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