poetry Flashcards
Poetry
characterized by controlled patterns of rhythm and syntax (often using meter and rhyme); a particularly concentrated emphasis on the sensual, especially visual and aural, qualities and effects of words and word order; and especially vivid, often figurative language.
Speaker
the person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem.
Denotation
a word’s direct and literal meaning, as opposed to its connotation.
Connotation
what is suggested by a word, apart from what it literally means or how it is defined in the dictionary.
Alliteration
the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words.
Assonance
the repetition of vowel sounds in a sequence of words with different endings.
Onomatopoeia
a word capturing or approximating the sound of what it describes.
Pun
a play on words that relies on a word’s having more than one meaning or sounding like another word: From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the Mercutio says, “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.”
Cacophony
Greek for “bad sound,” this term refers to the use of words that combine sharp, harsh, hissing, or unmelodious sounds. It is the opposite of euphony.
Euphony
Greek for “good sound”; this term refers to a group words that work together harmoniously so that the consonants permit an easy and pleasing flow of sound when spoken, as opposed to cacophony.
Imagery
broadly defined, imagery is any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, this is the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object. Imagery may be described as auditory, tactile, visual, or olfactory, depending on which sense it primarily appeals to – hearing, touch, vision, or smell.
Stanza
a section of a poem, frequently marked by extra line spacing before and after, that often has a single pattern of meter and/or rhyme.
couplet
two line stanza
tercet
three line stanza
Allusion
a 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.
Simile
a figure of speech involving a direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another, usually using the words like, as, so, or than to draw the connection.
Metaphor
a particular figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared implicitly – that is, without the use of a signal such as the words like, as, so, or than
Personification
a figure of speech that involves treating something nonhuman, such as an abstraction, as if it were a person by endowing it with humanlike qualities.
Hyperbole(overstatement)
a boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without intending to be literally true.
Understatement
language that makes its point by self-consciously downplaying the real emphasis.
Paradox
a statement that initially appears to be contrary but then, upon closer inspection, turns out to make sense.
Rhyme
repetition or correspondence of the terminal sounds of words.
Rhyme scheme
the pattern of end rhymes in a poem, often noted by small letters, such as abab or abba
End Rhyme
occurs when the last words in two or more lines of a poem rhyme with each other.
