Terms and Tools for Analyzing Poetry See the textbook pages listed for additional explanation and examples. The glossary beginning on p. 2173 may also be useful. You should know the terms in bold; terms that are underlined are ones you should be familiar with (we may use them in discussion and they may come in handy for writing papers.) Basics: We refer to the voice speaking the poem as the speaker (comparable to the narrator of a story). We may be able to identify the speaker closely with the poet him/herself, but don’t automatically equate them. When the speaker is clearly a character very distinct from the poet, we sometimes use the term persona to refer to that character. Language: Every choice of word is potentially useful to consider in understanding and analyzing a poem. Word choice is often referred to as diction. Aspects of diction that may be important in a particular poem include register (level of formality, technicality, etc.) and connotations (emotions, attitudes, etc. associated with a word). (See pages 830-831.)

Another important aspect of the language of a poem is the sound of the words. (See pages 954-55.) Common sound effects include

Alliteration: repeated sounds at the beginning of a word

Assonance: repeated vowel sounds

Consonance: repeated consonant sounds (other than at the beginning of words)

Onomatopoeia: words or phrases that sound like what they refer to

Rhyme is a special, common sound device. (See pages 958 and 960-61.) Terms used to describe rhyme include

Eye- or sight rhyme: words look similar but don’t really rhyme (love/cove)

Half- or slant rhyme: words almost, but don’t quite rhyme (wild/willed)

End rhyme and internal rhyme

Masculine rhyme and feminine rhyme

End-stopped and enjambed lines

The pattern of rhyming in a poem is known as its rhyme scheme, and is diagrammed by assigning each rhyming sound a letter of the alphabet. (See page 1005.) Pairs of lines that rhyme form couplets. Sets of four lines that rhyme in any pattern (abab, xaxa, etc.) form a quatrain.

Rhythm is another important effect of the words of a poem. It is created by the lengths of words and syllables, syllabic emphasis, syntax, and punctuation. A pause or break within a line is called a caesura. Some poems use a regular rhythmic pattern called meter (more on that below). Form: Form or structure in poetry has to do with any of the choices the poet has made about how to arrange the words, including rhyme, rhythm, and visual relationships.

Imagery: Poems make use of imagery even more than stories and plays do, including figures of speech:

A simile compares two things explicitly, using a word such as like or as

A metaphor compares two things without marking the comparison

Synecdoche uses a part to refer to the whole of something, or the whole for a part

Metonymy uses something similar to or associated with whatever is being described

Personification talks about something non-human as if it were human (See pages 900-902 and 904-906.) Meter: Most poetry written before the twentieth century used a regular pattern of rhythm. Classical poetry based meter on then lengths of syllables, but most poetry in English relies on emphasis: whether a syllable is stressed or unstressed. To identify a poem’s meter is to scan it. A small (usually recurring) pattern is called a foot. The most common feet (all of their names Greek) are

Trochee: stressed, unstressed

Iamb: unstressed, stressed

Anapest: unstressed, unstressed, stressed

Dactyl: stressed, unstressed, unstressed

Spondee: two stressed

Pyrrhic: two unstressed The number of feet in a line is also labeled with a word derived from Greek: monometer (one), dimeter (two), trimeter (three), tetrameter (four), pentameter (five), hexameter (six), heptameter (seven), octameter (eight). Thus a poem with five feet, most of them iambs, would be called iambic pentameter. See pages 981-84. Fixed forms: A poet can use meter and rhyme in a huge range of combinations, but certain common combinations became established. We will look at three of these:

The ballad stanza or common meter: quatrains of alternating tetrameter and trimeter, rhyming abab or xaxa. Easily recognized if you can sing it to the tune of “Amazing Grace.” (Page 1007.)

The sonnet: a fourteen-line poem with one of a few different established rhyme schemes. See page 1007-9.

Blank verse: lines with meter (iambic pentameter) but no rhyme. Most of the poems we are reading are free verse or open form: not using meter or rhyme as a structural feature (though rhyme may be used occasionally, and there is always rhythm).