POETIC TERMS

Common Closed-Form Poetry (poetry written in specific and traditional patterns produced through
rhyme, meter, line-length, and line grouping).

1. Lyric Poem: brief subjective, reflective poetry with regular rhyme scheme and meter reveals
the poet/speaker’s personal thoughts and feelings to create a single unique impression; more
interested in emotion, melody, and imagination; Elegy, ode, sonnet, or cinquain are lyric poems.

2. Sonnet: rigid fourteen-line lyric poem, usually in rhymed iambic pentameter; expresses single
theme or idea; Two types:
1) Petrarchan: Italian; Made up of octave (8 lines) and sestet (6 lines),
between which a break in thought occurs..
Rhyme scheme [abba abba] [cdecde] in Iambic Pentameter. Octave
presents problem; sestet resolves it.
2) Elizabethan: Shakespearean; 3 quatrains and a couplet in iambic
pentameter, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg, Each quatrain presents
separate development of central idea or problem. Couplet is climax or
solution.

3. Ode: Complex and often lengthy lyric poem written in a dignified formal style on a lofty or
serious subject; often written for special occasion to honor person or commemorate event. It is a
profound treatment of a profound subject. May have varying line lengths. There is no set form for
an ode.
Ex: "It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an Oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear.
A Lily of a day
Is fairer far, in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measure, life may perfect be."
-Ben Jonson
4. Elegy: type of lyric poem of mourning, usually over death of individual; May also be a lament over
passing of life or beauty or meditation over nature of death. Formal in language, solemn or
melancholy in tone.
Ex: "Farewell, too little, and too lately known,
Whom I began to think and call my own:
For sure our souls were near allied, and thine
Cast in the same poetic mold with mine.
One common note on either lyre did strike,
And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike…"
-John Dryden
Excerpt from To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
5. Pastoral: type of poem that deals in an idealized way with shepherds and rustic life
Ex: "Come with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valley, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals…"
-Christopher Marlowe
Excerpt from The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

6. Idyll: lyric poem describing the life of the shepherd in pastoral, bucolic, idealistic terms

6. Haiku: Japanese poem of 3 lines and 17 syllables (5 in first line, 7 in second, 5 in third) often
depicting a delicate image

7. Cinquain: 5 line poem (first line has two syllables; 2 nd line has four syllables, 3rd line has six
syllables; 4th line has eight syllables, 5th line has two syllables); usually in iambic; seldom has end
rhyme, but may contain internal rhyme, assonance, consonance

8. Epic: long, dignified narrative story about the adventures of a national hero using elevated
language, speech, and actions.

9. Ballad: simple narrative verse that tells a story to be sung or recited

10. A. Folk Ballads: earliest form, no known author, transmitted orally, subject
matter concerns every day life of common people
B. Literary Ballads: imitates style of folk ballad, has a single author
C. Ballad stanza: type of four-line stanza, 1st and 3rd lines have 4 stressed words; 2nd and
4th lines have 3 stresses. It is usually iambic. Second and fourth line rhyme abcb

11. Epigrams: short, witty poems which make humorous or satiric points. They are 2 to 4 lines
written in couplets. Epitaphs = lines composed to mark the death of someone.
Ex: Epigram- "We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so."
-Pope
Ex: Epitaph- "Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I."
-Dryden

12. Limerick: humorous nonsense verse, 5-line poem, often bawdy. Dominant foot is anapest
Ex: "There was a young person of Mullion,
Intent upon marrying bullion;
 By some horrible fluke
She jilted a duke
And had to elope with a scullion."

13. Clerihew: a humorous, quasi-biographical, closed-form poem in four lines, rhyming a a b b ,

usually about a famous person or figure. It humorously characterizes the person whose name is
in one of the rhymes. First two lines rhyme as do the last two.
Ex: "George the Third
Ought never to have occurred.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder."

14. Villanelle: a closed poetic form of 19 lines, composed of five triplets and a quatrain. The form
requires that whole lines be repeated in a specific order and that only two rhyme sounds occur
throughout

15. Dirge: a wailing song sung at a funeral or in commemoration of death. A short lyric of
lamentation.

16. Dramatic Monologue: a poem that reveals “a soul in action: through the speech of one
character in a dramatic situation. Character is speaking to identifiable but silent listener
17. Sestina: 39 lines with six-line stanzas and a closing stanza fo 3 lines called an envoy. Set
rhyme and repetition
18. Narrative poems: long or short poems that tell a story. Speaker is detached form action.
Usually objective with a set stanza format. Epic poems are narrative poems as are ballads.

Open-Form Poetry: avoids traditional patterns. Once termed free verse.

Blank Verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter; best form adapted to dramatic verse
Prose Poetry: a short work, written in prose, but employing the methods of verse such as imagery,
for poetic ends.
Free Verse: verse without regular rhyme, rhythm, or meter.

Devices of Sound
Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds within closely grouped words
alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds
consonance: repetition of consonant sounds usually at the end of words, but it may be in the middle
Ex. “And all the air a solemn stillness holds”
rhyme: the repetition of sounds in two or more words or phrases that appear close to each other in
a poem
Onomatopoeia: words echoing the actions they describe; words whose sounds imitate or suggest
their meaning. Also called echoic words
Dissonance: Harsh and inharmonious sounds, a marked breaking of the music of poetry, which may
be intentional, as it often is in Browning and Harding
Euphony: "good sound" refers to words containing consonants that permit an easy and smooth flow
of spoken sound; use of compatible, harmonious sounds to produce a pleasing, melodious
 effect.
Cacophony: "bad sound" in which percussive and choppy sounds make for vigorous and noisy
pronunciation, as in tongue twisters like "black bug's blood"; use of inharmonious sounds in close
conjunction for effect.

Scansion: analysis of verse in terms of meter

Meter: regular pattern of stressed or unstressed syllables in poetry. Meter is measured in units
called feet. A foot consists of one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed syllables.
1) iambic: A two-syllable foot; one unstressed syllable followed by one
stressed syllable as in rePORT
2) trochaic: A two-syllable foot with one stressed syllable followed by
unstressed syllable as in PATtern.
3) dactylic: a three-syllable foot with one stressed syllable followed by two-
unstressed syllables as in SIlently
4) anapestic: a three-syllable foot with two unstressed syllables followed by
a stressed syllable as in underTAKE
5) spondee: a two-syllable foot with both syllables stressed

There are other specialized meters, but these are the basics.

6) Amphibrach: a foot with unstressed, stressed, unstressed syllables (~/~):

Chicago
7) Amphimacer or cretic: a foot with stressed, unstressed , stressed syllables (/~/):
attitude
8) caesura: a pause in the meter or rhythm of a line
9) pyrrhic: a foot consisting of two unstressed syllables
10) imperfect foot: a foot consisting of a single syllable, either stressed or unstressed.
11) Catalexis: cutting a foot short at the end of a line (a type of imperfect foot)

Metrical Lines:
1. Monometer = 1 foot
2. Dimeter = 2 feet
3. Trimeter = 3 feet
4. Tetrameter = 4 feet
5. Pentameter = 5 feet
6. Hexameter = 6 feet
7. Heptameter = 7 feet = Septenary
8. Octameter = 8 feet

Stanza: usually a repeated grouping of 2 or more lines with the meter and rhyme scheme
Couplet: two lines of verse with similar end rhymes. If the idea is complete in itself is called a
closed couplet.
Heroic Couplet: iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs
Tercet or Triplet: 3 line stanza. Two variations of tercet-
 1) Terza rima = Italian verse consisting of a series of three-line stanzas in which the middle
line of each stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the following stanza
2) Villanelle = most complex variation, Rhyme aba and the first and third
lines of first tercet are repeated alternately in subsequent stanzas as
refrain.
Octave: eight-line stanza
Quatrain: four-line stanza
Sestet: six-line poem or stanza
Terza rima: three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc (center line rhymed twice in next stanza)
Rhyme royal: seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc used by Chaucer and
medieval poets

free verse: not written in traditional meter but is still rhythmical. No set rhyme scheme or
rhythm; it depends on the language cadence and punctuation for rhythm.

blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter

Types of Rhyme
1. Internal Rhyme: the presence of a rhyming word within a line of verse “The splendor falls on
castle walls”
2. Inexact Rhyme: Rhymes may often be created out of words with similar but not identical
sounds; either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are the same, or vice
versa. aka slant rhyme, near rhyme, approximate rhyme, half rhyme, off rhyme,
analyzed rhyme, or suspended rhyme.
In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks.
(Dylan Thomas: “Poem on His Birthday”)
3. Eye rhyme or Sight Rhyme: identical in spelling but different in pronunciation; ex: "prove" and
"above." They look as if they should rhyme exactly, but they don’t.
3. End Rhyme: the rhyming that occurs at the end of verse lines; the most common type.
4. Masculine rhyme: rhyme in which only the last, accented syllable of the rhyming words
correspond exactly in sound. Also called accented rhyme or rising rhyme or heavy stress
rhyme
She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
5. Feminine Rhyme: rhyme in which two consecutive syllables of the rhyming words correspond,
the first syllable carrying the accent. Double rhyme, Falling Rhyme, Dying rhyme
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying.
O the pain, the bliss of dying.

6. Cliché rhyme: rhymes such as moon and June or trees and breeze that have been so widely
used by poets and songwriters as to become trite.
 General Poetic Terms

Accent: the emphasis given to a syllable. A heavy or primary stress is marked

with a prime mark or acute accent ( /), and a lightly accented syllable is marked with a short
accent ( ~).

Accentual Rhythm:(Strong stress and “Sprung” Rhythm). Rhythm that relies not on traditional
meters but rather on numbers of strong stresses, regardless of the number oflightly
stressed words and syllables. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) developed “sprung”
rhythm, or rhythm in which the major stresses would be released or “sprung” from the
poetic line. The method is complex, but one characteristic is the juxtaposing of one-syllable
words, as in this line from “Pied Beauty””
With swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim:
Here a number of elements combine to create six major stresses in the line, which contains
only nine syllables.

Alexandrine: a line of verse written in iambic hexameter, containing twelve syllables or six iambic
feet.
She sighed for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year
(John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes”)

Allusion: references to literary works, persons, sayings, events, or objects in our cultural heritage
to which the author makes comparisons to enhance the meaning.

Apostrophe: The addressing of a discourse to a real or imagined person who is not present; also a
speech to an abstraction
Little Lamb, who made thee”
(William Blake, “The Lamb”)

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!

(John Milton, “ Samson Agonistes”)

Carpe Diem Poetry: Poetry that emphasizes the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy
the present. Carpe diem means “seize the day.”
“What is love? This not hereafter,
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”
--Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Conceit: an elaborate and extended metaphor that makes a comparison between two startingly
different things. It may be a brief metaphor but it provides the framework for the entire poem.
An especially unusual and intellectual conceit is the metaphysical conceit, used by certain
seventeenth-century poets, such as John Donne.

Concrete Poetry: poetry that draws most or all of its meaning from the visual impact of the poem.

Controlling image: an image or metaphor that runs throughout and determines the form or nature
of a literary work. Frost’s sonnet “The Silken Tent” involves the controlling image that the title
indicates.
End-Stopped Line: a line ending in a full pause, usually indicated with a period or semicolon.

Enjambment: a run-on line, continuing into the next without a grammatical break.
Green rustlings, more-than-regal charities
Drift cooly from that tower of whispered light.
(Hart Crane: “Royal Palm”)

Hyperbole: overstatement, exaggeration

Persona: Literally a mask. The term is widely used to refer to a “second self” created by an
author and through whom the narrative is told

Pun: a word play in which the writer suggests two or meanings of a word at the same time. These
are often humorous.

Refrain: one or more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.
Symbol: a specific thing that may stand for ideas, values, persons, or ways of life; a symbol
always points beyond its own meaning toward greater and more complex meaning.

Synecdoche: rhetorical figure in which a part stands for a whole or a whole for a part.

Synesthesia: a union or fusion of references to separate sensations or feelings; the description of

one type of perception or thought with words that are appropriate for another. (loud shirt, bitter
wind, prickly laugh, hearing light, seeing sound

Trope: use of word or words in a figurative sense; figure of speech,

Volta: the turn in thoughts—from question to answer, problem to solution—that occurs at the
beginning of the sestet in the Italian sonnet. It is sometimes between the twelfth and thirteenth
lines in an Elizabethan sonnet