LITERARY TERMS #5
A.P. LITERATURE
POETRY TYPES AND TERMS
DIVISIONS IN POETRY
• Metric feet make up lines of
poetry.
• Lines of poetry make up stanzas.
• Stanzas make up cantos.
• Cantos are like chapters in a
novel.
LYRIC POETRY
• Short verse stressing emotional over story
• A type of brief poem that expresses the
personal emotions and thoughts of a
single speaker. It is important to realize,
however, that although the lyric is
uttered in the first person, the speaker is
not necessarily the poet.
• There are many varieties of lyric poetry,
including the dramatic monologue,
elegy, haiku, ode, and sonnet forms.
NARRATIVE POETRY
• Verse that tells a story
• A poem that tells a story. A
narrative poem may be short or
long, and the story it relates may
be simple or complex
EPIC POETRY
• Long story in verse
• A long narrative poem, told in a
formal, elevated style, that focuses
on a serious subject and chronicles
heroic deeds and events important
to a culture or nation.
• Milton’s Paradise Lost, which
attempts to “justify the ways of God
to man,” is an epic.
EPIC POETRY
• Anglo-Saxon Epic: Beowulf
• Greek Epics: The Illiad & The Odyssey
by Homer, Greek mythology
• Epic of Gilgamesh, Mesopotamian
mythology
• Aeneid by Virgil, Roman mythology
• Mahābhārata, by Vyasa, Hindu
mythology
ENGLISH SONNET
• Fourteen line poem with three quatrains
and a couplet
• The English sonnet, also known as the
Shakespearean sonnet, is organized
into three quatrains and a couplet,
which typically rhyme abab cdcd efef
gg.
• This rhyme scheme is more suited to
English poetry because English has
fewer rhyming words than Italian.
ENGLISH SONNET
• English sonnets, because of their fourpart organization, also have more
flexibility with respect to where
thematic breaks can occur.
Frequently, however, the most
pronounced break or turn comes with
the concluding couplet, as in
Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee
to a summer’s day?”
SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
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ITALIAN SONNET
• Fourteen line poem with octave and
sestet
• The Italian sonnet, also known as the
Petrarchan sonnet, is divided into an
octave, which typically rhymes
abbaabba, and a sestet, which may
have varying rhyme schemes.
• Common rhyme patterns in the sestet
are cdecde, cdcdcd, and cdccdc.
ITALIAN SONNET
• Very often the
octave presents
a situation,
attitude, or
problem that the
sestet comments
upon or resolves.
• Example: John
Keats’s “On First
Looking into
Chapman’s
Homer.”
“ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S
HOMER” BY JOHN KEATS
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

ITALIAN SONNETS,
SONNET 23, BY LOUISE LABÉ
What good is it to me if long ago
You eloquently praised my golden hair,
Compared my eyes and beauty to the flare
Of two suns where, you say, love bent the bow,
Sending the darts that needled you with grief?
Where are your tears that faded in the ground?
Your death? By which your constant love is bound
In oaths and honor no beyond belief?
Your brutal goal was to make me a slave
Beneath the ruse of being served by you.
Pardon me, friend, and for once hear me through:
I am outraged with anger and I rave.
Yet I am sure, wherever you have gone,
Your martyrdom is hard as my black dawn.
BALLAD
• Traditionally, a ballad is a song,
transmitted orally from generation
to generation, that tells a story and
that eventually is written down.
• As such, ballads usually cannot be
traced to a particular author or
group of authors. Typically, ballads
are dramatic, condensed, and
impersonal narratives, such as
“Bonny Barbara Allan”.

BALLAD
• A literary ballad is a narrative poem
that is written in deliberate imitation of
the language, form, and spirit of the
traditional ballad.
• Example: Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans
Merci.”

BALLAD STANZA
• four-line stanza, known as a quatrain,
consisting of alternating eight- and sixsyllable lines. Usually only the second and
fourth lines rhyme (an abcb pattern).
• Coleridge adopted the ballad stanza in
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
All in a hot and copper sky
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.
a
b
c
b
EPIGRAM
• Witty poem or saying
• A brief, pointed, and witty poem that
usually makes a satiric or humorous point.
Epigrams are most often written in couplets,
but take no prescribed form.
• Epigrams were originally developed by the
ancient Greeks. The word "epigram" comes
from the Greek term "epi-gramma,"
meaning to inscribe. The Greeks placed
epigrams on statues of their heroes and
athletes, as well as on grave markers.
Today, we know the short statements on
gravestones as epitaphs.
EPIGRAMS BY OSCAR WILDE
• I hope you have not been leading a double life,
pretending to be wicked and being really good
all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
• The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on;
it is never of any use to oneself.
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others
whenever they go.
• Men always want to be a woman's first love;
women like to be a man's last romance.
• To be modern is the only thing worth being
nowadays.
EPIGRAMS
• In the depths of winter, I finally learned
that within me there lay an invincible
summer.—Albert Camus
• Gratitude is the timid wealth of those
who have nothing. —Emily Dickinson
• Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he
shall never be disappointed. —
Alexander Pope
• I am his Highness' dog at Kew; pray tell
me, sir, whose dog are you? —Alexander
Pope (engraved on the collar of a puppy Pope gave to his
Highness, Frederick, Prince of Wales)
EPITAPH
• Memorial poem, example: Rosetti’s “Remember”
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
- Christina Rosetti, The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems
ENJAMBMENT
• Running over of a sentence from one
line or stanza to another.
• In poetry, when one line ends without a
pause and continues into the next line
for its meaning. This is also called a runon line.
ENJAMBMENT
• The transition between the first two
lines of Wordsworth’s poem “My Heart
Leaps Up” demonstrates enjambment:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
• Joyce Kilmer’s poem, “Trees”
I think that I shall never see
a poem lovely as a tree.
REFRAIN
The word 'Refrain' derives from the
Old French word refraindre meaning
to repeat. A refrain is a phrase, line, or
group of lines that is repeated
throughout a poem, usually after
each stanza. A famous example of a
refrain are the words " Nothing More"
and “Nevermore” which are
repeated in “The Raven” by Edgar
Allan Poe.

FOUND POEM
• An unintentional poem discovered in
a nonpoetic context, such as a
conversation, news story, or
advertisement. Found poems serve as
reminders that everyday language
often contains what can be
considered poetry, or that poetry is
definable as any text read as a poem.
Found
Poems
Creating a
found
poem: a
page,
words,
imagination,
a thought.
HAIKU
• A style of lyric poetry borrowed from the
Japanese that typically presents an
intense emotion or vivid image of nature,
which, traditionally, is designed to lead
to a spiritual insight. Haiku is a fixed
poetic form, consisting of seventeen
syllables organized into three unrhymed
lines of five, seven, and five syllables.
Today, however, many poets vary the
syllabic count in their haiku.
HAIKU
On a withered branch
A crow has settled—
autumn nightfall.
—Matsuo Bashō
Even stones in streams
of mountain water compose
songs to wild cherries.
—Uejima Onitsura
one must bend
in the floating world snow on the bamboo
—Lady Chiyo
LIMERICK
• A light, humorous style of fixed form poetry.
Its usual form consists of five lines with the
rhyme scheme aabba; lines 1, 2, and 5
contain three feet, while lines 3 and 4
usually contain two feet: anapestic.
• Limericks range in subject matter from the
silly to the obscene, and since Edward
Lear popularized them in the nineteenth
century, children and adults have enjoyed
these comic poems.
There was a young lady
of Niger
Who smiled as she rode
on a tiger;
They returned from the
ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the
face of the tiger.
—William Cosmo Monkhouse
LIMERICKS BY EDWARD LEAR
• There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!‘
• There was a Young Lady of Ryde,
Whose shoe-strings were seldom untied.
She purchased some clogs,
And some small spotted dogs,
And frequently walked about Ryde.

ODE
• A relatively lengthy lyric poem that often
expresses lofty emotions in a dignified style.
Odes are characterized by a serious topic,
such as truth, art, freedom, justice, or the
meaning of life; their tone tends to be
formal.
• There is no prescribed pattern that defines
an ode; some odes repeat the same
pattern in each stanza, while others
introduce a new pattern in each stanza.
ODE
• In English poetry, there are basically two types of
Odes. One is highly formal and dignified in style
and is generally written for ceremonial or public
occasions. This type of ode derives from the
choral odes of the classical Greek poet Pindar.
• The other type of ode derives from those written
by the Latin poet Horace, and it is much more
personal and reflective. In English poetry, it is
exemplified by the intimate, meditative odes of
such Romantic poets as Wordsworth, Keats, and
Shelley.
ODE
• “Ode to Autumn” by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
SESTINA
• fixed form poetry consisting of 36 lines of
any length divided into 6 sestets and a 3line concluding stanza called an envoy.
• The six words at the end of the first sestet’s
lines must also appear at the ends of the
other five sestets, in varying order. These six
words must also appear in the envoy,
where they often resonate important
themes.
• An example of this highly demanding form
of poetry is Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina.”

TERZA RIMA
• An interlocking three-line rhyme
scheme: aba, bcb, cdc, ded, and so
on.
• Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Frost’s
“Acquainted with the Night” are written
in terza rima.

“Acquainted
With the Night”
by Robert Frost
aba,
bcb,
cdc,
ded,
efe,
gg
VILLANELLE
• A type of fixed form poetry consisting of
nineteen lines of any length divided into 6
stanzas: five tercets and a concluding
quatrain.
• The first and third lines of the initial tercet
rhyme; these rhymes are repeated in each
subsequent tercet (aba) and in the final two
lines of the quatrain (abaa). Line 1 appears
in its entirety as lines 6, 12, and 18, while line
3 reappears as lines 9, 15, and 19.
VILLANELLE
• The villanelle was originally used in
French pastoral poetry
• Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle
Into That Good Night” is a villanelle.
“Do Not Go Gentle Into
That Good Night” by
Dylan Thomas
aba
aba
aba
aba
aba
abaa
CONCRETE POETRY, OR,
PICTURE POEM
A type of open form poetry in which
the poet arranges the lines of the
poem so as to create a particular
shape on the page. The shape of the
poem embodies its subject; the poem
becomes a picture of what the poem
is describing.
• Michael McFee’s “In Medias Res” is an
example of a picture poem.
•
George Herbert's "Easter Wings", printed in 1633 on two facing pages
(one stanza per page), sideways, so that the lines would call to mind
birds flying up with outstretched wings.