Poetry Vocabulary
Theme
 The central theme of a poem represents its controlling idea. This idea is crafted and
developed throughout the poem and can be identified by assessing the poem’s rhythm,
setting, tone, mood, diction and, occasionally, title. The theme is rarely stated explicitly,
and it is not a moral but an important idea that is prevalent throughout the poem.
Form
 The structure and organization of a poem
Symbolism
 The use of one object or action to represent or suggest something else.
 Example from Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken:
Then took the other [road], as just as fair, / And having perhaps the better claim, / Because it
was grassy and wanted wear;
A road which is “grassy and wanted wear.” This road symbolizes the poet’s choice to go
down a less common path in life, and not just the literal path in the forest. The other two
excerpts are simply his reflections on the choice, rather than the symbol itself.
Free Verse
 Poetry without rhythms and rhyme schemes; do not follow regular rhyme scheme rules and
still provide artistic expression. In this way, the poet can give his own shape to a poem how
he/she desires. However, it still allows poets to use alliteration, rhyme, cadences or rhythms
to get the effects that they consider are suitable for the piece.
Personification
 A figure of speech in which a thing, an idea or an animal is given human attributes.
“Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so?”
Have You Got A Brook In Your Little Heart
by Emily Dickinson
Verse
 A line of a poem.
Rhythm
 A musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables or by the
repetition of other certain sound patterns.
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
(Romeo Juliet by Shakespeare)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqhPp-ptoJA
Metaphor
 An imaginative comparison between two unlike things in which one thing is said to be
another
 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Sonnet 18
By William Shakespeare
Imagery
 Language that appeals to the seven senses.
Narrative Poetry
 A Poem that tells a story.
 NOT an epic: Epics have superhuman or extraordinary happenings, narratives do not.
Stanzas
 A group of consecutive lines in a poem
that form a single unit. It is comparable to
a paragraph in a essay.
Figurative Language
 An expressive form of language.
 Examples: Simile, Metaphor,
Personification, Onomatopoeia,
Hyperbole, Alliteration, etc.
Rhyme
 The repetition of accented vowel sounds
and all sounds following them in words
that are close together in a poem.
Simile
 A comparison between two unlike things,
using words such as like, as, than, or
resembles.
 Example: Her face was as round as a
pumpkin.
Allteration
 The repetition of consonant sounds in
words that are close together.
 Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of
pickled peppers. How many pickled
peppers did Peter Piper pick?
Onomatopoeia
 Words whose sounds suggest their
meaning.
 Example: Pop, whizz, sizzle, snap, crackle,
boom, etc.
Hyperbole
 Involves an exaggeration of ideas for the
sake of emphasis.