English I Poetry Terms Notes

Poetry Terms

• Poetry: Rhythmic expression of intense perceptions of the world, oneself, and their relationship.

  • Purpose: "To please" (Harmon and Holman).

• Speaker: Imaginary voice assumed by the writer of a poem.

  • Not the same person as the poet.
  • Often not identified by name.

• Stanza: A group of lines in a poem, considered as a unit.

Sound Devices

• Rhythm: Pattern of beats or stresses in spoken or written language.

• Repetition: Use of any element of language more than once (sound, word, phrase, clause, sentence).

  • Used for musical effects and emphasis.

• Rhyme: Repetition of sounds at the ends of words.

• Internal Rhyme: Rhyming words appear in the same line.

• Couplet: Pair of rhyming lines, usually of the same length and meter.

  • Generally expresses a single idea.

• Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonant sounds.

  • Used to give emphasis, imitate sounds, create musical effects.

• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonants in two or more stressed syllables.

  • Example: “weak and weary” (Poe’s “The Raven”).

• Consonance: Repetition in two or more words of final consonants in stressed syllables.

  • Consonants are preceded by different vowel sounds.
  • Example: add-read

• Refrain: Repeated line or group of lines in a poem or song.

• Onomatopoeia: Use of words that imitate sounds.

Scansion Terms

• Meter: Rhythmical pattern of a poem determined by the number and types of stresses (beats) in each line.

• Scanning/Scansion: Marking the stressed and unstressed syllables.

• Foot: A group of stressed and unstressed syllables.

  • A line of poetry can be divided into feet by using vertical lines.

• Blank Verse: Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines.

  • Used by Shakespeare.

• Iambic Pentameter: Verse written in five feet lines with each foot having one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

• Free Verse: Poetry not written in a regular rhythmical pattern or meter.

  • Dominant in modern poetry.

Language Devices

• Diction: The choice and use of words and phrases in speech and writing.

• Denotation: A word’s dictionary meaning.

• Connotation: The set of associations that occur to people when they hear or read a word.

• Pun: A play on words based on different meanings of words that sound alike.

• Literal Language: Usage of words in an ordinary sense.

• Figurative Language: Writing or speech not meant to be taken literally.

• Hyperbole: A figure of speech that uses incredible overstatement or exaggeration for effect.

• Personification: A type of figurative language in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics.

• Metaphor: A figure of speech in which one thing is spoken as though it were something else.

• Implied Metaphor: Metaphor in which the terms of comparison are not explicitly stated.

• Direct Metaphor: Explicitly stated metaphor.

• Extended Metaphor: A metaphor that sustains the comparison for several lines.

• Simile: A figure of speech in which like or as is used to make a comparison between two basically unlike subjects.

Additional Literary Devices

• Allusion: A reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art.

• Fate: Power that predetermines events.

• Foil: A character whose personality or actions are in striking contrast of those of another.

• Foreshadowing: A warning or hint to readers that something will happen later in a story.

• Mood: The emotional texture or feeling of a setting.

• Theme: The overall message or takeaway of a story.

• Motif: An image, sound, action, or other figure that has a symbolic significance and contributes toward the development of a theme.

• Oxymoron: Two contradictory words brought together.

• Paradox: A statement that seems contradictory.

• Soliloquy: An extended speech delivered by a character alone onstage.

  • The character reveals his or her innermost thoughts and feelings directly to the audience, as if thinking out loud.

• Symbol: Anything that stands for or represents something else.

• Syntax: The way the words are sequenced in the lines of poetry.

• Tone: The attitude or feeling of the speaker.

• Irony: A situation in which the outcome is the opposite of what is expected.

  • Dramatic Irony: Occurs when the audience knows something that the characters do not—when the characters think something but the reader knows the opposite is true.
  • Situational Irony: When the reader thinks one thing should happen, but the opposite does.
  • Verbal Irony: The writer or speaker says one thing and means something entirely different.

• Comic Relief: Humorous scene or incident in a serious work—used to relieve the emotional intensity.