Poem Terms And Techniques

Question 1

Define Alliteration and it’s effect on the reader

Answer 1

Alliteration is the repetition of initial constant sounds in words. Used by poets to associate words together and create either a pleasing of jarring sound

Question 2

Allusion

Answer 2

Allusion is a reference to another piece of literature, work of art, person, place etc.

Question 3

Ambiguity

Answer 3

Ambiguity is a word or expression which has two or more possible meanings.

Used by poets with the intention of evoking some kind of emotive response in a reader

Question 4

Anaphora meaning

Answer 4

Anaphora is a rhetorical devise in which a word or phrase is repeated in several successive lines.

Used by poets to build towards a climatic moment or develop a particular image or emotion.

Question 5

Apostrophe

Answer 5

Apostrophe is a rhetorical device for speech addressed to a person, idea or thing.
Usually signalled by the word “O” at the start.

Question 6

Assonance

Answer 6

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in successive words. Used by poets to create a pattern of sounds and associate words (particularly actions) together.

Question 7

Ballad

Answer 7

Ballad is a form of poetry which relates a story to the reader, such as “Keats’ La Belle Dame”.

Often characterised by short stanzas and rhyme; strong links with the song

Question 8

Blank verse

Answer 8

Blank verse is a line or five stressed beats that is unrhymed.

Question 9

Caesura

Answer 9

Caesura is a pause within a line of verse.

Used by poets to emphasise a certain emotion and can point to a flatness in tone

Question 10

Colloquialism

Answer 10

Colloquialism is a local or regional expression which may not be understood by outsiders or informal language.

Used by poets to build a certain “local flavour” to their verse or to establish a more comfortable relationship with the reader

Question 11

Elegy

Answer 11

Elegy is a poem of lamentation, focusing on the death of a single person.

It can create an elegiac tone.

Question 12

End stopped

Answer 12

End stopped is the end of a line of verse coincides with an essential grammatical pause usually signalled by punctuation ie a full stop

Question 13

Enjambment

Answer 13

Enjambment is the running over of the sense and grammatical structure from one verse line or stanza to the next without a punctuated pause.

Often used by poets to indicate some kind of “outpouring” but it can mean very different things too

Question 14

Epigraph

Answer 14

Epigraph is an inscription or quotation placed at the start of a poem

Question 15

Euphony

Answer 15

Euphony is a language which sounds pleasantly smooth and musical in a particularly striking way

Question 16

Fricative sounds (f//v//th//th)

Answer 16

Fricative sounds are didvided into voiced (hard) and voiceless (soft).

It’s fun to notice the connection: the in knife, is soft, and becomes hard in the plural “knives”

The same thing happens in “loaf” and “loaves

Question 17

Hyperbole

Answer 17

Hyperbole is a rhetorical device where language is used in an exaggerated manner, either for comedic or emotive effect

Question 18

Iambic pentameter/tetrameter

Answer 18

Iambic pentameter are lines of poetry which contain five/four stressed beats.

Most commonly used in poetry from c15th-19th centuries

Question 19

Imagery

Answer 19

Imagery is the words or phrases a writer selects to create a certain picture in the readers mind.

Imagery is usually based on sensory details

Question 20

In media res

Answer 20

In media res is a phrase describing a common technique of storytelling in which the narrator begins the story in the middle of the action

Question 21

Lyric

Answer 21

Lyric is a poem in which personal and subjective feelings are expressed. Lyric poems are usually short and song like

Question 22

Metaphor

Answer 22

Metaphors goes thurther than a comparison between two different things or ideas by fusing them together. The subject of the metaphorical comparison is separate from the vehicle (eg the metaphoric word which carries the meaning) and sometimes the reader has to guess at the subject.

An extended metaphor develops the comparison beyond a single line or image in a poem

Question 23

Metre

Answer 23

Metre is a verse distinguished from prose because it contains some linguistic element which is repeated, creating a sense of pattern. The commonest pattern is stressed-based metre such as iambic

Question 24

Monologue

Answer 24

A monologue is a single person speaking, with or without an audience, Victorian poets popularised the form of the dramatic monologue, where a poet speaks in a particular dramatic situation, often to one intended speaker

Question 25

Ode

Answer 25

Ode is a form of lyric poem characterised by its length (eg long) intricate stanza forms and seriousness of purpose. Easily mocked

Question 26

Onomatopoeia

Answer 26

Onomatopoeia are words which sound like the sound they describe

Question 27

Oxymoron

Answer 27

Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which contradictory terms are brought together in what is at first sight an impossible contradiction, such as sweet sorrow

Question 28

Paradox

Answer 28

Paradox is an apparently self contradictory statement yet lying behind its absurdity is some kind of truth

Question 29

Parallelism

Answer 29

Parallelism is the building up of a sentence or statement using repeated syntactic units, achieving a sense of balance. Eg repeated three word phase

Question 30

Parody

Answer 30

Parody is an imitation of a specific work of literature, designed to mock or undermine it eg mockery of the sonnet form to show up the folly of courtly love

Question 31

Pathetic fallacy

Answer 31

Pathetic fallacy used to describe the assumption of the equation between the mood and the world around them; nature can be specifically described in terms of a poet or personas feelings

Question 32

Persona

Answer 32

A person is where the poem is spoken by a speaker which is clearly not the poet

Question 33

Personification

Answer 33

Personification is a verity of figurative or metaphorical language in which things or ideas are treated as if they were human beings.

Question 34

Plosive sounds

Answer 34

Plosive sounds (b//p//t//d) sounds create an abrupt, sharp, sometimes shocking effect

Question 35

Refrain

Answer 35

Refrain are words or lines repeated in the course of a poem, recurring at intervals and perhaps with a slight, purposeful variation

Question 36

Rhyme

Answer 36

Rhyme are chiming or matching sounds which create an audible sense of pattern. If the pattern is regular or irregular, the poet may well have made this choice deliberately

Internal and end rhyme may create different effects

Question 37

Semantic field

Answer 37

Semantic field (or lexical) fields are are a technique often used by poets to keep a certain image persistent in their readers mind. They are a collection of words which are related to one another be it through their similar meanings, or through a more abstract relation

Question 38

Sibilance

Answer 38

Sibilance are “s//s//sh//) sounds and their repetition is just a specific kind of alliteration. They are often associated with softening and carry more pleasant connotations than assonance

Question 39

Simile

Answer 39

Simile is a figure of speech in which one thing is said to be like another, using the words like or as

Question 40

Sonnet

Answer 40

Sonnets are a form of poetry of 14 lines, used typically to explore feelings related to life.

Question 41

Stanza

Answer 41

Stanzas are a verse in poetry.

They have different lengths and specific names.

Couplet - two line stanza

Triplet - three line stanza

Quatrain - four line stanza

Quintet - five line stanza

Question 42

Tone

Answer 42

Tone is the way words can suggest a particular manner or mood in which a poem should be read.

Question 43

Symbol

Answer 43

Symbols are something that represent something else, particularly a material object representing an abstract idea

Question 44

Volta

Answer 44

Volta’s are thronging points in a poem