Poetry Terms
Poetry Unit
 Alliteration
– the repetition of consonant
sounds, especially at the beginning of words
 Allusion –Unacknowledged reference and
quotations authors assume their readers will
recognize.
 Assonance – the repetition of similar vowel
sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or
prose. EX: assonantal “I’s” in the following
lines: “How soon unaccountable I became
tired and sick,/ Till rising and gliding out I
wander’d off by myself.”
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Ballad – a narrative poem written in four-line
stanzas, characterized by swift action and
narrated in direct style.
Blank Verse– A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed
iambic pentameter. (E.g. Shakespeare’s plays)
Connotation – The associations called up by a
word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning.
Consonance – the counterpart of assonance; the
partial or total identity of consonants in words
whose main vowels differ (ex. Shadow, meadow,
pressed, passed)
Couplet – A pair of rhymed lines that may or may
not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. (E.g.
“For thy sweet love remembered such wealth
brings /That then I scorn to change my state with
kings.
 Dactyl
– a stressed syllable followed by two
unstressed ones, as in FLUT-er-ing or BLUE-berry.
 Denotation – The dictionary meaning of a
word. Writers typically play off a word’s
denotative meaning against its connotative
meaning.
 Diction – level of formality that a speaker
uses
 Epic – a long narrative poem that records
the adventures of a hero.
 Figurative Language – a form of language
use in which writers and speakers convey
something other than the literal meaning of
their words.
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Foot – A meterical unit composed of stressed and
unstressed syllables.
Free Verse – Poetry without regular pattern of meter
or rhyme. The verse is “free” in not being bound my
earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to
adhere to explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme
scheme.
Hyperbole – a figure of speech involving
exaggeration.
Iamb – An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
one.
Imagery – The pattern of related comparative
aspects of language, particularly images, in a
literary work.
Internal rhyme – an exact rhyme within a line of
poetry: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I
pondered, weak and weary.
 Irony
– A contrast or discrepancy between
what is said and what is meant or between
what happens and what is expected to
happen in life and literature.
 Metaphor – A comparison between
essentially unlike things without an explicitly
comparative word such as like or as.
 Meter – The measured pattern of rhythmic
accents in poems.
 Narrative Poem – a poem that tells a story
 Narrator (Speaker) – The voice and implied
speaker of a fictional work, to be
distinguished from the actual living author.
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Ode – A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied
length, meter and form. Usually a serious poem on
an exalted subject.
Onomatopoeia – The use of words to imitate sounds
they describe. (E.g. buzz, crack)
Paradox – a rhetorical figure emodyng a seeming
contradiction that is nonetheless true. (EX. “What a
pity that youth must be wasted on the young.” OW)
Personification – Giving inanimate objects or
abstract concepts animate or living qualities.
Point of View – The view from which a story is
narrated.
Quatrain – a four-line stanza in a poem, the first four
lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan
sonnet.
Rhyme – The matching of final vowel or consonant
sounds in two or more words.
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Rhythm – The recurrence of accent or stress in lines
of verse .
Refrain – repeated word or series of words in
response or counterpoint to the main verse, as in a
ballad.
Sestet – A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza
or section of a poem.
Simile – A figure of speech involving a comparison
between unlike things using like, as, or as though.
Sonnet – A fourteen-line poem in iambic
pentameter.
Stanza – A division or unit of a poem that is
repeated in the same form – either with similar or
identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with
variations from one stanza to another.
Tone – the implied attitude of a writer toward the
subject and characters of a work.
Trochee – An accented syllable followed by an
unaccented on, as in FOOT-ball.