Literary Terms For Poetry

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds in words or syllables.

Allusion

Reference to another work or famous figure.

Anadiplosis

Repetition of a word at the end of one phrase at the start of the next.

Anaphora

Repetition of a word or phrase at the start of poetry lines.

Anthropomorphism

Inanimate object or animal behaving like a human.

Apostrophe

Speaker addressing a nonhuman directly.

Ars poetica

Poetry about poetry.

Assonance

Repeated use of vowel sounds.

Asyndeton

Sentence omitting conjunctions where appropriate.

Ballad

Poem imitating a sung, dramatic story.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Cacophony

Use of harsh, inharmonious sounds in poetry.

Cadence

Quality formed by text's rhythm and speaker's voice inflection.

Caesura

Pause within a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation.

Conceit

A startling or unusual metaphor, expanded upon several lines.

Connotation

Meanings or associations readers have with a word or an item beyond the dictionary definition

Consonance

Repetition of final consonant sounds with different vowels.

Couplet

Two-line rhymed stanza.

Denotation

A word's literal meaning.

Dialogue

Conersation between characters

Dissonance

Grating of incompatible sounds in poetry.

Diction

Author's choice of words.

Ekphrastic poetry

Poetry commenting on art in another genre.

End-stopped line

Line ending with a natural pause.

Enjambment

Continuation of a sentence without a pause.

Eulogy

A poem, speech, or other work praising someone no longer living

Euphony

Pleasing, harmonious sounds in poetry.

Figurative language

Nonliteral language evoking strong images.

Form

Structural characteristics of a work, especially a poem.

Free verse

Poetry without regular rhyme, rhythm, or metrical pattern.

Hyperbole

Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement.

Iambic pentameter

Meter with five iambs per line.

Imagery

Description of how something looks, feels, tastes, smells, or sounds.

Irony

writing or speaking tha timplies the contrary of what is actually writen or spoken; can be verbal, dramatic, or situational

Juxtaposition

Placing items side by side in a text for contrast.

Litotes

Understatement using double negatives for a positive.

Lyric poem

Short poem expressing personal feelings.

Metaphor

Comparison without like or as.

Meter

Organization of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

Metonymy

Using one thing's name to represent another.

Mood

Emotional tone in literature.

Motif

Repetitive phrase, image, or idea conveying a theme.

Ode

Poem meditating on a single object or condition.

Onomatopoeia

Words imitating sounds.

Oxymoron

A paradox made up of two seemingly contradictory words.

Paradox

Statement seeming contradictory but true.

Parallelism

Repeated use of similar grammatical structures.

Pastoral

Romanticized description of rural life.

Persona

A voice and viewpoint an author adopts to deliver a poem; like a narrator in prose

Personification

Attributing human characteristics to objects or animals.

Polysyndeton

Statement with more conjunctions than necessary.

Prose poem

Blend of prose and poetry.

Quatrain

Four-line stanza.

Refrain

Repeated line in a poem.

Rhetorical question

Question for stylistic effect, not an answer.

Rhyme

Repetition of similar sounds in poetry.

Rhythm

Pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Shift

Point indicating a change in the speaker's perspective.

Simile

Comparison using like or as.

Sonnet

Poem with 14 lines in iambic pentameter.

Stream of consciousness

A style of writing in which the author tries to reproduce the random flow of thoughts in the human mind.

Speaker

Person expressing a point of view in a poem.

Sprung rhythm

A meter developed out of Gerard Manley Hopkins's attempt to mirror natural speech patterns in poetry. The number of stressed syllables in every line is the same while the number of unstressed syllables can vary.

Stanza

Grouped lines in a poem.

Style

Way a literary work is written.

Syllepsis

Word used in the same grammatical relation with different meanings.

Symbolism

A device in literature where a setting, an object, or an event carries more than literal meaning

Synecdoche

Figure of speech using a part to represent the whole.

Synesthesia

Sensation of one sense evoking another.

Syndeton

Normal usage of conjunctions.

Syntax, poetic

Ordering and structuring words in poetry.

Tone

Author's attitude revealed by stylistic choices.

Verse

Metered and rhythmic piece of writing.

Villanelle

Poetic form with repeating lines in each stanza.

Zeugma

Using one verb with incongruous objects to change definition.