Poetry Terms Guide

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Your Poetry Terms Guide- For Home Use only

Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds in words such as “rough and ready.”

Example: “Our gang paces the pier like an old myth.”

Antithesis: An opposition, or contrast, of ideas. Example: “It was the best of times, it was the

worst of time.”

Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds without the repetition of consonants. Example: „My

words like silent raindrops fell.”

Ballad: A poem in verse that tells a story.

Blank Verse: An unrhymed form of poetry that normally consists of ten syllables in which every

other syllable, beginning with the second, is stressed. Since blank verse is often used in very long

poems, it may depart from the strict pattern from time to time.

Caesura: A pause or sudden break in a line of poetry.

Canto: A main division of a long poem.

Character: An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work.

Characteristics: The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques

of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress,

manner, and actions.

Climax: The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story.

Closed Form: A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in

such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern.

Complication: An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up,

accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work.

Conflict: A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of

the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters.

Consonance: The repetition of consonant sounds. Although it is similar to alliteration,

consonance is not limited to the first letters of words.

Couplet: Two lines of verse the same length that usually rhyme.

Dactyl: A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-

ry.

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Denotation: The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative

meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications.

Denouement: The resolution of the plot of a literary work.

Dialogue: The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically

enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.

Diction: The selection of words in a literary work.

Elegy: A lyric poem that laments the dead.

End rhyme: The rhyming of words that appear at the ends of two or more lines of poetry.

Epic: A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero.

Enjambment: The running over of a sentence or thought from one line of poetry to another.

Flashback: An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that

occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action.

Foil: A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story.

Foot: The smallest repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poetic line.

Foreshadowing: Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story.

Free Verse: Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme.

Haiku: A form of Japanese poetry that has three lines; the first line has five syllables, the second

has seven syllables, and the third has five syllables. The subject of the Haiku has traditionally

been nature.

Heroic Couplet: Two successive rhyming lines that contain a complete thought.

Hyperbole: An exaggeration or overstatement. Example: “I have seen this river so wide it only

had one bank.

Iambic: An unstressed followed by a stressed syllable.

Imagery: The words or phrases a writer selects to create a certain picture in the reader‟s mind.

Imagery is usually based on sensory details. Example: “The sky was dark and gloomy, the air

was damp and raw, the streets were wet and sloppy.”

Internal Rhyme: When the rhyming words occur in the same line of poetry. Example: “You

break my eyes with a look that buys sweet cake.”

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Irony: A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what

happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.

Literal Language: A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their

words denote.

Lyric: A short verse that is intended to express the emotions of the author; quite often these

lyrics are set to music

Lyric Poem: A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of

feelings.

Metaphor: A comparison of two unlike things in which no word of comparison (like or as) is

used.

Meter: The pattern of repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.

Narrative Poem: A poem that tells a story.

Narrator: The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual

living author.

Octave: An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the

octave of a sonnet.

Ode: A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form.

Onomatopoeia: The use of a word whose sound suggests its meaning.

Open Form: A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and

consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure.

Parody: A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often

playful and even respectful in its playful imitation.

Personification: A literary device in which the author speaks of or describes an animal, object, or

idea, as if it were a person. Example: “The rock stubbornly refused to move!”

Plot: The unified structure of incidents in a literary work.

Point of View: The angle of vision from which a story is narrated.

Protagonist: The main character of a literary work.

Pyrrhic: A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables ("of the").

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Quatrain: A four-line stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a

Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet.

Recognition: The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is.

Refrain: The repetition of a line or phrase of a poem at regular intervals, especially at the end of

each stanza. A song‟s refrain may be called the chorus.

Repetition: the repeating of a word or phrase within a poem or a prose piece to create a sense of

rhythm. Example: “His laugh, his dare, his shrug/ sag ghostlike.”

Resolution: The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story.

Reversal: The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the

protagonist.

Rhyme: The similarity or likeness of sound existing between two words. Example: “sat” and

“cat” are perfect rhymes because the vowel and final consonant sounds are exactly the same.

Rhymed Verse: Verse with end rhyme that usually has regular meter.

Rhythm: The ordered, or free occurrences of sound in poetry.

Rising Action: A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot

leading up to the climax.

Satire: A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and

follies.

Sestet: A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an

Italian sonnet.

Sestina: A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter.

Setting: The time and place of a literary work that establish its context.

Simile: A comparison of two unlike things in which a word of comparison (like or as) is used.

Example: “She stood in front of the altar, shaking like a freshly caught trought.”

Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is

arranged as three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or

Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba

cde cde or abba abba cd cd cd.

Spondee: A metrical foot represented by two stressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK.

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Spondaic: Two stressed syllables.

Stanza: 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

4. Quintet: five line stanza

5. Sestet: six line stanza

6. Septet: seven line stanza

7. Octave: eight line stanza

Style: The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or

verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques.

Subject: What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme.

Subplot: A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main

plot

Symbol: A person, a place, a thing, or an event used to represent something else. Example: A

dove is a symbol of peace.

Syntax: The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue.

Tercet: A three-line stanza.

Theme: The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action,

and cast in the form of a generalization.

Tone: The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work.

Trochaic: A stressed followed by and unstressed syllable.

Understatement: A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she

means; the opposite of exaggeration.

Verse: A single metrical line in a poetic composition; one line of poetry.

Villanelle: A nineteen-line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. The first and third lines

alternate throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas--five tercets, and a concluding

quatrain.

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