Versification

  • Poem: A composition written for performance by the human voice, where the words on the page serve as a verbal score for the reader to bring alive.

  • Epic: A long narrative poem on a great and serious subject, frequently divided into several "books" or sections.

  • Dramatic: Poetry, such as monologues or dialogues, written in the voice of a character assumed by the poet.

  • Lyric: Originally a song accompanied by a lyre, this term now refers to any fairly short poem in the voice of a single speaker.

  • Scansion: The action or art of analyzing stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry to determine its metrical feet.

  • Caesura: A natural pause in the speaking voice within a line of verse, often indicated in scansion by a double bar (||).

  • Meter: A structured rhythm consisting of a recurrence of regular, approximately equal units of measure.

  • Rhythm: An essential component of language consisting of a sequence of syllables with varying levels of emphasis or stress.

  • Accentual meter: Also known as strong-stress meter, it is the oldest English metrical system, where a line is organized by a specific number of strongly stressed syllables regardless of the total syllable count.

  • Accentual-syllable meter: The most common metrical system in English poetry, which structures lines based on the foot, a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables,.

  • Iambic: A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

  • Trochaic: A metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.

  • Anapestic: A metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.

  • Dactylic: A metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

  • Monometer: A poetic line consisting of one metrical foot.

  • Dimeter: A poetic line consisting of two metrical feet.

  • Trimeter: A poetic line consisting of three metrical feet.

  • Tetrameter: A poetic line consisting of four metrical feet.

  • Pentameter: A poetic line consisting of five metrical feet; it is the most popular line length in English poetry.

  • Quantitative meter: A system used in classical Greek and Latin poetry based on a syllable's "quantity" or duration in time rather than its stress.

  • Rhyme: The concurrence in two or more lines of the last stressed vowel and all speech sounds following it.

  • End rhymes: Rhymes that occur at the ends of poetic lines.

  • Internal rhyme: Rhyme that occurs within a single line of poetry.

  • Masculine vs. Feminine rhymes: Masculine rhymes consist of a single stressed syllable, while feminine rhymes consist of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.

  • Perfect rhyme: Also called full or true rhyme, this occurs when the correspondence of rhyming sounds is exact.

  • Off-rhyme: Also known as half, near, or slant rhyme, it changes the vowel sound and/or concluding consonants expected in a perfect rhyme.

  • Vowel rhyme: A form of off-rhyme where the words have only their vowel sounds in common.

  • Pararhyme: A term for rhymes where the stressed vowel sounds differ but are flanked by identical or similar consonants.

  • Forms: The larger patterns of poetry created by the combination of lines into structures such as stanzas.

  • Blank verse: A form consisting of unrhymed iambic pentameter.

  • Couplet: Two lines of verse, typically linked by rhyme.

  • Tercet: A three-line stanza traditionally linked by a single rhyme.

  • Quatrain: A four-line stanza, which is the most common stanzaic form in English poetry.

  • Sonnet: Traditionally a poem of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme.

  • Irregular forms: Poetry that utilizes rhyme and meter but follows no fixed or repeating pattern.

  • Open forms/free verse: Poetry that makes little or no use of traditional rhyme and meter, relying instead on rhythms appropriate to the poet's voice.

  • Prose poetry: A composition that possesses the features of a lyric but is formatted on the page as prose rather than broken into verse lines.

  • Found poetry: A type of poetry that converts existing prose passages from non-poetic sources (like advertisements or newspapers) into a poem.

  • Shaped poetry: Poems where the words are arranged on the page to take the physical shape of an object.

  • Concrete poetry: A category of verbal exploration where the visual typographic structure is primary, often to the point that it cannot be voiced.

  • Sound poetry: An abstract form of performance poetry that focuses on the musical and performative nature of sounds rather than literal meaning.