Poetry Terms

Question 1

What is conceit?

Answer 1

extended metaphors

complex logic or weird comparison

Question 2

What is personification?

Answer 2

human characteristics to nonhuman objects

Question 3

What is apostrophe?

Answer 3

speaker addresses someone absent, dead, or nonhuman like it’s present and can respond

Question 4

What is synecdoche?

Answer 4

using the part for the whole

ex. married ear

Question 5

What is metonymy?

Answer 5

using something closely related for the thing actually meant

ex. heard from the White House = government/President

Question 6

What is a paradox?

Answer 6

seeming contradiction that is somehow true

Question 7

What is hyperbole?

Answer 7

exaggeration, not literal

Question 8

What is an understatement?

Answer 8

when a poem says less than it means

ex. “It isn’t very serious. I have this little tumor…”

Question 9

What is sarcasm?

Answer 9

bitter or cutting speech said with the intention to hurt someone’s feelings

Question 10

What is satire?

Answer 10

literature that ridicules human folly (foolishness) or vice (sin) to bring about reform

Question 11

What is verbal irony?

Answer 11

what is said is the opposite of what is meant

Question 12

What is dramatic irony?

Answer 12

when the audience knows more than the character

Question 13

What is situational irony?

Answer 13

when there is a difference between what is expected and what actually happens

Question 14

What is alliteration?

Answer 14

repetition of initial consonant sounds

Question 15

What is consonance?

Answer 15

repetition of final consonant sound

Question 16

What is assonance?

Answer 16

repetition of vowel sounds

Question 17

How is rhyme scheme written?

Answer 17

different letter for each line with an ending word that doesn’t rhyme with a previous line, to the end of the poem

Question 18

What is repetition?

Answer 18

words/phrases intentionally repeated many time to make idea clearer
- not accidental, like repeating ‘the’, ‘an’, ‘to’, etc.

Question 19

What is anaphora?

Answer 19

first word or phrase is repeated in a series of lines

Question 20

What is onomatopoeia?

Answer 20

word that sounds like what it means

Question 21

What is enjambment?

Answer 21

when a line doesn’t stop at the end of the line; it continues onto next line without pause or punctuation

Question 22

What is caesura?

Answer 22

a pause within a line

- where to pause when reading

Question 23

What is juxtaposition?

Answer 23

placing two or more things side by side to compare & contrast them, or to create an interesting effect

Question 24

What is closed form poetry?

Answer 24

poetry that follows the rules

Question 25

What is open form poetry?

Answer 25

poetry that doesn’t follow the rules

- free verse