Poetry Terminology Flashcards
What is Alliteration?
The repetition of beginning consonant sounds in multiple words
What is Anaphora?
A rhetorical device that consists of repeating a sequence of words, giving emphasis.
What is Assonance?
The repetition of identical or similar phonemes in words e.g claps, hands, stamps.
What is Blank Verse?
A poetic form that uses a regular poetic meter without rhyme.
What is a Caesura?
A break between words/in a verse, not end-stopped.
What is Concrete Poetry / Kinetic Poetry / Shape Poetry?
A literary movement that uses the arrangement of words, letters and symbols to convey meaning through visual effects. Blends the visual and the verbal.
What is Diction?
The choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing.
What is a Dramatic Monologue?
A long speech by a character in a text, which reveals thoughts and feelings.
What is an Elegy / Elegiac Poem?
A poem of serious reflection, often lamenting the dead.
What is Ellipsis?
Omits a portion of the sequence of events, allows reader to fill narrative gaps (…)
What is End-Stopping?
The line ending with a complete thought or phrase, marked by a period. (.)
What is Enjambment?
The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of the line, or run-on sentences in poetry.
What is Epic?
A long narrative poem retelling the story of a hero/hero’s deeds.
What is an Eye-Rhyme?
A similarity between words visually, but not in pronunciation.
What is Form?
The structure of the poem that dictates how it is written.
What is Found Poetry?
A poem that uses words, phrases or passages from other sources, often rearranges this text to create new meaning e.g adding/deleting.
What is Free Verse?
A poem without rhythm or a regular rhyme; freely structured.
What is a Full Rhyme?
2 or more words that rhyme both visually and in pronunciation.
What is a Half Rhyme?
2 or more words where only their final consonant sound rhymes, not the rest of the word. E.g bag and bug
What are Heroic Couplets?
A pair of rhyming couplets, typically written in iambic pent, to describe heroic deeds/heroes.
What is Iamb?
2 syllables of a line: one unstressed, another stressed. E.g unite, provide.
What is Iambic Pentameter?
A line of blank verse that consists of one unstressed syllable (short) followed by a stress syllable (long) = 10 syllables.
What is Imagery?
Visually descriptive or figurative language in poetry,
What is an Internal Rhyme?
A rhyme in the middle of a line and another at the end of a line, or in the middle of the next.
What is Lyric?
A type of poetry that expresses thoughts/feelings of the speaker, often having a musical quality.
What is a Metaphor?
Describing something by saying that it is something else, applying a phrase/word to an object without it literally being that object = symbolic.
What is Metre?
The rhythmic structure of a line or verse.
What is Mood?
The overall tone, feeling or atmosphere created in a poem.
What is a Narrative Poem?
A poem that tells a literal story, often with a deeper meaning.
What is an Octet?
A stanza or poem that has 8 lines.
What is an Ode?
A lyric poem often used to address a singular person/ a short poem to address an event, person or idea.
What is Onomatopoeia?
A literary device used to describe what sounds sound like. E.g slam, boom, splash, crash.
What is an Oxymoron?
A literary device that combines two seemingly contradictory words to form a thought-provoking idea.
What is Personification?
Giving something non-human human qualities.
What is a Quatrain?
A 4 line stanza.
What is Rhyme?
Words having similar sounds, consonants, etc, in a poem/the repetition of syllables.
What is a Rhyme Scheme?
A pattern of rhymes in a poem.
What is Rhythm?
The beat and flow of a poem, created by rhyme or patterns of stressed/unstressed syllables.
What is a Sestet?
A 6 line stanza.
What is Sestina?
A fixed form of poetry consisting of six stanzas with six lines each.
What is Sibilance?
A literary device that uses the repetition of hissing sounds to create effect in poetry. “s”, “sh”, “z”
What is a Simile?
A comparison between two things using “like” or “as”
What is a Sonnet?
A poem with 14 lines and a strict rhyme scheme, often about love, grief, beauty, etc, usually ends with a change in the poet’s perspective.
What is a Stanza?
A paragraph of a poem = prefix derived from ‘to stand’
What is Structure?
The way words, stanzas and elements of a poem are organised on the page. E.g line lengths, number of lines and rhyme.
What is Syntax?
The arrangement of language and order of words within a line or sentence.
What is Lexis / a Lexical Set?
Vocabulary that share a common meaning, sound, or part of speech.
The level of language consisting of vocabulary, and how words are combined/grouped together to convey meaning.
What is Tone?
The attitude or feeling a poet conveys towards their subject matter, speaker or audience.
What is a Villanelle?
A poem of 19 lines with a strict rhyme scheme: five tercets then one quatrain.
What is a Tercet
A 3-line stanza.
What is a Voice?
The style of a poem that conveys the speaker’s attitude and personality e.g tone, diction, syntax etc.
What is Volta?
A dramatic shift in a poem’s tone or argument: marks a thought of change, occurs in different places depending on the poem.
Shakespearean = before final couplet.
Petrarchan = between octave and sestet.
What is Typography?
Arranging type to make a written language visually appealing, readable and legible = style, arrangement, appearance of letters.
What is a Paradox?
A seemingly contradictory statement which is, ironically, true when the meaning is fully investigated. Seems illogical at first.
What is an Envoi?
A short concluding stanza in a poem that summarises or comments on the poem, or serves as its dedication.
What is an Apostrophe in poetry?
A figure of speech where the speaker directly addresses someone/something that is not present and cannot respond in reality.
What is a Refrain?
A line or group of lines that regularly repeat.
