Selected English and American Poems
Literary Terms for Discussing Poetry
Alliteration: The repetition of initial sounds or prominent consonant sounds. Examples: “All the
awful auguries;” “pensive poets;” “after life’s fitful fever;” “I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance” (from
Tennyson’s “The Brook”)
Apostrophe: An addressing to an absent or imagined person or to a thing as if it were present and
could listen. Example: “Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England hath need of thee:
she is a fen / Of stagnant waters:” (from William Wordsworth, “London, 1802”)
Assonance: The repetition, in words of close proximity, of same or similar vowel sounds,
especially in stressed syllables, preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds. Examples:
“deep green sea;” “light / bride;” “tide / mine” (note that tide and hide are rhymes).
Ballad: A short narrative poem, especially one that is sung or recited, composed of quatrains, with
8, 6, 8, 6 syllables, with the second and fourth lines rhyming. A ballad often contains a refrain (i.e.
a repeated phrase, line, or group of lines). Examples: “Jackaroe;” “The Long Black Veil”
Blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Examples: Shakespeare's plays
Carpe diem poetry: Poems, whose theme is “to seize the day,” that is concerned with the shortness
of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present. Examples: Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make
Much of Time”; Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
Consonance: The counterpart of assonance; the repetition of identical consonant sounds in words
whose main vowels differ. Also called half rhyme or slant rhyme. Examples: shadow / meadow;
pressed / passed; trolley / bully; fail / peel.
Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually, but not necessarily, with end-rhymes (i.e. the rhyming
words occur at the ends of the lines). Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet.
Diction: The choice of vocabulary and of grammatical constructions. In poetry, it can be formal or
high—proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language; neutral or middle—correct
language characterized by directness and simplicity; or informal or low—relaxed, conversational
and familiar language. Example: there is a difference in diction between “One never knows” and
“You never can tell.”
Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme: Rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is
accented. Example: flower / shower
Dramatic monologue: A poetic form, derived from the theater, in which the poet chooses a
moment or a crisis, in which his characters are made to talk about their lives and their minds and
hearts to one or more other characters whose presence is strongly felt. In some dramatic
monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may reveal his personality in
unexpected and unflattering ways. Examples: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess;” T. S. Eliot’s
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;” Tennyson’s “Ulysses”
Elegy: A lyric poem expressing sadness, usually a lament for the dead. Example: Thomas Gray’s
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Enjambment: The continuation of the grammatical construction and logical sense of a line on to
the next line or lines for the purpose of special effect. Also called run-on lines. Example: “The
Count your master’s known munificence / Is ample warrant that no just pretense / Of mine for
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dowry will be disallowed…. ” (from Browning, “My Last Duchess”)
Epic: A long narrative poem, dignified in theme and elevated in style, that usually records how a
hero, through experiences of great adventure, accomplishes important deeds. Examples: Homer’s
“Odyssey;” Milton’s “Paradise Lost”
Eye rhyme: Words that look as if they should rhyme because they are spelled identically but
pronounced differently. Examples: heath / death; watch / catch, bear / fear, dough / cough
End rhyme: Identical sounds at the ends of lines of poetry. Also called “terminal rhyme.” Example:
“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night” (from William Blake, “The Tyger”).
Feminine rhyme (double rhyme): Stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identical unstressed
syllables. Examples: fatter / batter; tenderly / slenderly; revival / arrival
Foot: A basic metrical unit, consisting of two or three syllables, with a specified arrangement of
the stressed syllable or syllables. The repetition of feet can produce a pattern of stresses
throughout the poem. The numbers of feet are given here: monometer (one foot); dimeter (two
feet); trimeter (three feet); tetrameter (four feet); pentameter (five feet); hexameter (six feet);
heptameter or septenary (seven feet); Octameter (eight feet).
Free verse: Poetry in lines of irregular length, usually unrhymed and often largely based on
repetition and parallel grammatical structure. Examples: Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My
Captain!”; Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Bean Eaters”
Heroic couplet: Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter, often “closed,” i.e.
containing a complete thought. It is called heroic because in England, especially in the 18th
century, it was much used for heroic (epic) poems. Examples: “Be not the first by whom the new
are tried, / Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.” (frorm Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism”)
Iambic pentameter: The most natural and common kind of metrical pattern in English. Example:
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, / The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, / The
plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to me” (from
Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”).
Image: An Image is language that appeals to the senses, such as sight (visual), sounds (auditory),
tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). Imagery refers to images
throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers. Images frequently do
more than offer only sensory impressions. They also convey emotions and moods. Examples: “the
gray sea and the long black land” (visual); “and quench its speed i’ the slushy sand” (auditory);
“sea-scented beach” (olfactory); Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (visual and tactile)
Lyric poem: A short poem, often songlike, with the emphasis not on narrative but on the speaker’s
emotion or reverie. Example: Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Masculine rhyme: Rhyme of one-syllable words such as lies / cries or, if more than one syllable,
words in which the final syllables are stressed and, after their differing initial consonant sounds,
are identical in sound. Examples: stark / mark; support / retort; behold / foretold
Metaphor: A kind of figurative language equating two literally incompatible things with each other,
without a connective such as like or a verb such as appears or resembles. Examples: “Oh, my love
is a red, red rose” (the speaker’s love is equated with a rose); “a piercing cry” (a cry is compared
to a spear or other sharp instrument)
Metaphysical conceit: An elaborate and extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently
unrelated fields or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas. The term is
commonly applied to the metaphorical language of a number of early 17th century poets,
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particularly John Donne. Examples: Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning;” Marvell’s
“To His Coy Mistress”
Meter: A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The most common kinds of metrical feet in
English poetry are the five listed below:
Iamb (iambic): An unstressed stressed foot. The most common rhythm in English verse.
Examples: alone; away; “My heart is like a singing bird”
Trochee (trochaic): A stressed unstressed foot. Examples: happy; garden, “Tyger! Tyger!
Burning bright;”He was / louder / than the / preacher
Anapest (anapestic): An unstressed unstressed stressed foot. Also called “galloping meter.”
Examples: “As I came / to the edge / of the wood;” “There are man / -y who
say / that a dog / has his day”
Dactyl (dactylic): A stressed unstressed unstressed foot. Examples: underwear; constantly;
Take her up / tenderly; Sing it all / merrily
Spondee (spondaic): A stressed stressed foot. Examples: True-blue; smart lad; sweet rose;
dead set; “ (That the) night come”
Ode: A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form; Usually a serious poem on
an exalted subject. Example: Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”
Onomatopoeia: A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the
sound of the activity being described. Examples: hiss; buzz; murmur; whirr
Oxymoron: A self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units. Also can be seen as
a compact paradox. Examples: bittersweet; a pleasing pain; hurry slowly. An exaggerated
employment of oxymoron can be seen in Romeo’s speech early in Romeo and Juliet:
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
Paradox: A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true with a
logic structure. Examples: “More haste, less speed;” “less is more;” “The child is father of the
man”
Pentameter: A line of verse containing five feet.
Personification: Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions.
Prosody: The principles of versification, particularly as they refer to rhyme, meter, rhythm, and
stanza.
Quatrain: A four-line stanza or poetic unit. In an English or Shakespearean sonnet, a group of four
lines united by rhyme.
Rhyme: The repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at
the ends of lines. Unlike rhythm, rhyme is not basic to poetry; but it is pleasant, suggests order,
and may be related to meaning implying a relationship. Examples: lie / high; June / moon; stay /
play; tender / slender; throne / alone; love / dove
Rhyme scheme: The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to
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each rhyme at the end of a line of poetry. Example: The rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnet
often is abab cdcd efef gg.
Scan (scansion): The process of marking the kind and number of feet in poetic lines to establish
the prevailing metrical pattern. Example: The scansion of the line “The summer thunder, like a
wooden bell” tells readers that it is iambic pentameter.
Shakespearean sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, composed of three
quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Also called the English sonnet. Shakespeare
was its most distinguished practitioner.
Slant rhyme: A near or approximate but not true rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds
are identical but not the vowels. Also called oblique rhyme, off-rhyme and pararhyme. Examples:
sun / noon, should / food, slim / ham.
Soliloquy: A speech in a play, in which a character alone on the stage speaks his or her thoughts
aloud. Examples: Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Sonnet: A closed form of poem almost invariably of fourteen lines and following one of several set
rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the Italian or Petrarchan and the English or
Shakespearean. The sonnet developed in Italy probably in the 13th century and the form was
introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt.
Stanza: A group of poetic lines forming a unit corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters
and rhymes are usually repeating or systematic.
Terza rima: An interlocking rhyme scheme with the pattern aba bcb cdc, etc. Example: Shelley’s
“Ode to the West Wind”
Verse: (1) a line of poetry; (2) a stanza of a poem
Versification: The art and practice of writing verse. It includes all the mechanical elements making
up poetic composition: accent, rhyme, meter, rhyme, stanza form, diction, and such aids as
assonance, onomatopoeia, and alliteration.
Guidelines for Reading Poetry Responsively
The following guidelines can help you respond to important elements that reveal a poem’s
effects and meanings. The questions listed are general, so not all of them will necessarily be
relevant to a particular poem. Many, however, should prove useful for thinking, discussing,
understanding, and writing about poetry.
1. Read the poem a few times slowly and aloud.
2. Make sure you understand the grammar of each sentence so that you can follow what each
sentence literally says. If there are deviations form normal syntax, consider the reasons for
them.
3. Try relating the poem to your own experience in your life, work or study.
4. Pay attention to the title. What does it mean or emphasize? Does it provide any context for
the poem?
5. Rephrase the poem in your own words. What does your paraphrase reveal about the
poem’s subject and central concerns? What is lost or gained in your paraphrase?
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6. Study the poem’s voice. Who is the speaker? Is it possible to determine his or her age, sex,
level of awareness, and values? Is he or she addressing anyone in particular? How would you
characterize the poem’s tone? Is it consistent? What is the setting or situation?
7. Analyze the poem’s diction. Look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Examine the
denotations and connotations of the words the poet chose. Is dialect used? Is word order
unusual or unexpected? How does the arrangement of words reveal the meaning or the theme
of the poem?
8. Consider the poem’s use of allegory, allusion, myth, and symbols. In what way are they
related to the poem’s theme? Does the poem also use imagery or figures of speech such as
metaphor, simile, irony, personification, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy, etc.? How do
they enrich the poem’s vividness or meaning?
9. Listen to the poem’s sound and rhythm. What is the predominant rhythm or meter? Are
they regular or irregular? Is the rhythm consistent with the tone of the poem? Does the poem
use alliteration? Assonance? Rhyme? What effect do they produce in the poem?
10. Consider the poem’s form. Is the poem constructed as a sonnet? An ode? An elegy? A
lyric? A free verse? Is the form appropriate for shaping the poem’s thought and emotion?
11. Identify the poem’s theme. What central theme or themes does the poem explore? How
are the themes expressed?
12. Consider the biographical and historical information about the author and the poem which
might provide a useful context for interpretation of the poem.
13. Don’t expect to produce a definitive reading. Many poems do not resolve all the ideas,
issues, or tensions in them. Your reading will explore rather than define the poem.
Suggestions for Scanning a Poem
1. After reading the poem through, read it aloud. Try listening for natural emphases or
accented syllables in the rhythm of the line.
2. Mark the stressed syllables first, and then mark the unstressed syllables. Several methods
can be used to mark lines. One widely used system employs ˊ for a stressed syllable
and ˇ for an unstressed syllable.
3. If you are not sure which syllables should be stressed, look for two- and three-syllable
words in a line and pronounce them as you would normally pronounce them. For
Examples, you'd say beLOW, not Below, MURmuring, not murMURing or murmurING.
4. Try breaking the words into syllables so that you can see them individually instead of as
part of a word. For example: You’d say “The CUR few TOLLS the KNELL of PART ing
DAY,” not “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” This will make it easier to find the
stressed syllables.
5. From your markings, identify the dominant kind of foot (iambic, trochaic, dactylic, or
anapestic) and divide the lines into feet.
6. Count up the number of feet in each line (Remember that there may be variations; what is
important is the overall pattern). Put the kind of foot together with the number of feet, and
you've identified the meter. Examples: “The CUR | few TOLLS | the KNELL | of PART
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| ing DAY” is iambic pentameter whereas “As I CAME | to the EDGE | of the WOODS”
is anapestic trimeter.
7. Keep in mind that scansion does not always yield a definitive measurement of a line. What
really matters is not a precise description of the line but an awareness of how a poem’s
rhythms contribute to its effects.
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