Poetry Unit Terms
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45 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 alliteration | "Gnus never know pneumonia" |
| allusion | a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work. |
| apostrophe | a technique by which a writer addresses an inanimate object, an idea, or a person who is either dead or absent. |
| assonance | "A land laid waste with all its young men slain" |
| blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter |
| cacaphony | "Crackled, brittled, and broken..." |
| caesura | a natural pause in the middle of a line, sometimes coinciding with punctuation |
| consonance | the repetition of consonant sounds within or at the end of a word, e.g., east, west, best, test, trust, burst |
| couplet | two lines of verse that form a unit alone or as part of a poem, especially two that rhyme and have the same meter |
| devices of sound | the techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry (rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia) |
| diction | A writer's or speaker's choice of words |
| dramatic poem | Poem that reveals character through monologue or dialogue |
| end-stopped | a line with a pause at the end, marked by a period, comma, colon, semi-colon, exclamation point, or question mark |
| enjabment | When the meaning of a line of poetry is completed on the next line. This technique can emphasise an idea or add to the rhythm and flow of the lines.E.G. "How long have they tugged the leash and strained apart, My pack of unruly hounds! (D.H Lawerence) |
| extended metaphor | A metaphor developed at great length, occurring frequently in or throughout a work. |
| euphony | any agreeable (pleasing and harmonious) sounds |
| eye rhyme | an imperfect rhyme (e.g., 'love' and 'move') |
| free verse | verse without a fixed metrical pattern, usually having unrhymed lines of varying length (a.k.a., vers libre) |
| hyperbole | a figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect |
| imagery | description that appeals to the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) |
| irony | when reality is different from appearance; the implied meaning of a statement is the opposite of its literal or obvious meaning |
| lyric poem | a poem that does not tell a story but expresses the personal feelings or thoughts of a speaker |
| metaphor | comparison of two unlike things using the verb "to be" and not using like or as as in a simile. |
| meter | A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry |
| narrative poem | a poem that tells a story |
| octave | a rhythmic group of eight lines of verse |
| onomatopoeia | use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning |
| paradox | something apparently contradictory in nature (that may nonetheless be true); statement that looks false but is actually correct |
| parallelism | The use of phrases, clauses, or sentences that are similar or complementary in structure or in meaning |
| personification | kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human |
| poetic foot | a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it. |
| pun | a play on words involving the use of words with similar sounds but different meanings (collar, color), words with 2+ meanings (plain), or words with the same sound but different meanings (sun/son) |
| quatrain | a four line stanza |
| refrain | a word, phrase, line, or group of lines repeated regularly in a poem, usually at the end of each stanza |
| rhyme | the repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words close together in a poem |
| scansion | The process of marking lines of poetry to show the type of feet and the number of feet they contain |
| sestet | six line stanza |
| simile | a figure of speech that expresses a resemblance between things of different kinds (usually formed with 'like' or 'as') |
| sonnet | a short poem with fourteen lines, usually ten-syllable rhyming lines, divided into two, three, or four sections |
| stanza | a fixed number of lines of verse forming a unit of a poem |
| symbol | something that stands for itself at a literal level but which also suggests something (or several things) at the same time; frequently a concrete object or animal that represents a quality or abstract idea |
| tercet | a three line stanza |
| theme | the central idea or message of a work, the insight it offers into life |
| tone | Similar to mood, __ describes the author's attitude toward his or her material, the audience, or both. |
| villanelle | a short poem of fixed form, written in tercets, usually five in number, followed by a final quatrain, all being based on two rhymes. |
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