Poetic Terms

Villanelle

A French verse form consisting of 19 lines, five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. - See Dylan Thomas "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" - See Elizabeth Bishop "One Art"

Haiku

A Japanese verse form of three un-rhyming lines in five, seven and five syllables, respectively. Utilized as a way of exploring the depth of the natural world. A tanka, placed in the first line, provides a seasonal reference for the reader. "A caterpillar, this deep in fall-- still not a butterfly." - Basho Matsuo "A Caterpillar"

Allusion

A brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of significance. "But since he died, and poets better prove,/ theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love." - William Shakespeare "Sonnet 32" "Meanwhile the heinous and despiteful act Of Satan done in Paradise, and how Here in the Serpent..." - Milton "Paradise Lost" (Book X, 1-3) *Biblical Allusion

Hyperbole (Exaggeration)

A figure of speech consisting of exaggeration for emphasis. "I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street," - W.H. Auden "As I Walked Out One Evening"

Simile

A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase. Similar to a metaphor, but introduced by like or as. "My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun" - William Shakespeare "Sonnet CXXX"

Metaphor

A figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things or objects that are poles apart from each other but have some characteristics common between them. "'Hope' is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the word And never stops at all," - Emily Dickenson "Hope Is The Thing With Feathers"

Dactyl

A foot of three syllables, one stressed, two unstressed "Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley'd and thunder'd; - Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (*Dactyllic)

Anapest

A foot of three syllables, two unstressed, one stressed (A rolling, galloping feel) "I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; - John Masefield "Sea Fever" (*Anapestic)

Trochee

A foot of two syllables, one stressed, one unstressed "Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Silver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe. - William Shakespeare "Macbeth" (4.1.27) Third Witch (*Trochaic)

Iamb

A foot of two syllables, one unstressed, one stressed "My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree Towards heaven still" - Robert Frost "After Apple Picking"

Spondee

A foot of two syllables, two stressed "With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. - Gerard Manley Hopkins "Pied Beauty" (*Heavily Spondaic)

Free Verse

A form of poetry (Writing utilizing poetic devices) free from limitations of regular meter or rhythm, which does not follow a particular rhyme scheme or fixed form. "the back wings of the hospital where nothing will grow lie cinders in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle" - William Carlos Williams "Between the Walls"

Stanza

A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the ___, like a prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought. ____ vary in line length as below: Couplet (2), Tercet (3), Quatrain (4) Sestet (6) Octave (8)

Sonnet

A poem of 14 lines, written in one of the following three forms:

Cacophony

A poem or sentence with discordant, harsh or unharmonious words. "And, as in uffish thought he stood, / The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame," - Lewis Carroll "Jabberwocky" "Everywhere the windows give up nothing but frost's intricate veined foliage. Just engines shrilling pocked and frozen streets wailing toward some new disaster." - Lynda Hull "Suit for Emily"

Blank Verse

A poem with no rhyme and no set number of lines. It uses iambic pentameter, this means it contains lines of five feet with two syllables each, unstressed / stressed. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." - Robert Frost "Mending Wall

Internal Rhyme

A poetic device in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end of the same metrical line. "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams" - Edgar Allen Poe "Annabel Lee" "I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die." - Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Cloud"

Scansion

Describing the rhythms of poetry by dividing the lines, marking the places of stressed and unstressed syllables, and counting the syllables. Some common line lengths, marked by feet: Dimeter (2), Trimeter (3), Tetrameter (4) Pentameter (5) Hexameter (6)

Syntax

Referring to word order, and the way in which it works with grammatical structures. As we are used to hearing things in certain orders, the effect of breaking with normal ______ is to draw attention to what is being said. "What light from yonder window breaks?" - William Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet"

Accent

Refers to a stressed syllable within a metrical pattern as a poem. prominence of a syllable in terms of differential loudness, or of pitch, or length, or of a combination of these

Alliteration

Repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds, in a sequence of words that are close to each other within a phrase or verse line. "Kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding" - Gerard Manley Hopkins "The Windhover" "Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary" - Edgar Allen Poe "The Raven"

Consonance

Repetition of internal or ending consonant sounds of nearby words in poetry. "Let the boy try along this bayonet blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh." - Wilfred Owen "Arms and the Boy"

Symbolism

Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible. "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky ..." - William Wordsworth "My heart leaps up when I behold" (*Heart leaping symbolizes joy)

Elision (Contraction)

The opposite of "expansion." The removal of an unstressed syllable in order to maintain the rhythmic meter of a line. This practice explains some words frequently used in poetry such as th' in place of the, o'er in place of over and 'tis or 'twas in place of it is or it was.

Anaphora

The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect."And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? - Walt Whitman "I Sing the Body Electric"

Assonance

The repetition of internal vowel sounds of nearby words in poetry. "A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze" - William Wordsworth "Daffodils"

Approximate (Slant) Rhyme

The repetition of similar sounding or looking words occurring at the end of lines. Not an exact rhyme and preceding vowel sounds do not match. "Man is their high-priest, and should rise To offer up the sacrifice." - Henry Vaughan "Christ's Nativity" "The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes Returns him such a God-forsaken stare As outcast Adam gave to paradise." - Richard Wilbur "Boy at the Window"

Meter

The rhythm established in a poem, which is dependent upon the number of syllables in a line, as well as the way in which individual words are accented, or stressed.

Imagery

The sensory and figurative language used in poetry to create concrete images. "The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o'clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days." - T.S. Elliot "Preludes" "A chimney, breathing a little smoke." - James Schuyler "February"

End Rhyme

The use of a rhyme at the ends of lines in a poetic piece. "Whose woods these are I think I know, His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow." - Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

Diction (Poetic)

The vocabulary, phrasing, and grammatical usage deemed appropriate to verse as well as the deviations allowable for effect within it. Distinguished from common speech (prose) by effects such as elision, personification, etc. "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on" - John Keats "Ode to Grecian Urn" "But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time" - William Shakespeare "Sonnet 55"

Couplet

Two successive rhyming lines in the same verse (often with the same meter). "I have the measles and the mumps, a gash, a rash and purple bumps." - Silverstein "Sick"

Irony

A rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what appears on the surface differs from what is actually the case. The real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words (verbal irony) or in a situation in which there is an incongruity between what is expected and what occurs (dramatic irony) "Thank Heaven! the crisis, The danger is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last, And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last." - Edgar Allen Poe "For Annie" "Go ask his name: if he be married. My grave is like to be my wedding bed." - William Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet"

Elizabethan / Shakespearean sonnet

A sonnet composed of three quatrains and a terminal couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg. - See William Shakespeare "Sonnet XXIX"

Petrarchan / Italian sonnet

A sonnet containing an octave, the first eight lines, with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and a sestet, the last six lines, following any of various patterns such as cdecde or cdcdcd. The octave states a problem, asks a question, or expresses an emotional tension. The sestet, resolves the problem, answers the question, or relieves the tension. The "turn" at the ninth line, after the octave, is the volta. - See Francesco Petrarch "Visions"

Spenserian sonnet

A sonnet form composed of three quatrains and a couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee. - See Edmund Spenser "Amoretti"

Caesura

A strong pause within a line of a poem. A rhetorical break in the flow of sound in a line of verse. "They lie together now. They sleep apart." - John Mole "Coming Home" "Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east'" - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Mother and Poet"

Onomatopoeia

A word that mimics a noise or sound. The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named. "The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees..." - Alfred Lord Tennyson "Come Down, O Maid" "How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle" - Edgar Allan Poe "The Bells"

Euphony

Agreeableness of sound; pleasing effect to the ear, especially a pleasant sounding or harmonious combination or succession of words. "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." - John Keats "Ode to Autumn"

Feminine Ending

Term that refers to an unstressed extra syllable at the end of a line of iambic pentameter. (Masculine Ending has one extra stressed syllable at the end of the line)

Connotation

The associated or secondary meaning of a word or expression in addition to its explicit or primary meaning. Something suggested or implied by a word or thin, rather than being explicitly named or described. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," - William Shakespeare "Sonnet 18"

Tone

The attitude of a writer throughout a piece of writing. "I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence:" - Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken"

Enjambment

The continuance of a sentence without a pause (without punctuation) after the end of the line or stanza. "April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers." - T.S. Elliot "The Waste Land" *Lines 1,2,3,5,6 exhibit enjambment.

Denotation

The literal (dictionary) definition of something. Contrast with Connotation. "And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each." - Robert Frost "Mending Wall" * Aside from the obvious metaphor here, the denotation of the wall is a stone wall.

Paradox

self-contradictory phrase or concept that tells a truth. "I am the mother of sorrows, I am the ender of grief;" - Paul Laurence Dunbar "The ______" "The Child is father of the Man; - William Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up when I behold" "I must be cruel to be kind." - William Shakespeare "Hamlet"