Poetic Categorizations and Terms Flashcards
Stanza
a set amount of lines in poetry grouped together by their length, meter or rhyme scheme
Couplet
a two-line stanza
Tercet
a three-line stanza
Quatrain
a four-line stanza
Cinquain
a five-line stanza
Sestet
a six-line stanza
Septet
a seven-line stanza (also known as Rhyme Royal ABABBCC)
Meter
the pattern of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables in poetry
Rhyme Scheme
the pattern of rhyme that comes at the end of each line or verse
Aubade
A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover. John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” exemplifies this poetic genre.
Ballad
A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized y swift action and narrated in a direct style. The Anonymous medieval ballad, “Barbara Allan,” exemplifies this genre.
Blank Verse
A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare’s sonnets, Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost’s meditative poems such as “Birches “ include many lines of blank verse: When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy’s been swinging them
Elegy
A lyric poem that laments the dead. Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of William Butler Yeats” and his “Funeral Blues.”
Epigram
A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope’s “Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog” exemplifies the genre:
I am his Highness’ dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Lyric Poem
A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. The anonymous “Western Wind” epitomizes the genre:
Western wind, when will thou blow, / The small rain down can rain? / Christ, if my love were in my arms / And I in my bed again!
Ode
A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject
Sestina
A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line.
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.
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. Examples include Bishop’s “One Art,” Roethke’s “The Waking,” and Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.”
