English-Poetry Terms

Before I post my introduction to poetry, I will add list of terms to review. Please add these to your flashcards and read them everyday leading up to the final exam.

Alliteration: The repetition of identical consonant sounds at the beginning of closely associated words.

                        Ex. He clasps the crag with crooked hands

Allusion:  A brief reference to a person, event, or place (real or fictitious) or to a work of art or literature found outside the poem.  Allusions are most typically a casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure.

                        Ex. Cupid in Romeo and Juliet

Ballad:  a story or poem told in song, usually by an impersonal narrator.  Ballads are commonly written using a ballad rhyme scheme (abab).

Blank Verse:  poetry written in unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line)

Connotation:  the figurative meaning of a word.  It includes all of the overtones associated with a word such as emotions, memories, ideas, and imaginative responses.

Denotation:  the literal or dictionary definition of a word.

Diction:  diction is the vocabulary/words chosen by the poet.  It can reflect the attitude of the speaker, and can directly influence the atmosphere and mood of a poem.

Figurative Language:  the symbolic meanings of words.  Similar to connotation. 

                        Ex. Metaphors and similes

Free Verse:  poetry with neither rhyme nor rhythm.  No set pattern.

Hyperbole: Deliberate overstatement or exaggeration to achieve emphasis. 

                        Ex. I told you a million times to shut the door.

Imagery: The use of concrete details and figures of speech that appeal to the reader’s senses.  We can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, or feel the ideas through the images created by the poet.  Often images allude to more than the surface idea, and create meaning through metaphors.

Lyric:  a lyric is a song-like poem written mainly to express the feelings of emotions or thought from a particular person.

Onomatopoeia:  when the spelling of a word mirrors the sound that it makes in reality. 

                        Ex.  Boom!  Plop!  Buzz!

Paradox:  a group of words that might at first appear to be a contradiction but in reality may be true.  Similar to oxymoron but it is less obvious and takes much more thought to identify.  It is more of a contradiction of ideas, not just words.   

Personification:  a figure of speech that gives human characteristics to non-human things or abstractions.

                        Ex.  The wind whistled through the trees

                               Curiosity tempted him to look into the box.

Rhyme scheme:  The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines.

                        Ex.  abad cdcd

Simile:  comparing two unlike things using like or as.

                        Ex.  The raindrops sparkled like diamonds on the window pane.

Stanza:  a poetic paragraph.  It is a grouping of lines for effect in a poem.

Sonnet: a 14 line iambic pentameter poem that usually has two contradicting viewpoints presented in the poem with a final conclusion.  There are two forms:

Petrarchan Sonnet:  contains an octet (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines).  The rhyme scheme is usually abba abba cde cde OR abba abba cdcdcd.  The octave usually presents a question or states a problem and the sestet provides the solution.

Shakespearean Sonnet: has three quatrains (4 lines) and a rhyming couplet (2 lines).  The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg.  There is often a clear division between the first two quatrains and the last two with the rhyming couplet at the end providing a summary or conclusion.