Poetic Categorizations and Terms Flashcards

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1
Q

Stanza

A

a set amount of lines in poetry grouped together by their length, meter or rhyme scheme

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2
Q

Couplet

A

a two-line stanza

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3
Q

Tercet

A

a three-line stanza

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4
Q

Quatrain

A

a four-line stanza

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5
Q

Cinquain

A

a five-line stanza

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6
Q

Sestet

A

a six-line stanza

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7
Q

Septet

A

a seven-line stanza (also known as Rhyme Royal ABABBCC)

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8
Q

Meter

A

the pattern of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables in poetry

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9
Q

Rhyme Scheme

A

the pattern of rhyme that comes at the end of each line or verse

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10
Q

Aubade

A

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.

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11
Q

Ballad

A

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.

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12
Q

Blank Verse

A

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

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13
Q

Elegy

A

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.”

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14
Q

Epigram

A

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?

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15
Q

Lyric Poem

A

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!

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16
Q

Ode

A

A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject

17
Q

Sestina

A

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.

18
Q

Sonnet

A

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.

19
Q

Villanelle

A

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.”