Poetry Term World Lit 10

 Poetry Terms  

∙ Alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Ex: On the bald street breaks the blank day.  

∙ Allusion – a reference to a person, place, thing, event or idea in history or literature used to  suggest an emotion or idea. Ex: an allusion to the Garden of Eden might suggest a notion  of paradise or a time of purity and innocence. (Allusion is different from illusion, which is a  deception or erroneous perception of reality.)  

∙ Apostrophe – a figure of speech in which the poem’s speaker addresses someone absent or  dead, or something nonhuman as if it were alive and present and could reply.  

∙ Assonance – the repetition, at close intervals, of vowel sounds.  

∙ Ballad – a fairly short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form.  

∙ Consonance – the repetition, at close intervals, of consonant sounds found within or at the  end of words.  

∙ Couplet – 2-line stanza, which may or may not rhyme.  

∙ End rhyme – rhyme that comes at the end of lines. Ex. “It runs and it creeps/ For awhile,  till it sleeps” 

      ∙ Eye rhyme – words that look alike but do not sound alike. Ex: bough, cough; brow, blow.  

∙ Figurative language – words that are literally inaccurate but are used to describe or define  something. Usually this language makes use of metaphors or similes to compare and  equate something to another.  

∙ Fixed form – poetry that is categorized by its patterns of lines, meter, rhymes and stanzas.  Examples of fixed forms include the sonnet, ballad and villanelle.  

∙ Free verse – poetry that is not in a fixed form. Also called open form.  

∙ Imagery – the use of images, often figurative ones, that appeal to one of the 5 senses.  Images can be olfactory (smell), auditory (sound), tactile (touch), visual (sight), or gustatory  (taste).  

∙ Internal rhyme – rhyme that comes within one or several lines. Ex: I wished upon the  most beautiful moon in June and hope/ that soon I will fall in love.  

∙ Lyric – a short poem that expresses the personal emotions and thoughts of a first-person  narrator and is characterized by its musical qualities.  

∙ Metaphor – an implied comparison in which the figurative word is substituted for the  original term (in contrast to the explicit comparison of a simile). Ex: “He is a lion in the  field.”

∙ Meter – the recurrence of rhythmic stresses or accents in a regular pattern. ∙ Narrative poem – a poem that tells a story. 

∙ Onomatopoeia – use of a word that resembles the sound it denotes. Ex: buzz, bowwow,  choo-choo. 

∙ Personification – giving human characteristics to an animal, object or abstract concept. 

∙ Poetry – literature written in meter or verse. It is characterized by language chosen for its  sound and suggestive power and by such literary techniques as structured meter, rhyme, and  metaphor. 

∙ Prose poem – a poem which is written in prose format; i.e. it has no fixed lines. 

∙ Quatrain – a four-line stanza. 

∙ Rhyme (see also End, Eye, Internal and Slant rhyme) – two or more words that repeat  the same end sounds. ALso called perfect rhyme. Ex: send, bend, trend. 

∙ Rhyme scheme – the pattern of end rhymes denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, d…)  where each letter represents a new rhyme. 

∙ Setting – the place and time in which a poem takes place; not all poems have settings. 

∙ Simile – an explicit comparison of one thing to another using the connecting words like, as,  than, similar to, resembles or sees. Ex: He is like a lion in the field. 

∙ Slant rhyme – words, usually in a set rhyme scheme, which have similar sounds but are not  perfect rhymes. Also called approximate rhyme, imperfect rhyme, or near rhyme. Ex: arrayed/said. 

∙ Sonnet – a 14-line poem that has traditionally followed specific rules of rhyme and meter.

 ∙ Stanza – a group of lines in a poem. People often mistakenly call them paragraphs. 

∙ Style – the author’s manner of expression. An author’s style is the result of choices about  vocabulary, organization, imagery, pace, and recurring themes. 

∙ Symbol – a figure of speech in which a person or thing stands for some other idea/abstract  concept. Ex: the color white has become a symbol of purity or innocence. 

∙ Theme – the central or unifying idea that is developed in a work. 

∙ Tone – the expressions of the author’s attitude toward the subject matter. 

∙ Verse – another name for poetry derived from the Latin “vers” meaning “to turn.” It refers  to the fact that poetry lines “turn” at a specific point versus prose, which has no fixed lines.