Alliteration the repetition of initial consonant sounds. ex. “I grew like a thin, stubborn weed watering myself whatever way I could.”
Assonance the close repetition of similar vowels in conjunction with dissimilar consonant sounds. Used particularly in poetry, assonance differs from rhyme because only the vowel sounds are repeated. ex. “Cooked on the homeblack of a flat stove. Flipped to slap the birth awake. Wrapped by corn hands.
Ballad songlike poem that tells a story, often one dealing with adventure or romance. Ballads tell their stories with simple language, dramatic action, dialogue, and repetition, often in a refrain. A ballad stanza may have four or six rhyming lines.
Blank verse poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines, usually used in drama (esp. Shakespeare)
Caesura a pause or break in the middle of a line of poetry. Often indicated by punctuation. Used to reflect ordinary sound patterns, emphasize certain words, break up rhyme, or create special effects.
Concrete Poetry a poem with a shape that suggests its subject.
Consonance repetition of consonant sounds in conjunction with dissimilar vowel sounds.
Couplet a pair of consecutive rhyming lines, usually of the same length and rhythmical pattern.
Dramatic Poem verse that presents the speech of one or more characters. In a dramatic monologue, only one character speaks. In a dramatic dialogue, two or more characters speak.
End-stopped line line in a poem that ends with a major pause, often followed by a comma, dash, colon, semicolon, or period.
Epic a long narrative poem about the exploits of a hero or god.
Foot a group of two or three syllables with a particular pattern of stresses. Poets often create rhythmical pattern, or meters, by repeating specific types of feet.
Haiku a three-line Japanese verse form. The first and third lines have five syllables. The second line has seven syllables.
Iambic Pentameter a line of poetry with five iambic feet, each with one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. May be rhymed or unrhymed.
Imagery descriptive language used in literature to re-create sensory experiences.
Inversion a reversal of the regular word order in a sentence. ex. “Like a small gray coffeepot sits the squirrel” instead of “The squirrel sits like a small, gray coffeepot.
Lyric Poem highly musical verse that expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker. Presents an experience or creates an effect, but does not tell a full story.
Metaphor a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else. Comparison is suggested or implied through identification, as in “death is a long sleep.”
Meter rhythmical pattern—determined by the number and types of stresses, or beats, in each line. The patterns of meter are divided into groups called feet.
1. iamb: a foot with one weak stress followed by one strong stress
2. trochee: a foot with one strong stress followed by one weak stress.
3. Anapest: a foot with two weak stresses followed by one strong stress
4. Dactyl: a foot with one strong stress followed by two weak stresses
5. Spondee: a foot with two strong stresses
6. Pyrrhic: a foot with two weak stresses
7. Amphibrach: a foot with a weak syllable, one strong syllable, and another weak syllable
8. Amphimacer: a foot with a strong syllable, one weak syllable, and another strong syllable
Depending on the type of foot most common in them, lines of poetry are described as iambic, trochaic, anapestic, or dactylic.
Lines are also described in terms of the number of feet that occur in them, as follows:
Narrative Poem poem that tells a story in verse. Ballads, epics, and metrical romances are examples of narrative poems.
Onomatopoeia use of words that imitate sounds. ex. hiss, hum, murmur, rustle
Parallelism repetition of a sentence pattern or grammatical structure. Used in poetry and other writing to link related ideas.
Personification figurative language in which a nonhuman subject is given human qualities. Makes things or ideas seem alive.
Petrarchan Sonnet (Italian Sonnet) fourteen line lyric poem named for the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. Has no more than five rhymes, usually written in iambic pentameter, and generally follows a traditional rhyme scheme.
Poetry one of the three major types of literature, the others being prose and drama.
Quatrain a four-line poem or a stanza with four lines. If a quatrain is rhymed, it usually has one of these rhyme schemes: abab, aabb, abba, or abcb.
Refrain a regularly repeated line or group of lines in a poem or song.
Rhyme repetition of sounds at the ends of words. Rhymed words have the same vowel sounds in their accented syllables. The consonants before the vowels may be different, but the consonants after them are the same.
Exact rhyme is present when the rhyming sounds are identical ex. love and dove
Approximate, slant, or near rhyme is present when the sounds are similar, but not exact. ex. prove and glove
Rhyme Scheme regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem. Letters of the alphabet are used to describe the rhyme scheme.
Rhythm pattern of beats, or stresses, in spoken or written language. In traditional poetry, regular rhythmical pattern, or meter, is used. Poetry that is rhythmic but that does not have a regular pattern is called free verse. Used to emphasize ideas and feelings.
Run-on-line a line that does not end with a pause. The idea is continued onto the next line.
Shakespearean (English) Sonnet fourteen-line lyric poem that follows a traditional rhyme scheme and usually is written in iambic pentameter. Usually made up of three quatrains and couplet that follows the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
Simile a figure of speech that makes a direct comparison between two subjects, using either like or as.
Sonnet fourteen-line lyric poem focused on a single theme.
Stanza group of lines in a poem, considered as a unit.
1. couplet: two-lines
2. tercet: three-lines
3. quatrain: four-line
4. cinquain: five-line
5. sestet: six-line
6. heptastich: seven-line
7. octave: eight-line
Symbol anything that stands for or represents something else.
Theme a central idea, concern, or purpose in a literary work.