POETRY TERMS
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/glossary_of_poetic_terms.htm
ALLUSION: Reference to other sources: myth, art, literature, cultural icon or event
ANAPHORA: Repetition of beginning words, as in Genesis 1.
APOSTROPHE: When the listener is dead or otherwise unable to hear the poem
APHORISM: Brief, memorable statement of a truth or principle (maxim, epigram, adage)
AUBADE: A poem dealing with lovers waking up in the morning
BALLAD: A narrative poem about an important historical or social event or lurid love affair
CHIASMUS: Phrase reversal: “For we that live to please, must please to live.” Samuel Johnson
CONNOTATION: The emotional quality of a word (house, home) (dog, canine) (naked, nude)
DENOTATION: The dictionary definition. Double entendres arise if more than one meaning
DRAMATIC FRAMEWORK: The context in which the poem takes place: Sometimes setting
DRAMATIC OR DIALOGUE POEM: Spoken by more than one person
DREAM-VISION POEM: Poem that recounts a dream, often with surrealistic elements
ELEGY or DIRGE: Poem or lament for the dead; a poem composed in elegiac couplets
IMAGERY: Sensory words used to convey place, time, character, or mood
LISTENER: The one listening to the poem, not necessarily the audience
LYRIC or MEDITATIVE POEM: An idea or image
MALAPROPISM: Ludicrous misuse of language (The Rivals, Richard Sheridan, 1775)
MOOD: Atmosphere
NARRATIVE POEM: Tells a story about a person or an event
PARATAXIS/PARATACTICAL: Simple phrases / no causal subordination. (See “The Crossing”)
PASTORAL POEM: A poem dealing with shepherds, flocks, nature and love and such
PROSE MEANING: The paraphrase that sucks the life out of the poem
PROSE POEM: Prose that is overwhelmingly poetic and lyrical – usually short
REFRAIN: Whole lines or groups of lines in a fixed pattern
REPETITION: Repeating words or phrases, or lines
SPEAKER (Voice): The character saying the poem, not necessarily the poet
SYNESTHESIA: Combining metaphors of the senses: Smelling the color blue.
SYNTAX: The structure of sentences in the poem
TONE: Attitude
SOUNDS
Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonants: tried and true
Anaphora: repetition of beginning words, as in Genesis and the Book of John.
Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds: Time out of Mind
Cacophony or Dissonance: consonants – buzzing s, x, z… plosives (b,d,g,k,p,t)
Consonance: Repetition of end consonants: short and sweet; struts and frets
Euphony: beautiful sounds – vowels and certain consonants (r,l,v,n,m,w,y,f,wh,sh,th)
Onomatopoeia/ poetic words: Words that make the same sound as meaning; cluck; plop
Phonetic intensives: Intensification of sensation through use of sound.
(See Blackberry Eating poem) fl: flame; sl: slosh; st: strength; short i: bitsy;
long o: sorrow; att: chatter; spatter; er/le: repetition of action; ck: sudden end
Combination of Assonance and Alliteration: alack and alas; fit as a fiddle.
Rhyme is a combination of assonance and consonance. Alliteration, assonance and consonance are
considered within a line…close approximation to the lingering sound, or importance of a word. What
does alliteration do for a poet? What does rhyme do?
RHYME (Perfect Rhyme)
perfect rhyme: final accented vowel sound and all succeeding sounds rhyme: great and late; rider
and beside her; dutiful and unbeautiful. divorce and remorse.
masculine rhyme: a rhyme made on one stressed syllable: still and hill; fly and sky
feminine or double rhyme: two syllables rhyme, but not stressed at the end: frightful and spiteful;
fertile and turtle ; assonance and consonance
triple rhyme: three syllables rhyme (see Ira Gershwin songs) icicle and bicycle
internal rhyme: two words within the same line rhyme
external rhyme: two words within separate lines rhyme
end rhyme: words at the end of the line rhyme
approximate, near, or slant rhyme: sounds are similar at the end of the line by using assonance,
alliteration, or consonance: strut and fret . This term also includes:
half-rhymes: one syllable rhymes: lightly and frightful; yellow and willow
eye rhymes: love and move
Forced rhymes: rhinoceros and prepocerous, platinum and flatten ‘em;
hoist her and cloister
NOTE: Everyone seems to say something different about these definitions!
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE (tropes)
Allegory –The whole story represents something else, with ulterior symbols taking precedent
Apostrophe—Addressing a dead person or inanimate object or animal
Conceit or Extended Metaphor—The comparison extends and the two figures remain the same.
Either can be named or implied. When it is the entire poem, it is called poetic CONCEIT.
Irony – Three types:
Dramatic – Contrast between what the reader knows and the characters don’t
Situational - The contrast between the unexpected and the expected
Verbal – The contrast between what is meant and what is not meant. (A lie.)
Metaphor – Direct Connection or specific substitution of normally unlike objects
Metaphor and Simile always have a literal and figurative term / Simile – Like or As
Metonymy—Something like the object represents the whole. Substitution.
Life: Meaning blood ; The World: Meaning Humanity; Tomorrow: Meaning the last one!
Overstatement or Hyperbole – exaggerating the importance of something
Personification – Characteristics of a human
Symbol—The thing itself and a much larger and diverse meaning.
Synecdoche—a part stands for the whole (Perrine and others combine this with metonymy.)
The Hands: Manual laborers; An Ear: Listening ; Tongues: Languages
Merismus—When something is described in terms of extremes: It was the best of times; it was the
worst of times. ; I am the alpha and the omega. ; From Alaska to Florida,…
Understatement – Stating something is less important than it is
Litotes – understatement in which something is proven by negating its opposite:
This is no small thing. (After being shot: That wasn’t nice. Vs. That was mean. )
PATTERN
Stanza: An ordered pattern of rhyme and meter
terza rima
aba bcb cdc (etc.)
ottava rima
abababcc
ballad meter
x(4)a(3)x(4)a(3)x(4)
rhyme royal
ababbcc iambic pentameter
villanelle
Five tercets/quatrain—see Do Not Go Gentle
Spenserian Stanza
ababbcb/cc iambic pentameter/hexameter
Petrarchan/Italian Sonnet
abbaabba (octave); various rhyme in sestet: cdcdcd , cdecde
volta
Ninth line of the Petrarchan sonnet; presents new idea
Shakespearean/English
abab cdcd efef gg /abab bcbc cdcd ee (iambic pentameter)
heroic couplets
aabbcc (iambic pentameter-Chaucer)
heroic quatrain
abab (iambic pentameter)
heroic stanza
aabb (two heroic couplets, in iambic pentameter)
limerick
a(3)a(3)b(2)b(2)a(3) anapestic
sestina:
Complex form of alternating words
ode
Massive lyric poem to praise and glorify someone or a meditation
Pindaric Ode:
To praise and glorify. From dramatic choral songs. Stanza patterns are in
sets of three: 1) strophe 2) ANTISTROPHE 3) epode
Strophe and Antistrophe have same pattern. Epode differs.
Horatian Ode:
Meditative and homostrophic.
Palinode:
Rejection of earlier types of poems.
Typographical Design: Christmas Tree Poem; Poem in shape of subject
Continuous Form:
Slight design, paragraphs
Verse Paragraph:
Poetry form is in paragraphs
Couplet:
Tercet:
Quatrain:
Quintain:
Sestet:
Octave:
Two lines of rhymed poetry
Three lines of poetry
Four lines of poetry
Five lines of poetry
Six lines of poetry
Eight lines of poetry
METER (Repeated rhythm-prosody): Verse is language written in meter.
Not all verse is poetry. Not all poetry is verse.
NOTE: Speech is rhythmic, but not always metrical. Verse controls the chaos of language.
BLANK VERSE: Unrhymed iambic pentameter
CADENCE: A balanced rhythmic flow or meter.
CAESURA: punctuation inside the line, or natural or metrical pause within the line
ELISION: leaving out syllables in a word: o’er, e’er, n’er
END-STOPPED: line ends with natural speech pause, usually with punctuation
ENJAMBMENT (RUN ON): line continues to next line grammatically
FOOT: One metric unit. Poetic measure is determined by number of feet per line.
FREE VERSE: No metrical pattern
MEASURE: Feet per line of poetry
PROSODY: Study of metrical system of verse
SCAN: To find the metric pattern of a poem, also called its SCANSION. The reading of the poem
determines METER: Also, natural accents on syllables determines stress.
Articles and
prepositions are not often stressed. You can have leftover unaccented syllables: Iambs or
anapest usually at the end. Trochees or dactyls, at the beginning.
STRESS: The accented syllables force stress, but other words can carry it.
TO SLOW METER: Stresses; long vowels; hard to pronounce consonant combinations; grammar
rhetorical pauses
TO SPEED METER: triple meters faster (unaccented faster—short vowels and consonants)
Duple Meters:
Iambic
u/
Trochaic
/u
(Iamb)
(Trochee)
Triple Meters:
Anapestic
uu/
Dactylic
/uu
(Anapest) (Alexandrine : anapestic tetrameter)
(Dactyl)
Oddball Meters:
Spondee
Monosyllabic Foot
Pyrrhic
Molussus
//
/
uu
///
Words to describe measure, or feet per poetic line:
mo-nom’-eter
tetrameter
dim’-eter
pentameter
trim’-eter
hexameter
heptameter
octameter
Poetry is meant to be performed. The listeners cue in to poetry mainly through its music. Meter
and Rhyme make a pattern. It lets listeners know when one stanza or idea is done. It involves
listener to anticipate coming rhymes or ideas. Meter can carry emotion. Repetition carries
emotional weight. Going off-meter draws attention to a passage.
1) Don’t need to scan a line first, but… Good performers would. You need to understand the
meaning of a poem to know which words are better stressed than not, where to keep a strict
rhythm, and where to stray. Meter is pretty tied to interpretation of meaning.
2) Stresses can carry different weight. Not all stresses are the same. Scansion does not cover
these differences. Although this is not an exact science…
3) You can’t change the natural stresses in words, unless purposefully done.
4) Perfectly regular meter is NOT the goal. Beauty is in pattern and variation. There should be a
difference between the expected and the heard. Should not be a strictly metrical (expected)
reading. Verse is NOT necessarily POETRY!
5) Sound and meter repetition: pleasing; emotional intent; directs attention and awareness;
reinforces meaning.
Elements of Romantic Poetry: 19TH Century. (But starts earlier, with William Blake.)
 personal experience
 subjective emotion
 noble peasant/ common folks and earthy language
 against social injustice/the individual over the majority
 heightened or altered states (sometimes induced!) morbid and gothic
 attention to the medieval and heroic
 nature as an extension of feelings as part of the individual/ nature as God
 heightened consciousness/passion
William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats,
Lord Byron (George Gordon) and Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Elements of Metaphysical Poetry:
(English Renaissance, Commonwealth Era and Enlightenment)
Samuel Johnson, in describing metaphysical conceit, or “wit”: “a kind of discordia concors; a
combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently
unlike…The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.”
 Use of conceit, or “violent” metaphor that consumes the entire poem
 Intensely intellectual; exploiting all knowledge
 Topics are theological, philosophical, secular and fabulous
 Opposes idealized view of human nature and sexual love
 Diction is leveled more to actual speech than to the high diction of Renaissance
 Often in the form of an argument.
 Realistic, often ironic, and cynical
 Fit to the times for intellectual play, but later criticized for being obtuse
 Naturally, T.S. Eliot and his ilk (Ezra Pound) loved these poems, and revitalized them.
John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughn, Richard Cranshaw, John Cleveland, Andrew Marvell,
and Abraham Cowley.
What can poetry do better than prose? What is a poem?
Poetry attempts to recreate pleasure and experience to deepen the meaning of life—acutely
focusing to increase awareness and intensity of a subject. Not only the visual dimensions, but the
emotional dimensions of our world, as well. It is a synthesis of experience: scientific and the
literary—participatory and observational. Poetry is a multidimensional language: meter, sound,
meaning, intelligence, senses, emotions, and imaginations. With poetry, there is no moral, no beauty,
no truth except that which is the poem itself. Poetry also has the ability to sneak beneath the
radar of the political world, and effect change.
Perrine’s best quotes:
 “To be intensely alive is the opposite of being dead.”
 “(T)o come alive (a poem) must be as cunningly put together and as efficiently organized as a
tree.”
 “(A) paraphrase is useful only if you understand that it is… no more equivalent to the poem than
a corpse is to a person.”
Review Sheet for Poetry Terms
Alliteration
Metric Foot
Allusion
Metonymy
Anapest
Synecdoche
Apostrophe
Monometer
Assonance
Octave
Aubade
Ode
Ballad
Onomatopoeia
Blank Verse
Pastoral Poem
Cacophony and Euphony
Pentameter
Caesura
Personification
Conceit
Phonetic Intensive
Connotation
Prose Meaning
Dactyl
Scansion
Denotation
Seduction Poem
Dramatic Framework
Simile
Dramatic Irony
Slant Rhyme
Verbal Irony
Sonnets
Situational Irony
Speaker
Elegy
Symbolism
Elision
Trochee
End Rhyme
Villanelle
Enjambment
Figurative Language
Figure
Free verse
Hexameter
Hyperbole and Understatement
Iamb
Imagery
Internal Rhyme
Limerick
Listener
Masculine Rhyme
Feminine Rhyme
Metaphor
Meter: duple and triple