Poetry Vocab Flashcards
Poetry terms and definitions
Free Verse
Poetry without a regular pattern of rhyme
Parody
A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work
Symbol
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself
Metaphor
A comparison between essentially unlike things WITHOUT a work such as “like” or “as” to designate the comparison
Closed Form
A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in sure elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern
Connotation
The personal and emotional associations called up by a word
Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem
Quatrain
A four-line stanza in a poem
Hyperbole
A figure of speech involving exaggeration
Enjambment
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next
Allegory
A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning, often both demoralized and moral
Elegy
A lyric poem that laments of memorializes the dead
iamb
An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in today
Synestiesia
An attempt to fuse different senses by describing one in terms of another
Irony
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
Blank verse
a line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter
Narrator
The voice and implied speaker of a literary work, to be distinguished from the actual living author
Ode
A long, stately poem of praise in stanzas of varied length, meter and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject
Allusion
A reference to a a person, event, of literary work outside the poem
Personification
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities
Dramatic Monologue
A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener
Simile
Figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using “like” and “as” or “as though”
Sonnet
A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. Often distinguished as Shakespearean/English or Petrarchan/Italian
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry
