poetry terms

Question 1

anaphora

Answer 1

the repetition of a word or phrase, usually at the beginning of a line

Question 2

alliteration

Answer 2

the repetition of sounds in a sequence of words

Question 3

allegory

Answer 3

narrative with two levels of meaning, one stated and one unstated

Question 4

apostrophe

Answer 4

direct address to an absent or otherwise unresponsive entity (someone or something dead, imaginary, abstract, or inanimate)

Question 5

assonance

Answer 5

the repetition of vowels sounds

Question 6

beat

Answer 6

a stressed (or accented) syllable

Question 7

binary

Answer 7

duel, twofold, characterized by two parts

Question 8

blank verse

Answer 8

unrhymed iambic pentameter

Question 9

caesura

Answer 9

an audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle. (an audible pause at the end of a line is called an end-stop) the french alexandrine, anglo-saxon alliterative meter, and latin dactylic hexameter are all verse forms that call for a caesura

Question 10

chiasmus

Answer 10

from the greek letter chi (x), a “crossed” rhetorical parallel. that is, the parallel form a:b::a:b changes to a:b::b:a to become chiasmus

Question 11

climax

Answer 11

the high point; the moment of greatest tension or intensity. the climax can occur at any point in a poem and can register on different levels, e.g. narrative, rhetorical, or formal

Question 12

consonance

Answer 12

the repetition of consonant sounds

Question 13

couplet

Answer 13

two lines of verse, usually rhymed. heroic couplet: a rhymed iambic pentameter couplet

Question 14

diction

Answer 14

word choice, specifically the “class” or “kind” of words chosen

Question 15

elegy

Answer 15

since the 17th century, usually denotes a reflective poem that laments the loss of something or someone

Question 16

end-stopped line

Answer 16

a line that ends with a punctuation mark and whose meaning is complete

Question 17

enjamed line

Answer 17

a “run-on” line that carries over into the next to complete its meaning

Question 18

foot

Answer 18

the basic unit of accentual-syllabic and quantitative meter, usually combining a stressed with one or more unstressed syllables

Question 19

free verse

Answer 19

poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly

Question 20

imagery

Answer 20

the visual (or other sensory) pictures used to render a description more vivid and immediate

Question 21

meter

Answer 21

a regularly repeating rhythm, divided for convenience into feet

Question 22

metonymy

Answer 22

a figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it, e.g. “white house” for “the president”

Question 23

ode

Answer 23

a genre of lyric, an ode tends to be a long, serious meditation on an elevated subject

Question 24

prosody

Answer 24

the study of versification, i.e. the form – meter, rhyme, rhythm, stanzaic form, sound patterns – into which poets put language to make it verse rather than something else. refrain a phrase or line recurring at intervals. (n.b. the definition does not require that a refrain include the entire line, nor that it recur at regular intervals, though refrains often are and do)

Question 25

rhythm

Answer 25

the patterns of stresses, unstressed syllables, and pauses in language. regularly repeating rhythm is called meter

Question 26

simile

Answer 26

a figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using a connective word such as “like” or “as”

Question 27

speaker

Answer 27

the “I” of a poem, equivalent to the “narrator” of a prose text. in lyric poetry, the speaker is often an authorial persona

Question 28

stanza

Answer 28

a “paragraph” of a poem: a group of lines separated by extra white space from other groups of lines

Question 29

symbol

Answer 29

an image that stands for something larger and more complex, often something abstract, such as an idea or a set of attitudes

Question 30

symbolism

Answer 30

the serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or idea (distinct from allegory in that symbolism does not depend on narrative)

Question 31

synecdoche

Answer 31

a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, e.g. “wheels” for “car”

Question 32

tone

Answer 32

the speaker’s or authors’s attitude toward the reader, addressee, or subject matter. the tone of a poem immediately itself upon the reader, yet it can be quite difficult to describe and analyze

Question 33

trope

Answer 33

a figure of speech, such as a metaphor

Question 34

valediction

Answer 34

an act or utterance of farewell