Poetry Terms
Mrs. Denise Stanley
alliteration
 Repetition of consonant sounds at the
beginnings of words
 Example: ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of
pickled peppers …’
assonance
 Repetition of vowel sounds
consonance
 Repetition of consonant sounds at the ends
of words
rhyme
 Repetition of sounds at the ends of words
 Example: cat, mat, fat, hat, etc.
denotation
 Dictionary meaning of a word
 Example: ‘house’ and ‘home’ could both be
defined as a place to live
 ‘Thin’ and ‘skinny’ both mean not overweight
connotation
 Feelings associated with a word
 Example: ‘House’ and ‘home’ are defined as
a place to live, but ‘home’ seems more
comforting than ‘house.’
 ‘Skinny’ is not as positive sounding as ‘thin.’
‘Thin’ seems more attractive.
metaphor
 Makes a direct comparison between unlike
objects
 Example: “He is a monster.”
You are not saying he is like a monster or that
he looks like a monster, you are saying he
and the monster are one in the same.
simile
 Comparison of unlike objects using ‘like’ or
‘as.’
 Example: “She is as pretty as a picture.”
You are not saying she and the picture are
one in the same.
 “Clouds like cotton candy floated across the
sky.” -- You are not saying the clouds are
cotton candy; you are saying they are like
cotton candy.
onomatopoeia
 Use of words to imitate sounds
 Example: animal sounds like ‘moo,’ ‘hiss,’
‘meow,’ etc.
personification
 Giving something not human, human
characteristics
 Examples: Arms of a chair; legs of a chair;
face of a clock
 Further example: “The sun raced across the
sky.” (The sun is not human, so it cannot
literally race.)
stanzas
 Groups of lines in a poem, considered as a
unit – lines separated by white spaces
meter
 Regular pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables in poetry
Iambic pentameter
 Line of poetry that contains five iambs. (An
iamb is a metrical foot – or unit of measure –
that has one unstressed syllable followed by
a stressed syllable.)
Lines of poetry
 2 lines = couplet
 3 lines = tercet
 4 lines = quatrain
 5 lines = cinquain
 6 lines = sestet
 7 lines = septet
 8 lines = octave
free verse
 Poetry that does not have a pattern or a
rhyme scheme
blank verse
 Unrhymed poetry in a regular pattern
sonnets
 Poems with 14 lines with a definite rhyme
scheme
narrative poetry
 Poem that tells a story
ballad
 Narrative poem that was originally meant to
be sung
ode
 Poem with a single purpose, dealing with a
single theme
elegy
 Poem about death or other solemn theme
epic poem
 Long, narrative poem
concrete poem
 Poem written in the shape of its subject
lyric poetry
 Highly musical verse that expresses observations
and/or feelings of a single speaker
refrain
 The “chorus” of a poem
 (Like the “chorus” in a song … song lyrics)
tanka
 Five-line poem thirty-one syllables long
 1st line: 5 syllables
 2nd line: 7 syllables
 3rd line: 5 syllables
 4th line: 7 syllables
 5th line: 7 syllables