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| A non-dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple of complex, long or short. Epics and ballads are examples of narrative poems. |
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| An eight-line stanza. Most commonly, octave refers to the first division of an Italian sonnet. |
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| The use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Examples are "buzz," "hiss," or "honk." |
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| A form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. This combination usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness. Examples include "wise fool," "sad joy," and "eloquent silence." |
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A situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense. Take me to you, imprison me, for I Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. |
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A similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry. ...Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them. Till the bridge you will need to form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul. |
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| A restatement of an idea in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form. A paraphrase is often an amplification of the original for the purpose of clarity. |
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| A kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics. |
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A group of syllables in a verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it. The most common type of feet are as follows: iambic - u / trochaic - / u anapestic - u u / dactylic - / u u pyrrhic - u u spondaic - / / |
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| A play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings. Puns can have serious as well as humorous uses. |
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| A four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes. |
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| A group of words forming a phrase or sentence consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza. |
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| Close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse. For a true rhyme, the vowels in the accented syllables must be preceded by difference consonants, such as "fan" and "ran". |
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| A seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets. |
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| The recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. The presence of rhythmic patterns lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response to the listener or reader. |
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| A type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it. Its purpose is to injure or hurt. |
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| Writing that seeks to arouse a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule. Satire is usually comedy that exposes errors with an eye to correct vice and folly. |
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A system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and type(s) of feet per line. The following are the most common types of meter: Monometer - one foot per line Dimeter - two feet per line Trimeter - three feet per line Tetramemer - four "..." Pentameter - five "..." Hexameter - six "..." Heptameter - seven "..." Octameter - eight "..." In order to determine the meter of a poem, the lines are "scanned", or marked to indicated stressed and unstressed syllables which are then divided into feet. |
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| A six-lined stanza. Most commonly, sestet refers to the second division of an Italian sonnet. |
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| A directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with "like", "as", or "than". It is easier to recognize a simile than a metaphor because the comparison is explicit. |
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| Normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English or Shakespearean sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg. |
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| Usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme. |
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| Strategy (Rhetorical Strategy) |
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| The management of language for a specific effect. The strategy or rhetorical strategy of a poem is the planned placing of elements to achieve an effect. |
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The arragement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical division of a work. The most common units of structure in a poem are the line and stanza. |
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The mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author. Many elements contribute to style, such as... Diction Syntax Figurative language Imagery Selection of detail Sound effects Tone |
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| Something this is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else. |
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| A form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole. For example, we refer to "foot soldiers" for infantry and "field hands" for manual laborers who work in agriculture. |
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| The ordering of words into patterns or sentences. If a poet shifts words from the usual word order, you know you are dealing with an older stype of poetry or a poet who wants to shift emphasis onto a particular word. |
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| A stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme. |
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| A three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc, etc. |
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| The main thought expresses by a work. In poetry, is is the abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person, action, and image in the work. |
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| The manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that epxresses meaning. Tone is described by adjectives, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Tone is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, and style. |
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| The opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is. |
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| A nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain. It uses only two rhymes which are repeated as follows: aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa. Line 1 is repeated entirely to form lines 6, 12, and 18, and line 3 is repeated entirely to form lines 9, 15, and 19; thus, eight of the nineteen lines are refrain. |
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