- alliteration: the repetition of similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginnings of words.
- alliteration: Some bold soul slips by me and I sigh
- assonance: A land laid waste with all its young men slain...
- assonance: the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds.
- ballad: a songlike poem that tells a story, often one dealing with adventure and romance.
- concrete poem: a poem with a shape that suggests its subject.
- couplet: a two-line stanza, usually with the same end rhymes.
- end-stopped: a line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a punctuation mark of some kind.
- enjambment: the continuation of the sense of grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next.
- figurative language: using words to mean something other than their literal (or factual) meaning.
- free verse: poetry that is not written in a regular rhythmical pattern or set rhyme scheme
- hyperbole: an exaggeration that creates humor, emphasizes particular points, and/or creates dramatic effects.
- hyperbole: "I've got a million things to do!"
- imagery: words that appeal to one or more of the five senses; sensory language
- lyric: a highly musical poem that expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker.
- metaphor: a black bat night
- metaphor: a figure of speech in which something is described as though it were something else. It works by pointing out a similarity between two things.
- meter: the rhythmical pattern of a poem.
- mood: the feeling or atmosphere created by the poem
- narrative: a story told in verse (poetic form). It often possesses the elements of fiction, such as characters, conflict, and plot.
- onomatopoeia: buzz, hiss, honk
- onomatopoeia: the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning.
- personification: a type of language in which an inanimate subject is given human characteristics.
- personification: the sun grinned, the rain danced
- rhyme: the repetition of sounds at the end of words.
- rhyme scheme: a regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem.
- rhythm: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, or beats, in spoken and written language (see also meter)
- simile: quiet as a mouse, good as gold
- simile: makes a direct comparison between two unlike subjects using like or as.
- sonnet: a fourteen-line poem, often written in iambic pentameter.
- speaker: the imaginary voice assumed by the writer of a poem.
- stanza: a group of lines in a poem, considered as a unit; like paragraphs in prose
- structure: the arrangement of materials within a poem; the relationship of the parts of a poem to the whole; the logical divisions of a poem.
- symbol: anything that stands for or represents something else; concrete objects that represent abstract ideas.
- symbol: Winter or cold represents death
- tone: the attitude toward the subject and audience conveyed by the language and rhythm of the speaker