Mrs. Carmichael
English 11 & 12
GLOSSARY OF POETRY TERMS
Poetry:
an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through
meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an
emotional response
Verse:
another term for poetry
POETRY CLASSIFICATION
All poems fall under one of the following classifications:
descriptive: Describes the physical, or sensory, aspects or a scene or object:
sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound
lyric:
Expresses thoughts and feelings
narrative:
Tells a story
didactic:
poems that exist to teach the readers something, often a moral
dramatic:
Tells a story by using speech and action (e.g. Shakespeare’s plays)
POETRY FORMS
Some poems also have a specific form:
cinquain:
A five-line poem with a fixed syllable count The count is 2,4,6,8,2
concrete
(Shaped) Poetry: Takes on the shape of is subject
free Verse: Does not have regular rhyme or rhythm
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Mrs. Carmichael
ballad:
English 11 & 12
A narrative poem with regular rhyme and rhythm, originally written
to be sung
dramatic monologue: a poem representing itself as a speech made by one
person to a silent listener, usually not the reader. Examples include
Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," Alfred Lord Tennyson's
"Ulysses," and T S Eliot's "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" A
lyric may also be addressed to someone, but it is short and songlike and may appear to address either the reader or the poet
elegy:
a melancholy poem lamenting its subject's death but ending in
consolation
epic:
an extended narrative poem with a heroic or superhuman
protagonist engaged in an action of great significance in a vast
setting
epigram:
a brief witty poem
ode:
a poem of high seriousness with irregular stanzas
pastoral:
a poem that extols the virtues of country life
lines from “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe
Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield."
There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals
sonnet:
A lyric poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter following one of
several possible rhyme schemes
STANZAS AND THEIR FORMS
couplet:
a pair of successive rhyming lines
triplet:
a group of three lines of verse
quatrain:
a four line poem or stanza with regular rhyme and rhythm
ballad stanza: a quatrain with regular rhythm and rhyme, such as might be
found in a ballad
quintain:
a five-line stanza or poem
sestet:
a six-line stanza or poem
octave:
an eight-line stanza or poem
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Mrs. Carmichael
English 11 & 12
refrain:
a line or lines repeated at intervals during a poem
stanza:
a group of two or more lines in a poem linked on the basis of
length, meter, rhyme scheme, or thought A poetry “paragraph”
SOUND DEVICES
alliteration: the repetition of sounds in nearby words, usually involving the first
consonant sounds
assonance: The close repetition of similar vowel sounds
cacophony: unpleasant dissonance
consonance: The close repetition of identical consonant sounds
dissonance: harsh-sounding language Also called cacophony
euphony:
a pleasing harmony of sounds The opposite of cacophony
iambic pentameter: a meter that consists of five, two-syllable feet called iambs
It is the meter for Shakespeare’s drama and for sonnets, and is the
pattern that most closely approximates normal speech
meter:
the rhythmic pattern of a line, usually caused by the number and
arrangement of metrical units called “feet”
onomatopoeia: – Words that imitate the sounds they represent e.g. crunch,
buzz
parallelism: two or more expressions that share traits, whether metrical, lexical,
figurative, or grammatical, and can take the form of a list
repetition: When a sound, word, phrase, line or stanza is repeated
rhyme: similarity of sounds
rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyme within a stanza or poem
rhythm: the number of syllables per line and the pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE & OTHER IDEAS
allusion: a reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event,
movement, etc
apostrophe: an address to a dead or absent person or personification as if he
or she were present
extended metaphor: a metaphor that is continued for the length of the poem
figurative language: Language using “figures of speech” such as similes,
metaphors, and personification
hyperbole: A figure of speech in which emphasis is achieved by deliberate
exaggeration
image:
a mental picture created by words
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Mrs. Carmichael
English 11 & 12
imagery:
creating a picture in the reader’s mind by using vivid descriptions
and figurative language
idiom:
a phrase that has come to have an accepted meaning other than
the literal meanings of the word
metaphor:
a comparison by stating that two items are the same
e.g. Life’s a tale told by an idiot (Macbeth)
mood:
The feeling (emotion) created in the reader by the poem
oxymoron: an expression impossible in fact but not necessarily selfcontradictory, such as John Milton's description of Hell as
"darkness visible"
paradox:
a self-contradictory phrase or sentence, such as "the ascending
rain" or Alexander Pope's description of man, "Great lord of all
things, yet a prey to all"
pathos:
a quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow)
personification: a figure of speech in which a non-human thing is given human
attributes
simile:
a figure of speech in which there is a direct statement of the
similarity between two items, usually through the use of a word
such as “like, “as,” or “than”
symbol:
something real or concrete that stands for something greater and
abstract
theme:
the central idea Theme is not the subject or topic; It is what the
poet is showing us about life or human nature
understatement: a statement that is restrained in ironic contrast to what might
have been said
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