Poetry Flashcards
Ballad
a type of poem that tells a narrative which was traditionally set to music and usually written in quatrains (brownings the lost leader)
Blank Verse
a type of poetry that does not rhyme, usually with ten syllables in each line
Caesura
a pause within a line of poetry (the rain set early in to-night,
the sullen wind was soon awake)
Couplet
a pair of consecutive lines of poetry that create a complete thought or idea (grind away moisten and mash up thy paste pound at thy powder i am not in haste)
Dramatic Monologue
a poem written as if someone is speaking to an unseen listener about important thoughts (my last duchess, porphyrias lover)
Elegy
a serious, melancholic poem, often written to mourn the loss of someone who has died (the lost leader)
End Rhyme
when the last syllables or words in two or more lines rhyme with each other
End-Stopped Line
a line of poetry ending in a grammatical break, for example with a full stop
Enjambment
the continuing of a sentence from one line of a poem into the next line
Formal Verse
a poem which uses a strict metre, rhyme and form (my last duchess)
Free Verse
a poem that does not use a strict metre or rhyme scheme
Haiku
a specific type of Japanese poem which has 17 syllables divided into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables
Heroic Couplet
a verse form found in epic poetry, where the lines are in rhyming pairs (featured in my last duchess)
Iambic Pentameter
a verse line consisting of ten syllables, organised into five pairs of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables (my last duchess
Internal Rhyme
rhyme that occurs between words within a verse line
Metre
the regular and rhythmic arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables according to a particular pattern
Ode
a poem, especially one that is written in praise of a particular person, thing, or event (home-thoughts from abroad)
Quatrain
a stanza of four lines (the laboratory, my last duchess, porphyrias lover)
Refrain
a word, line, or phrase repeated in a poem
Rhyme
a word that has the same last sound as another word
Rhyme Scheme
a poet’s chosen pattern of lines whose last syllables rhyme with other lines in a poem (abba, cdcd)
Rhyming Couplet
a pair of rhyming lines of poetry, typically of the same length, next to each other
Rhythm
a strong pattern of sounds or words in verse or prose, determined by the relation of long and short or stressed and unstressed syllables
Sonnet
a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter with a strict rhyme scheme
Stanza
one of the parts into which a poem is divided
Tercet
a set or group of three lines of verse rhyming together or connected by rhyme with an adjacent triplet
Villanelle
a 19-line poetic form consisting of five tercets (made up of three lines) followed by a quatrain (consisting four lines)
