Poetry Terms

Question 1

What is the voice of a poem, or the narrator?

Answer 1

the speaker

Question 2

Who is the person speaking to the audience in a poem?

Answer 2

the voice

Question 3

What is the image or personality a character presents called?

Answer 3

their persona

Question 4

What is a poem written from an animal’s point of view called?

Answer 4

a mask

Question 5

What is the character or the attitude of a poem called?

Answer 5

the tone

Question 6

What is the use of words that emphasize a specific style of enunciation?

Answer 6

diction

Question 7

What is the technique of using specific words to invoke a certain idea or feeling called?

Answer 7

connotation

Question 8

What is the technique of using a word where the literally meaning contrasts its feelings called?

Answer 8

denotation

Question 9

What form of poetry uses humor, most often to push a reform?

Answer 9

satire

Question 10

What are the elements of a poem that involves any of the five senses to set a scene called?

Answer 10

imagery

Question 11

What is language that is not literal called?

Answer 11

figurative language

Question 12

What is the expressive, nonliteral use of language called?

Answer 12

figures of speech

Question 13

What is the distance between what is said and what is meant called?

Answer 13

irony

Question 14

What is it called when a speaker says something with a literal meaning different from what they actually mean?

Answer 14

verbal irony

Question 15

What is it called when there is a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant?

Answer 15

ironic tone of voice

Question 16

What is a reference to a person, place, event, or another literary work called?

Answer 16

an allusion

Question 17

What is a reference to classic Greek or Roman literary works called?

Answer 17

a classical allusion

Question 18

What is a reference to the Bible of other Biblical works called?

Answer 18

a biblical allusion

Question 19

What is a reference to another work of literature called?

Answer 19

a literary allusion

Question 20

What is a reference to people or an event with historical significance called?

Answer 20

a historical allusion

Question 21

What is a reference to any well-renowned cultural aspect called?

Answer 21

a cultural allusion

Question 22

What is a group of lines forming the basic reaccuring metrical unit called?

Answer 22

a stanza

Question 23

What is a four-line stanza in iambic meter, where the first and third unrhyming lines have four metrical feet & the second and fourth rhyming lines have three metrical feet called?

Answer 23

a ballad stanza

Question 24

What is a two line verse in the same meter that is joined by rhyme called?

Answer 24

a couplet

Question 25

What is a pair of rhyming iambic pentameters called?

Answer 25

a heroic couplet

Question 26

What is a poem with three rhyming lines called?

Answer 26

a triplet or tercet

Question 27

What is a stanza consisting of four lines called?

Answer 27

a quatrain

Question 28

What is an eight-line stanza or poem called?

Answer 28

an octave or a sestet

Question 29

What is a metrical pause in verse where one phrase ends and another begins called?

Answer 29

a caesura

Question 30

What is a popular narrative song passed down orally called?

Answer 30

a ballad

Question 31

What kind of poetry is known as the poetry of the romantic era and started in Europe?

Answer 31

romance

Question 32

What is a lengthy poem about the deeds of an extraordinary character called?

Answer 32

an epic

Question 33

What type of poem is about lovers separating at dawn?

Answer 33

an aubade

Question 34

What is a poem aiming to instruct the reader to celebrate the present called?

Answer 34

a carpe diem poem

Question 35

What is a poem written for a special occasion called?

Answer 35

an occasional poem

Question 36

What is a poem lamenting someone's death called?

Answer 36

an elegy

Question 37

What is a poem praising God or the divine called?

Answer 37

a hymn

Question 38

What type of poem has three stanzas, where the first and third are five syllables and the second is seven?

Answer 38

a haiku

Question 39

What type of poem has five lines and an AABBA rhyme scheme?

Answer 39

a limerick

Question 40

What type of poem is four stanzas, where the first and third are four lines and the last is two?

Answer 40

an Elizabethan sonnet

Question 41

What type of poem is two stanzas, where the first is eight lines about love and the second is six lines about love dying?

Answer 41

a Petrarchan sonnet

Question 42

What is a poem with regular metics, in iambic pentameter, but no rhyme scheme called?

Answer 42

blank verse

Question 43

What type of poem has no metric or rhyming pattern?

Answer 43

free verse

Question 44

What type of poem is written to mock the epic style?

Answer 44

a mock epic

Question 45

What kind of poem is three stanzas, where the first and last lines rhyme?

Answer 45

a terza rima

Question 46

What type of poem is nineteen lines, six stanzas, with an ABA ABA rhyme scheme and an ending couplet?

Answer 46

a villanelle

Question 47

What kind of poem is six verses of six lines with six ending words in a different order each time?

Answer 47

a sestina

Question 48

What type of poem starts with an initial set of lines that reverses halfway through the piece?

Answer 48

a palindrome

Question 49

What kind of poem is written in prose form?

Answer 49

a prose poem