Poetry Terms (pirated from Mrs. Eagles!)
1. Sound Effects
Alliteration: The repetition of the same sound at the beginnings of words: “sessions of sweet silent thought”
or “Apt alliteration’s artful aid”
Onomatopeia: Words that by their sound suggest their meaning; the sound echoes the denotative sense:
“hiss” “buzz” “whirr” “coo”
Rhyme Scheme: The pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines, usually analyzed by assigned the same letter of the
alphabet to each similar sound. The rhyme scheme for the English or Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.
2. Rhythmic effects
Enjambment: The continuation of a sentence from one line of a poem to the next (do not pause at the end of
such a line as you read the poem). In this selection from Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” the first line carries over
to the second and the third carries over to the fourth—
“Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?’”
In his poem “To a Poor Old Woman,” William Carlos Williams breaks down a sentence three times in order to
present an old woman sensuously eating plums. The 1st and 4th lines are end-stopped, the middle 2 are enjambed.
They taste good to her.
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her
Foot: The basic unit of rhythm in verse, a foot is a group of stressed or unstressed syllables; as feet are repeated,
they form a metrical pattern.
“New York is home to cats and kings” (4 iambs)
“Double, double, toil and trouble” (4 trochees)
“Starting the car was a joy for the boy” (3 dactyls)
“Underneath his broad smile grew a dangerous guile”
(4 anapests)
SPONDEE: 2 syllables—equally stressed as far as possible: “heartbeat” “childhood” “bookcase”
“Hot sun, cool fire”
IAMB:
TROCHEE:
DACTYL:
ANAPEST:
2 syllables—unstressed, stressed:
2 syllables—stressed, unstressed:
3 syllables—stressed, unstressed, unstressed:
3 syllables—unstressed, unstressed, stressed:
Meter: The regular, rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, measured in feet.
one foot - monometer
two feet - dimeter
three feet - trimeter
four feet - tetrameter
five feet – pentameter
six feet - hexameter
seven feet – heptameter
eight feet - octometer
(the “alexandrine” is 6 iambs)
Scansion: Dividing the poetic line into feet, then counting feet in order to determine meter.
Because / I could / not stop / for death
He kind– / ly stopped / for me
iambic tetrameter
iambic trimeter
3. Figurative Language (non-literal use of language)
Apostrophe: Directly addressing someone absent or dead, or some abstract or imaginary quality or concept:
“Death, be not proud ” “Rose, thou art sick”
Connotation: The emotional implications and associations that words may carry, as distinguished from their
denotative meanings. Compare: “dine” with “eat”; “admirably schooled” with “well trained”; “junkie” with
“substance abuser”
Denotation: The basic meaning of a word, independent of its emotional associations
Imagery: A collective noun for “image.” Images are the visual content of poetry; they are representations in
poetry of any sensory experience—pictures seen, sounds heard, sensations touched, tasted, smelled—which the
poetic words evoke in the reader’s mind. “Poetry engages our capacity to make mental pictures.” (Edward Hirsch)
Metaphor: Any comparison in which one thing described in terms of another: Walt Whitman characterized
grass as “the beautiful uncut hair of graves.”
Metonymy: The substitution of the name of an object closely associated with a word for the word itself. We
say “The pen is mightier than the sword” and mean that writing (the pen) is more powerful than warfare (the
sword). Metonymy employs concrete, tangible terms to convey abstract states. We say “the heart” when we mean
“the emotions.”
Overstatement (Hyperbole): Saying more than is literally meant, or than is literally true. Exaggeration.
Overstatement may heighten effect or be humorous. Listen to Macbeth talk about how he can’t wash his hands of
the blood of King Duncan, whom he has just murdered: (“incarnadine” means blood red; Shakespeare uses it as a verb here)
“No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Understatement: Saying less than is meant or literally true; the literal sense of what is said falls detectably
short of the magnitude of what is being talk about. Understatement is quite effective since the reader tends to fill
in what is missing. From Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Man He Killed”: “Yes; quaint and curious war is!” Or,
Artemus Ward’s humorous: “A man who holds his hand in a lighted fire will experience a sensation of excessive
and disagreeable warmth.”
Personification: Endowing animals, ideas, abstractions, inanimate objects with human qualities—human form,
human personality, human intelligence and/or human emotion. Maya Angelou describes a powerful wind against
her chimney: “The chimney made fearful sounds of protest as it was invaded by the urgent gusts.”
Pun: A play on words based on the similarity of sound between two words with different meanings. Some
common poetic puns involve “sun” and “son” or “I” and “eye.” Mack and Boynton cite a witty limerick:
There was a young fellow named Hall,
Who fell in the spring in the fall;
’Twould have been a sad thing
If he’d died in the spring,
But he didn’t—he died in the fall.
Simile: Metaphoric comparison of two things using like or as in the statement.
My love is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
Synecdoche: A type of metonymy, which substitutes the name of a part of something for the whole thing. We
say “hired hand” when we mean a “worker. We say “wheels” for a car and “threads” for clothes. In both cases, an
important part of the object (the threads or the wheels) stands for the whole.
4. Forms and Structures
Blank Verse: Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, often used for longer dramatic and epic poems.
Milton used blank verse in Paradise Lost and it was standard form for Elizabethan theatre. “It has been estimated
that three-fourths of all English poetry is written in blank verse. (Hirsch)
Couplet: Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry. Shakespeare always ends his sonnets with a couplet, and
often uses a couplet to signal the end of a scene that is in prose or blank verse. “The couplet has been an elemental
stanzaic unit—a couple, a pairing—as long as there has been written rhyming poetry in English.” (Hirsch)
Free Verse: (Literal translation of vers libre, employed by French poets seeking freedom from the rather
cumbersome alexandrine). Free verse is unrhymed, nonmetrical—“a poetry of organic rhythms. . .often inspired by
the cadence of spoken language.” (Hirsch)
Quatrain: A stanza of four lines; often used as a unit of composition in longer poems, the quatrain may also be
complete unto itself! “It is probably the most common stanzaic form in the world.” (Hirsch) Rhyme possibilities:
abab aabb abba aaba abcb
Sonnet: A poem almost invariably of fourteen lines, written in rhymed iambic pentameter (in English), and
following one of several set rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) and the
ENGLISH (SHAKESPEAREAN).
The Italian sonnet is distinguished by its division into the octave (8 lines, rhyming abbaabba) and the sestet (6
lines, rhyming cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce)
The English sonnet uses four divisions: 3 quatrains (each with a rhyme scheme of its own) and a couplet. The
typical rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. The Spenserian sonnet complicates the Shakespearean form ,
interlinking rhymes among the quatrains: abab bcbc cdcd ee.
Whole books have been written just on the sonnet form!
5. General Terms
Allusion: An indirect reference to a biblical, literary, or historical person, place, or event—that which is alluded
to is only implied, not directly stated. Othello, as he gazes on Desdemona in preparation to strangle her, says: “I
know not where is that Promethean Heat / That can thy light relume.” In her short story “Parker’s Back,”
Flannery O’Connor alludes to the story of Moses and the burning bush when Parker runs a tractor into a tree, the
tree burns, and Parker is suddenly “changed.”
Diction: The writer’s choices of particular words or expressions—choices intended to effect clear, effective, and
precise meaning. In “Richard Cory,” poet E.A. Robinson describes a man who was “a gentleman from sole to
crown.” The word crown (meaning his head) is also suggestive of royalty, and serves the “gentleman” description
in a particularly effective way.
Explication: Literally, an unfolding or spreading out. Explication is a method of uncovering meaning, line by
line, of a written work. This close analysis calls attention to words, images, relationships, allusions, ambiguities—
all the devices skillfully employed by the writer that together comprise art and meaning.
Irony: The contrast between what is stated and what is meant (verbal), what a character knows and what the
audience knows (dramatic), or what is expected to happen and what really happens (situational). Broadly, irony
recognizes the “reality” that is separate from the “appearance.” When Huck Finn says “All right then, I’ll go to
hell!” The reader knows that what Huck says and believes (he will go to hell) is different from what Mark Twain
says and believes (Huck should be sainted for his compassion). In a popular country song, a sad farmer (who has
crops to tend and four hungry children to feed) says to his wife who has abandoned him, “You picked a fine time
to leave me, Lucille.” In this case, the farmer’s seeming words of praise of course really imply blame—it’s a
terrible time to leave!
Juxtaposition: A comparison achieved by placing two things or two concepts side by side in such a way as to
imply that the reader or listener should look for a connection. The great virtue of juxtaposition is that it is
unobtrusive.
Paradox: “A paradox makes a single truth grow from two elements that literally contradict each other.” (Boynton
and Mack).
The Bible says “The last shall be first.” We hear that “less is more.” Richard Bentley asserted that
there are “none so credulous as infidels.” Paradox is more than just witty; it invites the reader to understand “the
tensions of error and truth simultaneously.” Merriam Webster’s Reader’s Handbook
Symbol: Something that is itself and also stands for something else: the apple is a piece of fruit that represents
temptation and fall; the dove is a graceful bird and also the symbol for peace. Poet Garcia Lorca said, “The form
and fragrance of just one rose can be made to render an impression of eternity.”
Tone: The emotional climate of the poem—usually complex. Tone is often defined as the speaker’s implied
attitude toward the subject, himself, the audience, or other characters. Tone may be formal or informal, playful,
intimate, ironic, condescending, zealous, tender—as far and wide as feelings can range. It emerges from the
complex interactions among words, images, and allusions, from the sounds of the language—from all the artistic
talents employed by the writer. Tone is inseparable from the meaning of a poem.
Voice / Persona / Speaker: Poet W.B.Yeats said that the poet “never speaks directly as to someone at the
breakfast table.” Thus, we speak of the “voice” or “speaker” in a poem or a novel as that character or second self
through whom the story is told, the ideas conveyed. In some cases, the speaker is less distinctive, simply serving
as the voice. Other times, the speaker is a crucial contributor to the whole meaning of the poem. (See Robert
Browning’s “My Last Duchess” or “Porphyria’s Lover,” and E. A. Robinson’s “Richard Cory.”)
SOURCES USED:
A HANDBOOK TO LITERATURE by William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman
HOW TO READ A POEM by Edward Hirsch
INTRODUCTION TO THE POEM by Robert Boynton and Maynard Mack
MERRIAM WEBSTER’S READER’S HANDBOOK