OAE 020- Poetry Review

feminine rhyme example

Goldsmith's "Retaliation: A Poem" Of old, when Scarron his companions invited Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united.

repetend example

Poe's "Ulalume"

enallage example

Punch magazine's "you pays your money, and you takes your choice."

tetrameter

a line of verse consisting of four metrical feet

portmanteau word

an artificial word made up parts of others, so called because of two meanings combined in one word.

oxymoron

the conjunction of words which at first view seem to be contradictory or incongruous, but whose surprising juxtaposition expresses a truth or dramatic effect such as, cool fire, deafening silence, wise folly, etc.

cataphora

the use of a grammatical substitute (like a pronoun) which has the same reference as the next word or phrase as "before him, John saw a sea of smiling faces."

hendiadys

the use of a pair of independent words joined by and, where one of the words achieves the effect of a modifier, to express a single expanded idea, as nice and warm (nicely warm) - Shakespeare's works contain many examples of hendiadys such as "sound and fury" (furious sound) in Macbeth, and "heat and flame" (hot flame) in Hamlet

syntax

the way in which linguistic elements (words and phrases) are arranged to form grammatical structure.

scan

to mark off lines of poetry into rhythmic units, or feet, to provide a visual representation of their metrical structure,

hypallage example

"With rainy marching in the painful field" ---Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.iii "Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?" ---Shakespeare, Othello, IV.ii "While the cock...Stoutly struts his dames before;" ---Milton, "L'Allegro"

near rhyme

(also called approximate rhyme, slant rhyme, off rhyme, imperfect rhyme, or half rhyme) a rhyme in which the sounds are similar, but not exact, as in home and come or close and lose. most near rhymes are types of consonance. -due to change in pronunciation, some near rhymes in modern English were perfect rhymes when they were originally written in Old English

anaphora

(also called epanaphora) the repetition of the same word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or lines for rhetorical or poetic effect, as in Lincoln's "we cannot dedicate- we cannot consecrate- we cannot hallow this ground." or from Fitzgerald's "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"

perfect rhyme

(also called true rhyme or exact rhyme), a rhyme which meets the following requirements: 1. an exact correspondence in the vowel sound and, in words endings in consonants, the sound of the final consonant, 2. a difference in the consonant sounds preceding the vowel, and 3. a similarity of accent on the rhyming syllables

rhyme scheme example

-Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" with end rhymes of the words, cloud-hills-crowd-daffodils-trees-breeze is described as having a rhyme scheme of ababcc; the two quatrains of the poem "La Tour Eiffel" with end words of form-warm-storm-insouciance and earth-mirth-birth-France having an interlocking or chain rhyme scheme of aaab cccb. -In quatrains, the popular rhyme scheme of abab, as in Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" is called alternate rhyme or cross rhyme. Tennyson used an abba scheme, often called envelope rhyme, for In Memoriam. -the rhyme scheme of Fitzgerald's "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" is aaxa.

villanelle example

Arlington Robinson's "The House on the Hill"

examples of assonance

Byron's "She Walks in Beauty"

example of alliterative verse

In a somer seson, when softe was sonne, I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were, In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes, Wente wide in this world wondres to here. -The Vision of Piers Plowman by William Langland 1330-1400 - to facilitate maintaining the alliterative pattern, poets made frequent use of specialized vocabulary consisting of many synonymous words seldom encountered outside of alliterative verse. - by the 14th century, rhyme and meter displaced alliteration as a formal element, although alliterative verse continued to be written into the 16th century and alliteration retains an important function as one of a poet's sound devices.

periphrasis example

James Thomson's "the bleating kind" for sheep in The Seasons, and Milton's "he who walked the waves" for Jesus in Lycidas

portmanteau word example

Lewis Caroll's "Jabberwocky" in which he combined lithe and slimy into slithy, or the word smog, formed from smoke and fog.

resonance example

Milton's "and the thunder...ceases now. To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep."

epizeuxis example

Milton's: "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon."

parallelism example

Pope's An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot: "Happy my studies, when by these approved! Happier their author, when by these beloved!"

polyptoton example

Shakespeare's "then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright," Tennyson's "my own heart's heart, and my ownest own, farewell."

cross rhyme example

Swinburne's: Fate is a sea without a shore, and the soul is a rock that abides; But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides. As written above, the rhyme pattern what the French call rime brisee, if the two long lines were to be split after the caesuras into four short lines, the rhyme pattern would become a cross rhyme

hendiadys example

Tennyson's: "waving to him white hands and courtesy" (courteous white hands)

elision example

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

dissonance example

Whitman's "The Dalliance of Eagles" The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, -the term dissonance can also refer to any elements of a poem which are discordant in the context of their use. -although often considered synonymous with cacophony, the term dissonance more strongly implies a deliberate choice

scan example

William Cowper's "Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk" (written in anapestic trimeter): I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute; from the center all around to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

senryu

a 3-line unrhymed Japanese poetic form structurally similar to the haiku, but dealing with human rather than physical nature, usually in an ironic or satiric vein

haiku

a Japanese form of poetry consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. the elusive flavor of the form, however, lies more in its touch and tone than in its syllabic structure. brief descriptions of nature that convey some implicit insight or essence of a moment. they contain either a direct or oblique reference to a season. -derived from the hokku, which was the opening part of the renga, a lengthy Japanese poem usually composed by several poets writing alternating stanzas. -original Japanese haiku was written in a one-line format.

polyptoton

a figure of speech in which a word is repeated in a different form of the same root or stem. the juxtaposition of common roots with different endings in a polyptoton produces a rhyme-like effect--although not a true rhyme, it is sometimes referred to as a grammatical rhyme. -similar to the polyptoton, but without involving repetition, is the anthimeria, frequently used by Shakespeare, which turns a word from one part of speech into another, usually in the making of verbs out of nouns, as in, "I'll unhair my bed," Cummings boldly turned a verb and an adjective into nouns in the line, "they sowed their isn't they reaped their same,"

sonnet

a fixed form consisting of 14 lines of 5-foot iambic verse. In the English or Shakespearean sonnet, the lines are grouped in three quatrains (with six alternating rhymes) followed by a detached rhymed couplet which is usually epigrammatic. - a variant of the Shakespearean form is the Spenserian sonnet which links the quatrains with a chain or interlocked rhyme scheme, abab bcbc cdcd ee -a sonnet sequence is a series of sonnets in which there is a discernable unifying theme, while each one retains its own structural independence. All of Shakespeare's sonnets were part of a sequence.

sestina

a fixed form of six 6-line (usually unrhymed) stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of each of the lines of a concluding envoi in the form of a tercet.

stich

a line or verse of poetry

dissonance

a mingling or union of harsh, inharmonious sounds, often used deliberately for effect.

half rhyme

a near rhyme; also, an apocopated rhyme in which the rhyme occurs only on the first syllable of the rhyming word, as in blue and truly or sum and trumpet.

catalog verse

a poem comprised of a list of persons, places, things, or abstract ideas which share a common denominator. an ancient form, it was originally a type of didactic poetry.

villanelle

a poem in a fixed form, consisting of five 3-line stanzas followed by a quatrain and having only two rhymes. in the stanzas following the first stanza, the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated alternatively as refrains. they are the final two lines of the concluding quatrain.

epigraph

a quotation, or a sentence composed for the purpose, placed at the beginning of a literary work or one of its separate divisions, usually suggestive of the theme.

epizeuxis

a rhetorical device consisting of the immediate repetition of a word or phrase for emphasis - the placement of a word before a repetition in an epizeuxis is called a diacope.

disyllabic rhyme

a rhyme in which two final syllables of words have the same sound, as in fender and bender or beguile and revile. - fender and bender are a feminine rhyme, while beguile and revile are masculine rhymes

feminine rhyme

a rhyme occurring on an unaccented final syllable, as in dining or shining or motion or ocean. feminine rhymes are double or disyllabic and are common in the heroic couplet.

close rhyme

a rhyme of two contiguous or close words, such as in the idiomatic expressions, "true blue", or "fair and square" - close rhymes are a distinguishing characteristic of echo verse.

caesura

a rhythmic break or pause in the flow of sound which is commonly introduced in about the middle of a line of verse, but may be varied for different effects. usually placed between syllables rhythmically connected in order to aid the recital as well as to convey the meaning more clearly, it is a pause dictated by the sense of content or by natural speech patterns, rather than by metrics. it may coincide with conventional punctuation marks, but not necessarily. - since caesura and pause are used interchangeably it is better to use the metrical pause for the type of "rest" which compensates for the omission of a syllable. - a caesura occurring at the end of a line is not marked in the scanning process - the classical caesura was a break caused by the ending of a word within a foot.

ballad

a short narrative poem with stanzas of two or four lines and usually a refrain. the story of a ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter but frequently deals with folklore or popular legends. the plot is the dominant element, dealing with a single crucial episode, narrated impersonally, with frequent use of repetition. they are written in straight-forward verse, seldom with detail, but always with graphic simplicity and force. alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with the last words of the second or fourth lines rhyming an xyb rhyme scheme.

polyphonic prose

a type of free verse using characteristic devices of verse such as alliteration and assonance, but presented in a form resembling prose

hypallage

a type of hyperbaton involving an interchange of elements in a phrase or sentence so that a displaced word is in a grammatical relationship with another that it does not logically qualify

line

a unit in the structure of a poem consisting of one or more metrical feet arranged as a rhythmical entity. -important factor in the distinction between prose and verse. -in metrical verse, line lengths are usually determined by genre or convention, as well as by meter. but otherwise, and especially in free verse, a poet can give emphasis to a word or phrase by isolating it in a short line - in recitation aloud (performance), the line-end is a signal for a slight, non-metrical pause. -the traditional practice of capitalizing the initial line-letters contributes to the visual perception of the line as a unit; this practice is often not observed in modern free verse.

terza rima

a verse form consisting of tercets, usually in iambic pentameter in English poetry, with a chain or interlocking rhyme scheme, as: aba, bcb, cdc, etc. the pattern concludes with a separate line added at the end of the poem (or each part) rhyming with the second line of the preceding tercet or with a rhyming couplet.

blank verse example

act 4, scene 1 of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice": the quality of mercy not strain'd it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath; it is twice blest: it bleseth him that gives and him that takes

epistrophe

also called epiphora, the repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases or verses, as in Lincoln's "of the people, by the people, for the people."

chain rhyme

also called interlocking rhyme, a rhyme scheme in which a rhyme in a line of one stanza is used as a link to a rhyme in the next stanza, as in the aba bcb cdc, etc of terza rima or the aaab cccb of "La Tour Eiffel" -another type of chain rhyme, which is usually referred as rime enchainee, links consecutive lines, with the last word of one line rhyming with the first word of the following line.

broken rhyme

also called split rhyme, a rhyme produced by dividing a word at the line break to make a rhyme with the end word of another line. In Hopkins' "The Windhover" for example he divided kingdom at the end of the first line to rhyme with the word wing ending in the fourth line.

rhythm

an essential of all poetry, the regular or progressive pattern of recurrent accents in the flow of a poem as determined by the arses and theses of the metrical feet, i.e., the rise and fall of stress. the measure of rhythmic quantity is the meter. -a rhythmic pattern in which the accent falls on the final syllable of each foot, as in the iamb or anapest, is called a rising or ascending rhythm; a rhythmic pattern with the accent occurring on the first syllable of each foot, as in the dactyl or trochee, is a falling or descending rhythm.

feminine ending

an extra unaccented syllable at the end of an iambic or anapestic line of poetry, often used in blank verse.

solecism

an impropriety of speech or a violation of the established rules of syntax

hyperbaton

an inversion of the normal grammatical word order; it may range from a single word moved from its usual place to a pair of words inverted or to even more extremes of syntactic displacement. specific types of hyperbaton are anastrophe, hypallage, or hysteron proteron. -the poetic use of hyperbaton is the principal difference in diction between poetry and prose. poets utilize it to meet the needs of meter or rhyme, for emphasis or rhetorical effect, and to temper the flow of narrative.

stanza forms

couplet (2), tercet (3), quatrain (4), quintet (5), sestet (6), septet (7), and octave (8). specific names to describe them: ballad meter, ottava rima, rhyme royal, terza rima, and Spenserian stanza.

end-stopped

denoting a line of verse in which a logical or rhetorical pause occurs at the end of the line, usually marked with a period, comma or semicolon. - while correctly used to refer to a single line, the term is most frequently used in the reference to the couplet, especially the closed or heroic couplet.

cacophony

discordant sounds in the jarring juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables which are grating to the ear, usually inadvertent, but sometimes deliberately used in poetry for effect. -sound devices are important to poetry. to create sounds appropriate to content, the poet may sometimes prefer to achieve a cacophonous effect instead of the more commonly sought for euphony. the use of words with the consonants b, k and p, to cite one example, produce harsher sounds than the soft f and v or the liquid l, m and n.

sestina usual ending word

first stanza: 1-2-3-4-5-6 second stanza: 6-1-5-2-4-3 third stanza: 3-6-4-1-2-5 fourth stanza: 5-3-2-6-1-4 fifth stanza: 4-5-1-3-6-2 sixth stanza: 2-4-6-5-3-1 concluding tercet: middle of first line- 2, end of first line-5 middle of second line- 4, end of second line- 3 middle of third line- 6, end of third line- 1 The poem's "Will's Place" is an example of a sestina.

ricochet words

hyphenated words, usually formed by reduplicating a word with a change in the vowel or initial consonant sound, such as pitter-patter, chit-chat, riff-raff, wishy-washy, hob-nob, roly-poly, pell-mell, razzle-dazzle, etc. - there are a substantial amount of ricochet words in both modern and ancient English. they usually convey an intensifying effect.

ekphrasis or ecphrasis

in modern usage, the vivid literary description of a specific work of art, which may be the actual or imaginary, such as a painting, sculpture, tapestry, church, and the like. originally, the term more broadly applied to a description in words of any experience, person or thing. - the general term for the effective quality of sense impressions or mental images and the resulting arousal of emotion is enargia

rhyme

in the specific sense, a type of echoing which utilizes a correspondence of sound in the final accented vowels and all that follows of two or more words, but the preceding consonant sounds must differ, as in the words, bear and care. in a broader poetic sense, however, rhyme refers to close similarity of sound as well as an exact correspondence; it includes the agreement of vowel sounds in assonance and the repetition of consonant sounds in consonance and alliteration. rhymes usually occur at the end of lines. - differences as well as identity in sound echoes between words contribute to the euphonic effect, stimulate intellectual appreciation, and serve to unify a poem. in addition, rhymes tend to heighten the significance of the words, provide a powerful mnemonic device, and complement the rhythmic quality of the lines.

homonym

one of two or more words which are identical in pronunciation and spelling, but different in meaning, as the noun bear and the verb bear. -homophones are words which are identical in pronunciation but different in meaning or derivation or spelling, such as rite, write, right, or wright, or rain and reign. heteronyms are words which are identical in spelling but different in meaning and pronunciation, as sow, to scatter seed, and sow, a female hog. homographs are words which are identical in spelling but different in meaning and derivation or pronunciation, and pine, a tree or the bow of a ship or the bow of an arrow.

iambic example

opening line of John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale": a drow-sy numb-ness pains

alliterative verse

poetry in which alliteration is a formal structure in place of rhyme; it was prevalent in a number of old literature prior to the 14th century, including Anglo-Saxon. First half line (hemistich) is united with second half by alliterating stressed syllables; in the first-half line generally two or sometimes three syllables alliterate while in the second half usually only one. sometimes one alliterating sound is carried through successive lines.

blank verse

poetry written without rhymes, but which retains a set metrical pattern, which iambic pentameter (five iambic feet per line) in English verse. very flexible form, the writer not being hampered in the expression of thought or syntactic structure by the need to rhyme, it is used extensively in narrative and dramatic poetry.

sound devices

resources used by writers of verse to convey and reinforce the meaning or experience of poetry through the skillful use of sound.

chain verse

similar to chain rhyme, but links words, phrases, or lines (instead of rhyme) by repeating them in succeeding stanzas, as in the pantoum, but there are many variations.

phonetic symbolism

sound suggestiveness; the association of particular word-sounds with common areas of meanings so that other words of similar sounds come to be associated with those meanings. (also called sound symbolism, it is utilized by poets to achieve sounds appropriate to their significance). -an example of word sounds in English with a common area of meaning is a group beginning with gl, all having reference to light, which include: gleam, glare, glitter, glimmer, glint, glisten, glossy and glow.

texture

the "feel" of a poem that comes from interweaving of technical elements, diction, tone, syntax, patterns of sound and meaning i.e., all elements apart and independent of its structure. in other words, that which would remain if it were to be rendered in prose.

scansion

the analysis and graphic display of a line's rhythm performed by scanning the line to determine its metrical categorization e.g., iambic trimeter, trochaic octameter, etc., as a way of describing the rhythmical pattern of a poem. scansion will also show the variations in the meter and the deviations from it, if there are any. -scansion accounts for syllabic accents and slacks, but does not always differentiate between the relative "weights" of stress, one of the means by which a skillful poet modulates the rhythm for effect. -the scanning process employs symbols on and above the lines to identify the foot divisions, their arsis and thesis, and any internal caesuras the line may contain.

tanka

the classic form of a Japanese poetry with five unrhymed lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables to produce a concentrated essence of a single event, image or mood

consonance

the close repetition of the same end consonants of stressed syllables with differing vowel sounds, such as boat and night, or the words drunk and milk in the final line of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" -most often occurs within a line. when used at line ends in place of rhyme, as in the words, cool and soul, in the third stanza of Emily Dickinson's "He Fumbles at your Spirit" it is sometimes referred to as consonantal rhyme to differentiate it from perfect rhyme and other types of near rhyme. - in a more general sense, consonance also refers to a pleasing combination of sounds; sound in agreement with tone

enjambment

the continuation of the sense and therefore the grammatical construction beyond the end of a line of verse or the end of a couplet. -this run-on device can be very effective in creating a sense of forward motion, fine-tuning the rhythm, and reinforcing the mood, as well as a variation to avoid monotony, but should not be used as a mere mannerism.

enallage

the effective use of a grammatically incorrect part of speech in place of the correct form, e.g., present tense in place of past tense, plural for singular, etc.

pitch

the frequency of sound waves which the listener perceives as higher or lower. along with intensity and length (duration), it is one of the three tonal qualities of sound.

sigmatism

the intentional repetition of words with sibilant speech sounds closely spaced in a line of poetry as in: "she sells sea-shells by the sea shore"

trope

the intentional use of a word or expression figuratively i.e., used in a different sense from its original significance in order to give vividness or emphasis to an idea. some important types of trope are: antonomasia, irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche.

repetend

the irregular repetition of a word, phrase, or line in a poem. it is a type of refrain, but differs in that it can appear at various places in the poem and may be only a partial repetition,

iamb or iambus, iambic

the most common metrical foot in English, German, and Russian verse and in many other languages as well; it consists of two syllables, a short or unaccented syllable followed by a long or accented syllable; as in a-void or the rush. - the name of the iambic foot derives from the Greek iambos, a genre of invective poetry (now termed lampoon)

elision

the omission of a letter or syllable as a means of a contraction, generally to achieve a uniform metrical pattern, but sometimes to smooth the pronunciation; most such omissions are marked with an apostrophe. specific types of elision include aphaeresis, apocope, syncope, synaeresis, and synaloepha. - the opposite of elision is hiatus: the slight break in articulation caused by the occurrence of contiguous vowels, either within a word as "naive" or in the final and beginning vowels of successive words, as the "umbrella"

ellipsis

the omission of a word or words necessary to complete a grammatical construction, but which is easily understood by the reader, such as "the virtues I esteem" for "the virtue which I esteem". -the marks (...) or (--) denoting an omission or pause. -other terms involving omissions in grammatical construction include: asyndeton, which omits conjunctions; zeugma and syllepsis, which use one word to serve for two; and aposiopesis, which omits a word or phrase at the end of a clause or sentence for effect.

Asyndeton

the omission of conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words and phrases as in "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."

rhyme scheme

the pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, such as the ababbcc of the Rhyme Royal stanza form. -capital letters in the alphabetic rhyme scheme are used for the repeating lines of a refrain; the letters x and y indicate unrhymed lines.

synesthesia or synaesthesia

the perception or description of one kind of sense impression in words normally used to describe a different sense, like a "loud aroma" or a "velvety smile". it can be very effective for creating vivid imagery

resonance

the quality of richness or variety of sounds in poetic texture

cadence

the recurrent rhythmical pattern in lines of verse; also, the natural tone or modulation of the voice determined by the alternation of accented or unaccented syllables. -cadence differs from meter in that it is not necessarily regular, but rather a more flexible concept of rhythm such as its characteristics of free verse and prose poetry.

assonance

the relatively close juxtaposition of the same or similar vowel sounds, but with different end consonants in a line or passage, thus a vowel rhyme, as in the words date and fade.

incremental repetition

the repetition in each stanza (of a ballad, for example) of part of the preceding stanza, usually with a slight change in wording for effect.

echo

the repetition of particular sounds, syllables, words or lines in poetry.

parallelism

the repetition of syntactical similarities in passages closely connected for rhetorical effect. the repetitive structure, which is commonly used in elevated prose as well as poetry, lends wit or emphasis to the meanings of the separate clauses, thus being particularly effective in antithesis. (can sometimes be extended throughout a poem)

cross rhyme

the rhyme scheme of abab, also called alternate rhyme, in which the end words of alternating lines rhyme with each other i.e., the rhymes cross intervening lines. -cross rhyme derives from long-line verse such as hexameter in which two lines have caesural words rhymed together and end words rhymed together.

alexandrine

the standard line in French poetry, consisting of twelve syllables with a caesura after the sixth syllable. there are accents on the sixth and last syllables of the line, and usually a secondary stress within each half-line (hemistich). the English Alexandrine is written in iambic hexameter, thus containing twelve syllables in six metrical feet. -probably received its name from an old French romance, Alexandre le Grand, written about 1180, in which the measure is first used. -the last line of the Spenserian stanza is an Alexandrine.

periphrasis

the substitution of an elaborate phrase in place of a simple word or expression, as "fragrant beverage drawn from China's herb" for tea. - a periphrasis may be used as a euphemism as well as an embellishment. it also can be used for humorous effect.

tautology

the unnecessary and excessive repetition of the same idea in different words in the same sentence, as "the room was completely dark and had no illumination" or "a breeze greeted the dusk and nightfall was heralded by a gentle wind"

serpentine verses

verses ending with the same word with which they begin. -the term alludes to the old representation of snakes with their tails in their mouths, which was symbolic of eternity, without beginning or end.

sight rhyme

words which are similar in spelling but different in pronunciation, like now or how or height and weight. some words that are sight rhymes today did have a correspondence of sound in earlier stages of the language. -sight rhymes may occasionally be used for their contribution to the visual aspect of poetry.