Try the Online Quiz on Poetry Terms to test your knowledge of these terms.
You might also like to try the Online Quiz on Prosody to test your knowledge of scanning poetry.

An asterisk (*) indicates terms not discussed in class; you are not responsible for knowing those.

Alliteration: The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close proximity. Example: pensive poets, nattering nabobs of negativism.

Allusion: Unacknowledged reference and quotations that authors assume their readers will recognize.

Anapest (anapestic): unstressed unstressed stressed. Also called "galloping meter." Example: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house/ Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."

Anaphora: Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of a line throughout a work or the section of a work.

Apostrophe: The addressing of a poem to a real or imagined person who is not present.  Example: "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour /England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters." --William Wordsworth, "London, 1802"

Assonance: The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close proximity. Example: deep green sea.

*Ballad: A narrative poem composed of quatrains (iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter)  rhyming x-a-x-a. Ballads may use refrains.  Examples: "Jackaroe," "The Long Black Veil"

*Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. Example: Shakespeare's plays

Caesura: A short but definite pause used for effect within a line of poetry.

Carpe diem poetry: "seize the day." Poetry concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present. Example: Herrick’s "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time"; Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

*Consonance: the counterpart of assonance; the partial or total identity of consonants in words whose main vowels differ. Example: shadow meadow; pressed, passed; sipped, supped. Owen uses this "impure rhyme" to convey the anguish of war and death.

Couplet: two successive rhyming lines. Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet.

Dactyl (dactylic) stressed unstressed unstressed. This pattern is more common (as dactylic hexameter) in Latin poetry than in English poetry. Example: Grand go the years in the Crescent above them/ Worlds scoop their arcs/ and firmaments row (Emily Dickinson)

Diction (formal or high): Proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language. This type of language used to be thought the only type suitable for poetry.

Diction (neutral or middle): Correct language characterized by directness and simplicity.

Diction (informal or low): Relaxed, conversational and familiar language.

Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme: rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is accented (flower, shower)

Dramatic monologue: A type of poem, derived from the theater, in which a speaker addresses an internal listener or the reader.  In some dramatic monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways.

End-stopped rhyme: A line ending in a full pause, usually indicated with a period or semicolon.

Enjambment: A line having no end punctuation but running over to the next line.

*Explication: A complete and detailed analysis of a work of literature, often word-by-word and line-by-line.

Eye rhyme: Words that look as though they should rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently. Example: bear/fear, dough/cough/through/bough

Foot (prosody): A measured combination of heavy and light stresses. The numbers of feet are given below.

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 or septenary (7 feet)

Heroic couplet: two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter; the second line is usually end-stopped.

*Hymn meter or common measure: quatrains of iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter rhyming a b a b. 

Hyperbole (overstatement): exaggeration for effect

Iamb (iambic): an unstressed stressed foot.

Iambic pentameter: The most natural and common kind of meter in English; it elevates speech to poetry.

Image: Images are references that trigger the mind to fuse together memories of sight (visual), sounds (auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). Imagery refers to images throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers.

Metaphor: A comparison between two unlike things, this describes one thing as if it were something else.

*Metaphysical conceit: An elaborate and extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently unrelated fields or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas. The term is commonly applied to the metaphorical language of a number of early seventeenth-century poets, particularly John Donne. Example: stiff twin compasses//the joining together of lovers like legs of a compass. See also "To His Coy Mistress"

Meter: The number of feet within a line of traditional verse. Example: iambic pentameter.

Octave: The first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, unified by rhythm, rhyme, and topic.

Onomatopoeia. A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the activity being described. Example: buzz, slurp.

Paradox: A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true.

Personification: Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions.

Petrarchan sonnet: A sonnet (14 lines of rhyming iambic pentameter) that divides into an octave (8) and sestet (6)

Prosody: the metrical pronunciation of a song or poem.

Pyrrhic foot (prosody): two unstressed feet (an "empty" foot)

Quatrain: a four-line stanza or poetic unit. In an English or Shakespearean sonnet, a group of four lines united by rhyme.

Rhyme: The repetition of identical concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines. Example: June/moon.

Rhyme scheme: The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyme at the end of a line of poetry.

Scan (scansion): the process of marking beats in a poem to establish the prevailing metrical pattern

Sestet: A six-line stanza or unit of poetry.

Shakespearean sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, composed of three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.

Slant rhyme: A near rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels. Example: sun/noon, should/food, slim/ham.

Sonnet: A closed form consisting of fourteen lines of rhyming iambic pentameter.

Spondee: stressed stressed. A two-syllable foot with two stressed accents. The opposite of a pyrrhic foot, this foot is used for effect.

Stanza: A group of poetic lines corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually repeating or systematic.

Synaesthesia: A rhetorical figure that describes one sensory impression in terms of a different sense.  Example: "darkness visible" "green thought"

*Syntax: Word order and sentence structure.

Triple rhyme or dactylic rhyme: Rhyming words of three or more syllables in which any syllable but the last is accented. Example: Macavity/gravity/depravity

Trochee (trochaic): stressed unstressed. Example: "Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright"

Understatement (litotes): deliberately underplaying or undervaluing a thing to create emphasis.