| poetry | language arranged in lines and stanzas; the opposite of prose |
| rhyme scheme | the pattern of repetition of same sounds at the ends of lines |
| onomatopoeia | the use of a word whose sound reflects its meaning |
| simile | indirect (using like,as, such) comparison between two unlike things |
| metaphor | a direct comparision between two unlike things |
| parody | humorous imitation of a well known work of art or literature |
| octave | a group of eight lines of poetry |
| paradox | a statement that contains contradiction, or opposite ideas |
| rhythm | the pattern or beat of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry |
| pun | a humorous play on words (usually based upon a word with multiple meaninngs) |
| personification | a figure of speech in which human qualities are attributed to a nonhuman |
| sestet | a group of six lines of poetry |
| parallelism | repetition of grammatical constructions to express related ideas of equal importance |
| understatement | technique of emphasizing by saying less than is literally true; oppostite of hyberbole |
| stanza | a group of lines that forms a unit of poetry; comparable to a paragraph in prose |
| oxymoron | two words together containing contradictory meanings |
| quatrain | a group of four lines of poetry |
| narrative poem | lines and stanzas that tell a story |
| voice | unique use of language that allows a reader to "hear" the particular personality of a character, speaker, or author |
| sonnet | a fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter |