Poetry Vocab Flashcards
Perfect rhyme
(also called true or full rhyme): rhyme in which the vowel sounds and the final consonants are exactly alike, while the initial consonant sounds are different Example: I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
Free verse
poetry that does not have a fixed rhythm or rhyme scheme Example: “there are so many tictoc clocks everywhere telling people what toctic time it is for tictic instance five toc minutes toc past six tic”
Imperfect rhyme
(also called slant, near or half rhyme): rhyme in which the consonants of stressed syllables agree but the vowel sounds do not match Example: They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank, Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink
Eye rhyme
also called “false rhyme;” words that look like they should rhyme, but do not actually contain the same sounds Example: Hast thou not dragg’d Diana from her car, And driv’n the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? The Naiad from her fountain-flood?
End rhyme
rhyme at the end of a line of
verse
Example: “Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.”
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Internal rhyme
rhyme occurring within a line of
verses.
Example: The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
Imagery
concrete details designed to
appeal to the sense of sight. By
itself, the term imagery implies a
reference to sight.
Example: On a flat road runs the well-train’d runner;
He is lean and sinewy, with muscular legs;
He is thinly clothed—he leans forward as he runs,
With lightly closed fists, and arms partially rais’d.
They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the
sun—hark to the musical clank,
Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses
loitering stop to drink,
Tactile Imagery
concrete details designed to appeal to the sense of touch Example: The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Olfactory Imagery
concrete details designed to
appeal to the sense of smell
Example: “The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.”
“And what a congress of stinks!—
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,”
Auditory imagery
concrete details designed to
appeal to the sense of sound
Example: They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the
sun—hark to the musical clank,
moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls
Gustatory imagery
concrete details designed to appeal to the sense of taste Example: Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
Metaphor
a comparison of two unlike
things without using like or as
Example: “I don’t want to be the sweeper of the egg shells that you
walk upon…”
The Lightning is a yellow Fork
From Tables in the sky
Personification
attributing animate characteristics to something that is not alive Example: “Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.”
Simile
a comparison of two unlike things using like or as Example: Shoots dangled and drooped, Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates, Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
You may think at first I’m mad as a hatter
When I tell you a cat must have three
different names.
Symbol
a tangible item that represents an
intangible idea
Example: The little graveyard where my people are!
So small the window frames the whole of it.
Not so much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three stones of slate and one of marble,
Broad-shouldered little slabs there in the sunlight
On the sidehill. We haven’t to mind those.
But I understand: it is not the stones,
But the child’s mound—
“Don’t, don’t, don’t
Don’t,” she cried.
