Elements of Poetry Flashcards
Alliteration
Alliteration Is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words.
Example:
The snake sneaked past the snail.
The repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words: “What would the
world be, once bereft/Of wet and wildness?” (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”)
matching initial consonants (short, ship)
Assonance
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonants in two or more stressed syllables.
Example:
The green leaves fluttered in the breeze.
a preponderance of repeated vowels or vowel sounds (like stony and holy)
matching vowels (shake, hate); assonance is sometimes used to refer to slant rhymes
Ballad
A ballad is a song-like narrative poem, usually written in rhymed stanzas of 4 to 6 lines that feature repetition and strong meter.
Blank Verse
Blank Verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Connotation
Connotation is the associated or secondary meaning of a word or expression in addition to its explicit or primary meaning. Emotional association.
Consonance
Consonance is the repetition of final consonant sounds in stressed syllables with different vowel sounds.
Example:
The king sang a song.
a preponderance of repeated consonants or vowel sounds
matching consonants (rabies, robbers)
Denotation
Denotation is the literal meaning of a word.
Dramatic Poetry
Dramatic Poetry is a poem that presents the speech of one or more speakers in a dramatic situation.
In dramatic poetry, the speaker is a persona who is not the poet and the poem is a theatrical enactment.
English Sonnet
An English Sonnet is a 14 line lyric poem consisting of 3 quatrains and a couplet.
Usually rhymed abab cdcd efef gg
Figurative Language
Figurative Language is language not meant to be interpreted literally.
Free Verse
Free Verse is a type of poetry that exhibits language but does not follow fixed patterns.
(also “vers libre”)
Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set meter
Formal Verse
Formal Verse is poetry that follow fixed patterns.
Haiku
Haiku is an unrhymed three-line lyric poem, usually focused on images from nature, in which line 1 and 3 have five syllables and line 2 has 7 syllables.
Remember 5-7-5
Imagery
Imagery is descriptive language that creates word pictures.
Example:
“A thick-yellow haze hung over the city, blocking out building, blinding the sun.”
Lyric Poetry
Lyric Poetry is a short poem that expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker.
Lyric poems are highly musical short forms situated within the first person in which the speaker of the poem is often assumed to be the same as, or very similar to, the poet. For many centuries, poets, theorists and critics have debated the character of lyric poems. Building on the ideas of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), some critics said reading lyric poems is like overhearing someone speaking in a moment of intense, brief, solitary reflection. In this characterization, the speaker of the poem may address herself or the speaker may address a mysterious, beloved presence. If you are interested in books and articles that debate the meaning and character of lyric poems please ask for citations.
Meter
Meter is rhythmic patterns built on the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in poems.
The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of accented (or stressed) syllables
Narrative Poetry
Narrative Poetry is a poem that tells a story.
Narrative poetry tells a story; and a story refers to a series of developing events with specific (though sometimes unreported) time frames, settings, and characters.
Telling a story with some semblance of characters, plots, locales, time frames, dialogue or scenes; ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative poems
Ode
An ode is a lyric poem on a serious subject, usually written in precise structure.
A lyric poem that is serious and thoughtful in tone and has a very precise, formal structure; John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a famous example of this type of poem.
Rhyme
Rhyme is the repetition of alike sounds within the poetry.
The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words; the pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for each final sound; in a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second, and fifth lines end
in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another.
Exact or True Rhyme
Exact or True Rhyme are words that end in both the same vowel and the same consonant sounds.
Example:
sun and run
Slant Rhyme
Slant rhyme are words that end in similar but not exact sounds.
Example:
prove and love
End Rhyme
End rhyme are rhyming words that fall at the ends of two or more lines.
Example:
crawls, walls, and falls.
Internal Rhyme
Internal rhyme are rhyming words placed within a line.
Example:
The mouse in the house woke the cat.
Rhyme Scheme
A rhyme scheme is a set pattern of rhyme.
a pattern of rhyming lines in a poem
Stanza
A stanza is a grouping of lines within poetry.
Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the use of words to imitate sounds.
Example:
The bees buzzed, and the brook gurgled.
A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds; examples of onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, and tick-tock; Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” not only uses onomatopoeia, but calls our attention to it:
“Forlorn! The very word is like a bell/
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!”;
another example of onomatopoeia is found in this line from Tennyson’s Come Down, O Maid:
“The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/
And murmuring of innumerable bees.”
The repeated “m/n” sounds
reinforce the idea of “murmuring” by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer
day.
Metaphor
Metaphor are words comparing unlike things.
Example:
The air was wet wool, heavy and warm.
A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected; some examples of metaphors: all the world’s a stage; he was a lion in battle
Extended Metaphor
a comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem
Personification
Personification is giving non-human things human qualities.
A figure of speech in which things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: dead leaves dance in the wind, blind justice.
Sestet
Sestet is a group of 6 lines in poetry that share a rhyming pattern.
Simile
Simile is comparing unlike things using “like” or “as”.
Octet
Octet is a group of 8 lines in poetry that share a rhyming pattern.
Accent
An emphasis given to a syllable or word; the word “poetry” has an accent (or stress) on the first syllable
Sibilance
A repetition of the “s” sound; like a hissing effect
Antithesis
A figure of speech (or rhetorical figure) in which words and phrases with opposite meanings are balanced against each other; an example of antithesis is “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” (Alexander Pope)
Allegory
A narrative or collection of ideas that stands in or represents ideas that stand apart from the events or ideas literal meaning
Apostrophe
Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea; the poem God’s World by Edna St. Vincent Millay begins with an apostrophe: “O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!/Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that roll and rise!”
Caesura
A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. There is a caesura right after the question mark in the first line of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”
Conceit
A greatly extended and developed metaphor; an example of a conceit can be found in Shakespeare’s sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and in Emily Dickinson’s poem “There is no frigate like a book”
