Poetry Vocab

Question 1

Free Verse

Answer 1

Poetry without a regular pattern of rhyme

Question 2

Parody

Answer 2

A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work

Question 3

Symbol

Answer 3

An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself

Question 4

Metaphor

Answer 4

A comparison between essentially unlike things WITHOUT a work such as “like” or “as” to designate the comparison

Question 5

Closed Form

Answer 5

A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in sure elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern

Question 6

Connotation

Answer 6

The personal and emotional associations called up by a word

Question 7

Couplet

Answer 7

A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem

Question 8

Quatrain

Answer 8

A four-line stanza in a poem

Question 9

Hyperbole

Answer 9

A figure of speech involving exaggeration

Question 10

Enjambment

Answer 10

A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next

Question 11

Allegory

Answer 11

A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning, often both demoralized and moral

Question 12

Elegy

Answer 12

A lyric poem that laments of memorializes the dead

Question 13

iamb

Answer 13

An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in today

Question 14

Synestiesia

Answer 14

An attempt to fuse different senses by describing one in terms of another

Question 15

Irony

Answer 15

A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is to be expected to happen. Different types include verbal, situational, and dramatic

Question 16

Blank verse

Answer 16

a line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter

Question 17

Narrator

Answer 17

The voice and implied speaker of a literary work, to be distinguished from the actual living author

Question 18

Ode

Answer 18

A long, stately poem of praise in stanzas of varied length, meter and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject

Question 19

Allusion

Answer 19

A reference to a a person, event, of literary work outside the poem

Question 20

Personification

Answer 20

The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities

Question 21

Dramatic Monologue

Answer 21

A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener

Question 22

Simile

Answer 22

Figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using “like” and “as” or “as though”

Question 23

Sonnet

Answer 23

A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. Often distinguished as Shakespearean/English or Petrarchan/Italian

Question 24

Assonance

Answer 24

The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry

Question 25

Imagery

Answer 25

Language that represents a sense of impression (sight, sound, taste, smell)