Poem Terms And Techniques Flashcards
Define Alliteration and it’s effect on the reader
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
Allusion
Allusion is a reference to another piece of literature, work of art, person, place etc.
Ambiguity
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
Anaphora meaning
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.
Apostrophe
Apostrophe is a rhetorical device for speech addressed to a person, idea or thing.
Usually signalled by the word “O” at the start.
Assonance
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.
Ballad
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
Blank verse
Blank verse is a line or five stressed beats that is unrhymed.
Caesura
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
Colloquialism
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
Elegy
Elegy is a poem of lamentation, focusing on the death of a single person.
It can create an elegiac tone.
End stopped
End stopped is the end of a line of verse coincides with an essential grammatical pause usually signalled by punctuation ie a full stop
Enjambment
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
Epigraph
Epigraph is an inscription or quotation placed at the start of a poem
Euphony
Euphony is a language which sounds pleasantly smooth and musical in a particularly striking way
Fricative sounds (f//v//th//th)
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
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a rhetorical device where language is used in an exaggerated manner, either for comedic or emotive effect
Iambic pentameter/tetrameter
Iambic pentameter are lines of poetry which contain five/four stressed beats.
Most commonly used in poetry from c15th-19th centuries
Imagery
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
In media res
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
Lyric
Lyric is a poem in which personal and subjective feelings are expressed. Lyric poems are usually short and song like
Metaphor
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
Metre
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
Monologue
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
Ode
Ode is a form of lyric poem characterised by its length (eg long) intricate stanza forms and seriousness of purpose. Easily mocked
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia are words which sound like the sound they describe
Oxymoron
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
Paradox
Paradox is an apparently self contradictory statement yet lying behind its absurdity is some kind of truth
Parallelism
Parallelism is the building up of a sentence or statement using repeated syntactic units, achieving a sense of balance. Eg repeated three word phase
Parody
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
Pathetic fallacy
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
Persona
A person is where the poem is spoken by a speaker which is clearly not the poet
Personification
Personification is a verity of figurative or metaphorical language in which things or ideas are treated as if they were human beings.
Plosive sounds
Plosive sounds (b//p//t//d) sounds create an abrupt, sharp, sometimes shocking effect
Refrain
Refrain are words or lines repeated in the course of a poem, recurring at intervals and perhaps with a slight, purposeful variation
Rhyme
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
Semantic field
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
Sibilance
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
Simile
Simile is a figure of speech in which one thing is said to be like another, using the words like or as
Sonnet
Sonnets are a form of poetry of 14 lines, used typically to explore feelings related to life.
Stanza
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
Tone
Tone is the way words can suggest a particular manner or mood in which a poem should be read.
Symbol
Symbols are something that represent something else, particularly a material object representing an abstract idea
Volta
Volta’s are thronging points in a poem
