Poetic Terms Flashcards
Alliteration
The repetition of usually initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words–
for example, “cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise”
Phillis Wheatley, “An Hymn to the Evening”
Allusion
Brief, often implicit and indirect reference within a literary text to something outside the text, whether another text or any imaginary or historical person, place or thing.
Anaphora
Involving the repetition of the same word or phrase in successive lines, clauses, or sentences.
Assonance
Repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings–for example, “The death of the poet was kept from his poems”
Caesura
Short pause within a line of poetry.
Connotation
What is suggested by a word, apart from what it literally means or how it is defined in the dictionary
End-stopped line
Line of verse that contains or concludes a complete clause (ends thought) and usually ends with a punctuation mark.
Enjambment:
In poetry, the technique of running over from one line to the next without stop–for example, “I live in a doorway/ between two rooms.”
Imagery
Broadly defined, any sensory detail or evocation in a work;
Narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object.
Juxtaposition
Placing two or more things next to each other, side by side, to highlight their differences to create contrast, tension, or emphasis.
Metaphor
Figure of Speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly–that is, without the use of a signal such as the word like or as–as in “Love is a rose, but you better not pick it.”
Personification
Figure of speech that involves treating something nonhuman, such as an abstraction, as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities, as in “Death entered the room”
Shift/Volta/Turn
A turn of thought or argument in a poem.
Sibilance
Repetition of s or sh sounds, as in “a sense of soft sound swirling”
Tone
Attitude a literary work takes toward its subject or that a character in the work or speaker of a poem conveys, especially as revealed through diction.
