English – Grade 9
Poetry Terms
Speaker: The voice in a poem that speaks to us
Lyric Poem: a poem that expresses a speaker’s emotions or thoughts. Lyric poems do
not tell a story, are often short, and usually convey a single strong emotion.
Free Verse: poetry that does not have a regular rhyme scheme or verse. In free verse,
poets often try to capture the natural rhythm of spoken language.
Haiku: a three-line poem with 17 syllables – 5 syllables in lines 1 and 3, and 7 syllables
in line 2. Haikus often contrast/compare two images from nature or daily life.
Sonnet: a 14-line lyric poem. Sonnets often focus on a single strong emotion. Most
sonnets have a regular rhythmic pattern and rhyme scheme.
Catalog Poem: a poem that presents a list of many different images to create depth
and intensity.
Ballad: a song that tells a story. Ballads use steady rhythm, strong rhymes, and
repetition.
Rhyme Scheme: a regular pattern of end rhymes.
Image: a word or phrase that appeals to one or more of the five senses. Sometimes an
image helps us imagine that we hear a sound, smell an odor, feel a texture, or taste
something.
Sensory Details: elements that help you imagine how something looks, sounds,
smells, feels, or tastes.
Figurative Language: expressions that put aside literal meanings in favor of
imaginative connections. Figures of speech are based on comparisons that are not
literally true.
Simile: two unlike things compared using a word such as like, as, than, or resembles.
Metaphor: a comparison of two unlike things in which one thing is said to be another.
direct metaphor: directly compares two things by using a verb such as is.
implied metaphor: implies or suggests a comparison between two things, rather than
stating the comparison directly.
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Personification: a type of metaphor, human qualities are given to something that is not
human, such as an object, an animal, or even an idea.
Rhyme: the repetition of a stressed vowel sound and any sounds that follow it in words
that are close together in a poem.
End rhyme: rhyme that occurs at the end of lines
Internal rhymes occur when at least one of the rhymed words falls within a line.
Approximate rhymes repeat some sounds but are not exact echoes.
Rhythm is a musical quality based on repetition.
One common form of rhythm is meter, a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables in the lines of a poem.
You can scan a poem to identify its meter. Stressed syllables are marked (′), and
unstressed syllables are marked (˘).
In poetry, a foot usually consists of one stressed syllable and one or more unstressed
syllables.
An iamb is a foot made of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
A trochee has a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.
An anapest has two unstressed syllables, then a stressed syllable.
A dactyl has one stressed syllable, then two unstressed syllables.
A spondee is two stressed syllables.
Using words that sound like what they mean is onomatopoeia.
Repeating the same consonant sound in several words is alliteration.
The repetition of vowel sounds in several words is assonance.
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