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Alliteration:
Most often thought of as pattern of repeated initial consonant sounds
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Allusion (literary allusion):
A reference in a literary work to another literary work, figure of speech, character, or place
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Anaphora: from Greek “carrying back”:
A rhetorical device in which successive lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences begin with the same word or phrase
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Anthem:
A song or hymn of praise or gladness
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Aphorism:
A terse or concise formulation of a truth
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Apostrophe: from Greek “turning away”:
A rhetorical device in which a speaker or writer addresses an absent person, an abstraction, or inanimate object
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Assonance:
The repetition of vowel sounds
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Avant Garde:
A group that develops new or experimental concepts in the arts
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Ballad: from Latin “dance”:
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Ballad Stanza:
A quatrain in which the odd lines have 4 stresses, the even lines 3, and rhymes ABCB or ABAB
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Caesura: Latin, “cutting or metrical pause”:
A pause or break within a line of poetry, occurring near the beginning, middle, or end of the line. Usually signaled by a punctuation mark
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Carpe Diem: from Latin “pluck the day”:
A phrase that comes from the Latin poet Horace and is commonly translated as “seize the day.” A convention of poetry that exhorts someone to live as fully in the present moment as possible. Frequently used as a seduction strategy to urge a woman to give into her desires before she grows too old
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Chiasmus: from Greek, “placing crosswise”:
a repetition of words or phrases in inverted order
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Chorus: from Greek “dancing”
A stanza of a song that is repeated. Originates in Greek drama as a single or collective voice that intrudes on the action of the play to provide commentary of some kind
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Common Meter: Also called Common Measure:
The meter of the ballad stanza
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Conceit:
A trope that conveys a striking or elaborate or extended metaphor
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Connotation:
The associative, metaphoric, or symbolic meaning of a word or image
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Consonance:
The repetition of consonant sounds
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Convention:
An established technique, style, or device that is commonly agreed upon. Use of the sonnet as a love poem is a convention as is the fact that sonnets contain 14 lines and the love represented is unrequited
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Curse:
A prayer or invocation for harm or injury to come to someone
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Denotation:
The literal meaning of a word or image
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Diction:
Word choice and arrangement, i.e.: abstract, concrete, colloquial, formal common, technical, slang, figurative, Latinate, Anglo Saxon
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Ekphrastic: from Greek “description”
a literary description (poem) or commentary on a visual work of art
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End stop:
Full pause, grammatical or syntactical, at the end of a line
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Enjambment or run-on from French “to encroach, to
stride”:
When the grammatical or syntactical sense of the line carries over to the next
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Epic Simile:
An extended comparison used in epics
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Formal Verse:
As opposed to free verse, formal verse is apt to contain a regular meter, rhyme scheme, or be fulfill a convention such as the sonnet, ballad stanza, etc.
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Figurative Language:
Language that uses images, metaphors, tropes, and conceits to create a pattern of connotative meanings
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Image: from Latin “likeness, conception, semblance”:
Pictorial likeness, literal or figurative, that illustrates an idea, object or action
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Irony: from Greek for “dissembling”:
When one thing is named or stated but another is intended; contradiction between intention and statement
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Kenning: from Old Norse meaning “to perceive” or “to name”:
A multi-noun substitute for a single noun such as “the hedge-squatter” or hare or “whale-road” for sea
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Line: from Greek “flax” or “thread”:
A structural unit of measurement in verse that, by its length and rhythm, adjusts the reading speed and overall cadence of a poem
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Litany:
A resonant or repetitive recital or chant
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Lyric Poem:
A patterned poem, featuring repetition, with sonic and song-like surface textures
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Lyrics:
Words written to accompany the music of a song
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Metaphor: from Greek “to transfer” or “to carry over”:
A comparison made between two very different things. Composed of the tenor, the literal object that provides the comparison and the vehicle, the object that carries the comparison. My heart is a lion—heart is the tenor and lion the vehicle
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Meter: from Greek “measure”:
The rhythmical pattern (measure) usually observed in a line of poetry
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Metrical Feet:
A unit or measure of meter
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Iambic:
- (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable)
- a world of green [two iambs]
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Trochaic:
- (a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable)
- Gone the three ancient ladies [one trochee, one dactyl, one trochee]
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Anapestic:
- (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable)
- of a world [one anapestic foot]
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Dactylic:
- (a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables)
- canopy certainty [two dactylic feet]
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Spondee:
- (two stressed syllables)
- Get out [one spondaic foot]
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Narrative Poem:
A poem that tells a story
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Onomatopoeia:
The formation or use of words such as buzz that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to
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Oxymoron:
A figure made by comparing two opposite and contradictory features or attributes. One of the most famous oxymora in the English language is “Darkness visible,” John Milton’s description of hell from Paradise Lost
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Parody:
A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or work for comic effect or ridicule
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Paradox:
A contradictory statement; (A daring statement which unites seemingly contradictory words but which on closer examination proves to have unexpected meaning and truth)
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Prayer:
An address to God in word or thought
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Refrain:
- A repeated line or lines.
- Used synonymously with chorus
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Rhyme:
When similar vowels and consonants are repeated in particular words
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Masculine, single rhyme:
repetition of stressed vowels and their subsequent consonants (“screen”/”green”)
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Feminine or double rhyme:
two syllable rhyme, the final syllable is unstressed (“steeple”/”people”)
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Pure or perfect rhyme:
when the stressed syllables and their following consonants produce an identical sound (“victory”/”story”; “meat”/“feet”; “green”/“screen”; “steeple”/ “people”)
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Slant rhyme (also known as off, approximate, imperfect, near, part, half, etc.):
a general term describing partial vowel and final consonance rhyme (“good”/”mud”)
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Internal rhyme:
rhyme that occurs within a line
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Head rhyme:
rhyme that occurs at the beginning of lines
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Rhyme Scheme:
The pattern of repeated sounds usually, but not always, at the end of lines.
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Riddle:
A mystifying, misleading or puzzling question posed as a problem to be solved or guessed. Composed of two parts: an element of description posed as a question and a block element that creates confusion
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Parallelism:
The repetition of identical or similar syntactic patterns, adjacent phrases, clauses, sentences, and stanzas
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Personification:
The attachment of human qualities to something nonhuman
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Rondeau:
from the French “little circle”: a poem of 15 lines organized into a quintet (5), quatrain (4), and sestet (6); possessing two rhyme sounds; and a refrain
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Song:
A short musical composition of words and music
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Sonnet:
A 14-line poem of Italian origin in which an argument or romantic plea is stated
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Italian or Petrarchan:
a sonnet composed of an eight-line section (octave) that rhymes abbaabba, followed by a six-line section (sestet) that rhymes variously cde cde; cd cd cd; cde dce; octave sets out an argument; sestet attempts to answer the argument or plea; volta appears after the 8th line
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English or Shakespearean:
a sonnet composed of three quatrains that rhyme abab; cdcd; eef, followed by a couplet that rhymes gg; volta appears after the 12th line
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Villanelle: from Italian “a rustic song or dance”:
A form, usually nineteen lines in length, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, containing a pattern of repeating the first and third lines in the succeeding stanzas and two rhyme words
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Spell:
A spoken word or form of words held to have magic power; incantation
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Stanza:from Italian “stopping place” or “room”:
- A grouping of lines in a poem, usually refers to a uniform number in each grouping.
- Related words are strophe and stave
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Monostich:
a poem made up of one line stanzas
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Couplet:
a stanza composed of two lines
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Tercet:
a stanza composed of three lines
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Quatrain:
a stanza composed of four lines (the most common stanza in English poetry)
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Quintet:
a stanza composed of five lines
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Sestet:
a stanza composed of size lines
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Septet:
a stanza composed of seven lines
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Octet:
a stanza composed of seven lines
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Stich (stik) from Greek “row,” “line,” “verse”:
Refers to lines of similar length or (stichic) a poem with lines of similar length
Refers to lines of similar length or (stichic) a poem with lines of similar length
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Syntax:
Sentence structure
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Tone:
The attitude of the speaker
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Trope:
“any language that aspires toward the state of metaphor” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
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Verse: from Latin “to turn,” “row” or “furrow”:
A verse can refer to a single line of a poem, a single stanza or group of lines, or a refrain in a song or hymn
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Volta:
- a turn in the argument that takes place between the octave and sestet of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet or between the end of the third quatrain and the couplet of an English or Shakespearean sonnet.
- Generally, a volta can describe any turn in the argument of a poem.
- Turn can be used interchangeably
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