Poetry terms

The prominance or emphasis given to a syllable or word. In word poetry, the accent (or stress) falls on the first syllable.

A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply.

Lewis Caroll makes use of cacophony in 'Jabberwocky' by using an unpleasant spoken sound created by clashing consonents

A grammatical pause or break in a line of poetry (like a questoin mark) usually near the middle of the line

An example of a conceit can be found in Shakespare's sonnet "shall I compare thee to a summer's day" when an image or metaphor likens one thing to something that is seemingly very different

Shakespearing sonnets usally end in a couplet and are a pair of lines that are the same length and usally rhyme and form a complete thought

Enjambment comes from the French word for "to straddle". Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence from one line or couple into the next and derives from the French verb "to straddle" An example by Joyce Kilmer is 'I think that I shall never see/ A poem as lovely as a tree

Euphony refers to pleasant spoken sound that is created by smooth consonants

Two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem. For example, an iamb is a foot that had two syllables one unstressed followed by one stressed.

A stanza composed of two rhymed lines in iambic pentameter

Hyperbole (overstatement) is a figurative language that depends on intentional overstatement

A metrical foot of two syllables, one short (or unstressed) and one long(on unstressed)

Shakespears plays were written mostly in iambic pentameter, which is the most common type of meter in English poetry. It is a basic measure of English poetry, five iambic feet in each line

a lilote is a figure of speech in which affirmative is expressed by the negation of the opposite. "He's no dummy" is a good example.

regularized rhythms. An arrangement of language in which the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time. Each unitarmeter is called a foot

A stanza or poem of four lines

a phrase, line or group of lines that is repeated throughout the poem, usually after every stanza

The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words

measured by stressed or less stressed syllables. Measures in feet, heavily or lightly accented syllables

Is fundementally a dialectical construc which allows the poet to examine the nature and remifications of two usally contrastive ideas, emotions, states of mind, beliefs actions, events, images, ect., by just aposing the two against each other, and possibly resolving or just revealing the tensions created and operative between the two.

has two parts, an octave (eight lines) and a sesttet (six lines) A questions is raised in the octave by the poet that is answered in the sestet. The remaining 6 lines is called the sestet and can have either two or threee rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways as explained below.

Octave - abbaabba (always remains the same pattern_ but is followed by the sestet in a variety of the following combinations

• cdcdcd
• cddcdc
• cdccdc
• cdcccd
• cdccdc

consists of three quatrains (four lines) and a final rhyming couplet (two lines) The rhyme sceme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Usually the question or theme is set forth in the quatrains while the answer or resolution appears in the final couplet.

a division of poetry named for the number of lines it contains: 1 couplet: two line stanza, 2. Triplet: three line stanza, 3. Quatrain: four line stanza, 5. Sestet: six line stanza, 6. Septet: seven line stanza, 7. Octave: eight line stanza.

refers to the accents or emphasis, either strong or weak, given to each syllable in a piece of writing, as determined by conventional pronunciation

refers to word order and sentecn structure. Normal word order in English sentences is firmly fixed in subject-verb object sequence subject-verb-compliment in poetry, word order may be shifted around to meet emphasis, to heighten the connection between two words, or to pick up on specific implications or traditions.

single metrical line of poetry, or poetry in general