- Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet: divided into an octave (abbaabba) and a sestet (cdecde)
- Shakespearean (English) sonnet: organized into three quatrains and a couplet; (abab cdcd efef gg)
- anapestic: two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed one
- assonance: repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same
- ballad stanza: consists of alternating eight and six-syllable lines
- blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter
- cacophony: language that is discordant and difficult to pronounce
- caesura: pause within a line (II)
- consonance: common type of near rhyme that consists of identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds
- couplet: consists of two lines that usally rhyme and have the same meter
- dactylic: one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones
- dimeter: two feet
- elegy: lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead (at a funeral)
- end rhyme: most common form of rhyme in poetry; the rhyme that comes at the end of the lines
- euphony: refers to language that is smooth and musically pleasant to the ear
- foot: metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured
- form: overall structure or shape of a poem
- free verse: poems that do not conform to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza
- heptameter: seven feet
- heroic couplet: consists of rhymed iambic pentameter
- hexameter: six feet
- iambic: consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable
- internal rhyme: places at least one of the rhymed words within the line
- line: sequence of words printed as a separate entity on the page
- meter: a regular pattern of stressed an unstressed syllables
- monometer: one foot
- octameter: eight feet
- octave: poetic stanza of eight lines; usually forming one part of a sonnet
- ode: characterized by a serious topic and formal tone
- pentameter: five feet
- quatrain: four-line stanza; most common stanzaic form in the English language and can have various meters and rhyme schemes
- rhyme: repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines
- rhyme scheme: pattern of end rhymes
- rhythm: a musical quality in language, produced by repetition
- scansion: process of measuring the stresses in a line of verse in order to determine the metrical pattern of the line
- sestet: stanza consisting of exactly six lines
- sonnet: popular literary form in English since the sixteenth century
- spondee: two syllable foot in which both syllables are stressed
- stanza: consists of a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme
- stress: the emphasis, or accent, given a syllable in proununciation
- tercet: three-line stanza
- tetrameter: four feet
- trimeter: three feet
- triplet: three lines rhyme
- trochaic: consists of one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable