic technique in which one line ends without a pause and must continue on to the next line to complete its meaning; also referred to as a "run-on line."

Caesura

A pause within a line of poetry, sometimes punctuated, sometimes not, often mirroring natural speech.

Rhythm

The general pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Meter

The formal, regular organization of stressed and unstressed syllables, measured in feet.

Feet

Combinations of patterns of stressed or unstressed syllables within a line of poetry.

Iamb

A poetic foot of two syllables with the stress, or accent, on the second, as in the word "again," or the phrase "by far."

Iambic Pentameter

a rhythmic meter containing five iambs

Iambic Tetrameter

A line of four iambic feet (eight syllables)

Closed forms

conventional or traditional forms of poetry (the opposite is open form)

Sonnet

A poetic form composed of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter that adheres to a particular rhyme scheme. Traditionally for love poems.

Petrarchan sonnet

divided into an octet (eight lines) rhyming abba, abba and a sestet (six lines) with a variety of different rhyme schemes: cdcdcd, cdecde, or cddcdd.

Shakespearean sonnet

consists of three quatrains (four lines) and a couplet (two lines) at the end. This type of sonnet rhymes abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The third quatrain often provides the turn, or volta, in which the speaker shifts his or her perspective in some way. The last two lines sometimes close the sonnet with a witty remark.

Elegy

A contemplative poem, usually for someone who has died.

Lyric

A short poem expressing the personal thoughts or feelings of a first-person speaker.

Ode

A form of poetry used to meditate on or address a single object or condition. It originally followed strict rules of rhythm and rhyme, but by the Romantic period it was more flexible.

Villanelle

A form of poetry in which five tercets, or three-line stanzas (rhyme scheme aba), are followed by a quatrain (rhyme scheme abaa). At the end of tercets two and four, the first line of tercet one is repeated. At the end of tercets three and five, the last line of tercet one is repeated. These two repeated lines, called refrain lines, are repeated again to conclude the quatrain. Much of the power of this form lies in its repeated lines and their subtly shifting sense or meaning over the course of the poem.

Sound

The musical quality of poetry

Alliteration

The repetition of the same initial consonant sounds in a sequence of words or syllables.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words.

Consonance

Identical consonant sounds in nearby words.

Onomatopoeia

Use of words that refer to sound and whose pronunciations mimic those sounds.

Cadence

Quality of spoken text formed from combining the text's rhythm with the rise and fall in the inflection of the speaker's voice.

Free verse

A form of poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme.

End rhyme

Rhyme at the end of a line.

Internal Rhyme

rhyme within a line of poetry

Near/Slant Rhyme

When an author uses poetic license to rhyme words that do not sound quite the same

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhyme for an entire poem.