POETRY TERMINOLOGY for ENGLISH IV
FORMS OF POETRY
Abcedarian Poem: A poem having verses beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet.
Acrostic Poem: A poem in which certain letters of the lines, usually the first letters, form a word or message relating to the subject. Examples of acrostic poems date back as far as the 4th Century.
Cinquain: A five-line stanza of syllabic verse, the successive lines containing two, four, six, eight and two syllables.
Epigram: A short, witty poem, usually humorous or satiric.
Free verse: Verse that has neither regular rhyme nor regular meter. Free verse often uses cadences rather than uniform metrical feet.
Haiku: Short poem of Japanese origins, frequently 17 syllables in length.
Sonnet: A fourteen line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a varied rhyme scheme. The two main types of sonnet are the Petrarchan (or Italian) and the Shakespearean.
The Petrarchan Sonnet is divided into two main sections, the octave (first eight lines) and the sestet (last six lines). The octave presents a problem or situation which is then resolved or commented on in the sestet. The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-B-A A-B-B-A C-D-E C-D-E, though there is flexibility in the sestet, such as C-D-C D-C-D.
The Shakespearean Sonnet, (perfected though not invented by Shakespeare), contains three quatrains and a couplet, with more rhymes (because of the greater difficulty finding rhymes in English). The most common rhyme scheme is A-B-A-B C-D-C-D E-F-E-F G-G. In Shakespeare, the couplet often undercuts the thought created in the rest of the poem.
Visual Poetry: Also called Shape Verse or Concrete Poetry: poems that look like what they’re about.
THE RHYTHM OF POETRY
Meter: The rhythmic pattern that emerges when words are arranged in such a way that their stressed and unstressed syllables fall into a more or less regular sequence.
Accent: The rhythmically significant stress in the articulation of words, giving some syllables more relative prominence than others.
Foot: The basic unit of meter consisting of a group of two or three syllables. Scansion is the process of determining the prevailing foot in a line of poetry.
Types of feet: U = (unstressed); / = (stressed syllable)
Iamb: U / (the winds)
Trochee: / U (flower)
Anapest: U U / (by the dawn’s)
Dactyl: / U U (mightiest)
Spondee: / / (brute beast)
Pyrrhic: U U (on the)
End-stopped: A line that has a natural pause at the end (period, comma, etc.). For example, these lines are end stopped:
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun./
Coral is far more red than her lips red. -William Shakespeare
Enjambment: The running over of a sentence or thought into the next couplet or line without a pause at the end of the line; a run-on line. For example, the first two lines here are enjambed:
"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove. . ." -- William Shakespeare
THE SOUND OF POETRY
Alliteration: The repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) of stressed syllables in neighboring words or at short intervals within a line or passage, usually at word beginnings.
ex: The lazy labs lie languidly on the laps of their loyal owners.
Assonance: The use of similar vowel sounds repeated in successive or proximate words containing different consonant. ex: He hid the lid under the mittens as he bid goodbye to the witch.
Cacophony: Unpleasant sounds: “black bugs blood”
Euphony: Pleasant sounds: “Thy hair soft-lifted by winnowing wind.”
Onomatopoeia. The formation and use of words that suggest by their sounds the object or idea being named. "Hiss," for example, when spoken is intended resemble the sound of steam or of a snake. Other examples include these: slam, buzz, screech, whirr, crush, sizzle, crunch, wring, wrench, gouge, grind, mangle, bang, blam, pow, zap, fizz, urp, roar, growl, blip, click, whimper, and, of course, snap, crackle, and pop. .
Rhyme. The similarity between syllable sounds at the end of two or more lines. Some kinds of rhyme include:
*Couplet: a pair of lines rhyming consecutively AND Eye rhyme: words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, though. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter.)
USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN POETRY
Metaphor: A comparison which imaginatively identifies one thing with another dissimilar thing, and transfers or ascribes to the first thing (the tenor or idea) some of the qualities of the second (the vehicle or image). Unlike a simile or analogy, metaphor asserts that one thing is another thing, not just that one is like another. Very frequently a metaphor is invoked by the to be verb:
Personification: The metaphorical representation of an animal or inanimate object as having human attributes -- attributes of form, character, feelings, behavior, and so on. As the name implies, a thing or idea is treated as a person.
Simile: A direct, expressed comparison between two things essentially unlike each other, but resembling each other in at least one way. In formal prose the simile is a device both of art and explanation, comparing the unfamiliar thing (to be explained) to some familiar thing (an object, event, process, etc.) known to the reader. There is no simile in the comparison, "My car is like your car," because the two objects are not "essentially unlike" each other. When a noun is compared to a noun, the simile is usually introduced by like.
OTHER TERMS:
Stanza: A division of a poem: a four-line stanza is called a quatrain; a two-line stanza, a couplet.
Tone: The writer's attitude toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic.
Pun: Word play in which the writer surprisingly reveals that words with totally different meanings have similar or identical sounds.
Symbolism and Allusion: A symbol is an object oe person that represents something else, as our flag represents our country. An allusion is a reference to some person, historical event, work of art, etc. in another work.