Poetry Devices Flashcards
Poetry Devices
Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds; especially at the beginning of words. Example: “Fetched fresh; as I suppose; off some sweet wood.” Hopkins; “In the Valley of the Elwy.”
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Antagonist
A character or force against which another character struggles.
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Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose; as in “I rose and told him of my woe.” Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” contains assonantal “I’s”
Poetry Devices
Ballad
A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas; characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. The Anonymous medieval ballad; “Barbara Allan;” exemplifies the genre.
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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. Here are the opening blank verse lines of “Birches”: 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.
Poetry Devices
Caesura
A strong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardy’s “The Man He Killed” contains caesuras in the middle two lines:
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Connotation
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets; especially; tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” includes intensely connotative language; as in these lines: “Good men; the last wave by; crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay; / Rage; rage against the dying of the light.”
Poetry Devices
Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. Shakespeare’s sonnets end in rhymed couplets; as in “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
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Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word’s denotative meaning against its connotations; or suggested and implied associational implications
Poetry Devices
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.”
Poetry Devices
Epic
A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero.
Poetry Devices
Figurative language
A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration; litotes or understatement; simile and metaphor; which employ comparison; and synecdoche and metonymy; in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.
Poetry Devices
Flashback
An interruption of a work’s chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work’s action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time.
Poetry Devices
Foot
A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example; an iamb or iambic foot is represented by _’; that is; an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost’s line “Whose woods these are I think I know” contains four iambs; and is thus an iambic foot.
Poetry Devices
Free verse
Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is “free” in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad.
Poetry Devices
Hyperbole
A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: “Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star.”
Poetry Devices
Iamb
An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one; as in to-DAY. See Foot.
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Lyric poem
A type of poem characterized by brevity; compression; and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. The anonymous “Western Wind” epitomizes the genre:
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Metaphor
A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is “My love is a red; red rose;”
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Meter
The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. See Foot and Iamb.
Poetry Devices
Metonymy
A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: “We have always remained loyal to the crown.” See Synecdoche.
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Ode
A long; stately poem in stanzas of varied length; meter; and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject
Poetry Devices
Onomatopoeia
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic.
Poetry Devices
Parody
A humorous; mocking imitation of a literary work; sometimes sarcastic; but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation. Examples include Bob McKenty’s parody of Frost’s “Dust of Snow” and Kenneth Koch’s parody of Williams’s “This is Just to Say.”
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Personification
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities.
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Protagonist
The main character of a literary work
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Quatrain
A four-line stanza in a poem; the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet.
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Recognition
The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is
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Reversal
The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist.
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Rhythm
The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from “Same in Blues” by Langston Hughes; the accented words and syllables are underlined:
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Satire
A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices; stupidities; and follies. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a famous example. Chekhov’s Marriage Proposal and O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge;” have strong satirical elements.
Poetry Devices
Sestet
A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian sonnet. Examples: Petrarch’s “If it is not love; then what is it that I feel;” and Frost’s “Design.”
Poetry Devices
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.
Poetry Devices
Simile
A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like; as; or as though. An example: “My love is like a red; red rose.”
Poetry Devices
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.
Poetry Devices
Stanza
A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form–either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter; or with variations from one stanza to another. The stanzas of Gertrude Schnackenberg’s “Signs” are regular; those of Rita Dove’s “Canary” are irregular.
Poetry Devices
Symbol
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself; that stands for something beyond itself. The glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie; the rocking horse in “The Rocking-Horse Winner;” the road in Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”–all are symbols in this sense.
Poetry Devices
Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: “Lend me a hand.” See Metonymy.
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Syntax
The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose; verse; and dialogue. In the following example; normal syntax (subject; verb; object order) is inverted:
Poetry Devices
Tercet
A three-line stanza; as the stanzas in Frost’s “Acquainted With the Night” and Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.” The three-line stanzas or sections that together constitute the sestet of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet.
Poetry Devices
Tone
The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work; as; for example; Flannery O’Connor’s ironic tone in her “Good Country People.” See Irony.
Poetry Devices
Trochee
An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one; as in FOOT-ball.
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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.”
