ABC:A poem that has five lines that create a mood, picture, or feeling. Lines 1 through 4 are made up of words, phrases or clauses while the first word of each line is in alphabetical order. Line 5 is one sentence long and begins with any letter.
Acrostic
Poetry that certain letters, usually the first in each line form a word or message when read in a sequence.
Ballad
A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tail or legend which often has a repeated refrain.
Ballade
Poetry which has three stanzas of seven, eight or ten lines and a shorter final stanza of four or five. All stanzas end with the same one line refrain.
Blank verse
A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter and is often unobtrusive. The iambic pentameter form often resembles the rhythms of speech.
Bio
A poem written about one self's life, personality traits, and ambitions.
Burlesque
Poetry that treats a serious subject as humor.
Canzone
Medieval Italian lyric style poetry with five or six stanzas and a shorter ending stanza.
Carpe diem
Latin expression that means 'seize the day.' Carpe diem poems have a theme of living for today.
Cinquain
Poetry with five lines. Line 1 has one word (the title). Line 2 has two words that describe the title. Line 3 has three words that tell the action. Line 4 has four words that express the feeling, and line 5 has one word which recalls the title.
Classicism
Poetry which holds the principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature.
Couplet
A couplet has rhyming stanzas made up of two lines.
Dramatic monologue
A type of poem which is spoken to a listener. The speaker addresses a specific topic while the listener unwittingly reveals details about him/herself.
Elegy
A sad and thoughtful poem about the death of an individual.
Epic
An extensive, serious poem that tells the story about a heroic figure.
Epigram
A very short, ironic and witty poem usually written as a brief couplet or quatrain. The term is derived from the Greek epigrammatic meaning inscription.
Epitaph
A commemorative inscription on a tomb or mortuary monument written to praise the deceased.
Epithalamium (Epithalamion)
A poem written in honor of the bride and groom.
Free verse (vers libre)
Poetry written in either rhyme or unrhymed lines that have no set fixed metrical pattern.
Ghazal
A short lyrical poem that arose in Urdu. It is between 5 and 15 couplets long. Each couplet contains its own poetic thought but is linked in rhyme that is established in the first couplet and continued in the second line of each pair. The lines of each couplet are equal in length. Themes are usually connected to love and romance. The closing signature often includes the poet's name or allusion to it.
Haiku
A Japanese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five morae, usually containing a season word.
Horatian ode
Short lyric poem written in two or four-line stanzas, each with its the same metrical pattern, often addressed to a friend and deal with friendship, love and the practice of poetry. It is named after its creator, Horace.
Iambic pentameter
One short syllabel followed by one long one five sets in a row. Example: la-LAH la-LAH la-LAH la-LAH la-LAH
Idyll (Idyl)
Poetry that either depicts a peaceful, idealized country scene or a long poem telling a story about heroes of a bye gone age.
Irregular (Pseudo-Pindaric or Cowleyan) ode
Neither the three part form of the pindaric ode nor the two or four-line stanza of the Horatian ode. It is characterized by irregularity of verse and structure and lack of coorespondence between the parts.
Italian sonnet
A sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba followed by six lines with a rhyme pattern of cdecde or cdcdcd.
Lay
A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels.
Limerick
A short sometimes vulgar, humorous poem consisting of five anapestic lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 have seven to ten syllables, rhyme and have the same verbal rhythm. The 3rd and 4th lines have five to seven syllables, rhyme and have the same rhythm.
List
A poem that is made up of a list of items or events. It can be any length and rhymed or unrhymed.
Lyric
A poem that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet.
Memoriam stanza
A quatrain in iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of abba -- named after the pattern used by Lord Tennyson.
Name
Poetry that tells about the word. It uses the letters of the word for the first letter of each line.
Narrative
A poem that tells a story.
Ode
A lengthy lyric poem typically of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal stanza structure.
Pastoral
A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, romanticized way.
Petrarchan
A 14-line sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abbaabba followed by a sestet of cddcee or cdecde
Pindaric ode
A ceremonious poem consisting of a strophe (two or more lines repeated as a unit) followed by a an antistrophe with the same metrical pattern and concluding with a summary line (an epode) in a different meter. Named after Pindar, a Greek professional lyrist of the 5th century B.C.
Quatrain
A stanza or poem consisting of four lines. Lines 2 and 4 must rhyme while having a similar number of syllables.
Rhyme
A rhyming poem has the repetition of the same or similar sounds of two or more words, often at the end of the line.
Rhyme royal
A type of poetry consisting of stanzas having seven lines in iambic pentameter.
Romanticism
A poem about nature and love while having emphasis on the personal experience.
Rondeau
A lyrical poem of French origin having 10 or 13 lines with two rhymes and with the opening phrase repeated twice as the refrain.
Senryu
A short Japanese style poem, similar to haiku in structure that treats human beings rather than nature: Often in a humorous or satiric way.
Sestina
A poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in varied order as end words in the other stanzas and also recur in the envoy.
Shakespearean
A 14-line sonnet consisting of three quatrains of abab cdcd efef followed by a couplet, gg. Shakespearean sonnets generally use iambic pentameter.
Shape
Poetry written in the shape or form of an object.
Sonnet
A lyric poem that consists of 14 lines which usually have one or more conventional rhyme schemes.
Tanka
A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the other seven.
Terza Rima
A type of poetry consisting of 10 or 11 syllable lines arranged in three-line tercets.
Verse
A single metrical line of poetry.
Villanelle
A 19-line poem consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain on two rhymes. The first and third lines of the first tercet repeat alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain.
: Figures of Speech
FIGURE OF SPEECH : A mode of expression in which words are used out of their literal meaning or out of their ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional intensity or to transfer the poet's sense impressions by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning familiar to the reader. Some important figures of speech are: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole and symbol. SIMILE: A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two essentially unlike things, usually using like, as or than, as in Burns', "O, my luve's like A Red, Red Rose" or Shelley's "As still as a brooding dove," in The Cloud.
Sidelight: Similes in which the parallel is developed and extended beyond the initial comparison, often being sustained through several lines, are called epic or Homeric similes, since METAPHOR: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one object or idea is applied to another, thereby suggesting a likeness or analogy between them, as
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one. --- Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! --- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind . . . The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white. --- James Thomson, The Seasons
Sidelight: While most metaphors are nouns, verbs can be used as well: Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these. --- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud
PERSONIFICATION : A type of metaphor in which distinctive human characteristics, e.g., honesty, emotion, volition, etc., are attributed to an animal, object or idea, as "The haughty lion surveyed his realm" or "My car was happy to be washed" or "'Fate frowned on his endeavors." Personification is commonly used in allegory.
SYMBOL: An image transferred by something that stands for or represents something else, like flag for country, or autumn for maturity. Symbols can transfer the ideas embodied in the image without stating them, as in Robert Frost's Acquainted With the Night, in which night is symbolic of death or depression, or Sara Teasdale's The Long Hill, in which the climb up the hill symbolizes life and the brambles are symbolic of life's adversities.
HYPERBOLE (hi-PER-buh-lee) : A bold, deliberate overstatement, e.g., "I'd give my right arm for a piece of pizza." Not intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a statement. Sidelight: A type of hyperbole in which the exaggeration magnified so greatly that it refers to an impossibility is called an adynaton.
LITOTES (LIH-tuh-teez, pl. LIH-toh-teez) : A type of meiosis (understatement) in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary, as in "not unhappy" or "a poet of no small stature."
IMAGERY, IMAGE: The elements in a literary work used to evoke mental images, not only of the visual sense, but of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly used in reference to figurative language, imagery is a variable term which can apply to any and all components of a poem that evoke sensory experience, whether figurative or literal, and also applies to the concrete things so imaged.
FIGURE OF SOUND : Sometimes called sound devices, these include onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, consonance, euphony, resonance, and others. Not all of these are considered figures of speech, exactly, but they're included here because they're part of what you'll find it you look closely at the language and word choice of may poem. They work hand-in-hand with rhythm and all types of rhyme.
ALLITERATION: Also called head rhyme or initial rhyme, 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, as in "wild and woolly" or the line from Shelley's The Cloud: I bear light shade for the leaves when laid Sidelight: Alliteration has a gratifying effect on the sound, gives a reinforcement to stresses, and can also serve as a subtle connection or emphasis of key words in the line, but alliterated words should not "call attention" to themselves by strained usage.
ASSONANCE : The relatively close juxtaposition of the same or similar vowel sounds, but with different end consonants in a line or passage, thus a vowel rhyme, as in the words, date and fade.
ONOMATOPOEIA (ahn-uh-mah-tuh-PEE-uh): Strictly speaking, the formation or use of words which imitate sounds, like whispering, clang and sizzle, but the term is generally expanded to refer to any word whose sound is suggestive of its meaning. Sidelight: Because sound is an important part of poetry, the use of onomatopoeia is another subtle weapon in the poet's arsenal for the transfer of sense impressions through imagery, as in Keats' "The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves," in Ode to a Nightingale.. Sidelight: Though impossible to prove, some philologists (linguistic scientists) believe that all language originated through the onomatopoeic formation of words.
CACOPHONY (cack-AH-fuh-nee or cack-AW-fuh-nee) : Discordant sounds in the jarring juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables, sometimes inadvertent, but often deliberately used in poetry for effect, as in the lines from Whitman's The Dalliance of Eagles:
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Sidelight: Sound devices are important to poetic effects; to create sounds appropriate to the content, the poet may sometimes prefer to achieve a cacophonous effect instead of the more commonly sought-for euphony. The use of words with the consonants b, k and p, for example, produce harsher sounds than the soft f and v or the liquid l, m and n.
CAESURA (siz-YUR-uh): A rhythmic break or pause in the flow of sound which is commonly introduced in about the middle of a line of verse, but may be varied for different effects. Usually placed between syllables rhythmically connected in order to aid the recital as well as to convey the meaning more clearly, it is a pause dictated by the sense of the content or by natural speech patterns, rather than by metrics. It may coincide with conventional punctuation marks, but not necessarily. A caesura within a line is indicated in scanning by the symbol (||), as in the first line of Emily Dickinson's, I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
I'm no | body! || Who are | you? Sidelight: As a grammatical, rhythmic, and dramatic device, as well as an effective means of avoiding monotony, the caesura is a powerful weapon in the skilled poet's arsenal.
Sidelight: Since caesura and pause are often used interchangeably, it is better to use metrical pause for the type of "rest" which compensates for the omission of a syllable.
Rhythm
from The teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, edited by Ron Padgett.and your text, Elements of Literature, Second Course (Holt, Rinehart)
Rhythm is a musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm occurs in all forms of language, both written and spoken, but is particularly important in poetry
The most obvious king of rhythm is the regular repetition of stressed and unstessed syllables found in some poetry.
Writers also create rhythm by repeating words and phrases or even by repeating whole lines and sentences, as Walt Whitman does in "Song of Myself":
I hear the sound I love, the soung of the hyman voice, I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused, or following,
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,
Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals...
People often use a combination of two words to describe regular rhythm or meter. For example, you might refer to the meter of a sonnet as iambic pentameter The first word, such as iambic, refers to the beat pattern, in this case an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable (the most common in English). The second refers to the length of the line. In the case of pentameter we mean five feet (or ten syllables, long.
Below are some commonly used words to describe the meter of regular poetry.
The most common units ("feet") of rhythm in English are:
The iamb, consisting of two syllables, only the second accented (as in "good-bye")
The trochee, two syllables, only the first accented (as in "awful")
The anapest, three syllables, with only the third stressed (as in "Halloween")
The dactyl, one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed (as in "wonderful")
The spondee, two consecutive syllables that are both stressed (as in "big deal")
Many American poets in the past thirty years have written poetry using everyday language, and because much American speech is iambic in pattern, the poetry shows a lot of iambic rhythm.
Rhythm (or "measure") in writing is like the beat in music. In poetry, rhythm implies that certain words are produced more force- fully than others, and may be held for longer duration. The repetition of a pattern of such emphasis is what produces a "rhythmic effect." The word rhythm comes from the Greek, meaning "measured motion."
In speech, we use rhythm without consciously creating recognizable patterns. For example, almost every telephone conversation ends rhythmically, with the conversant understanding as much by rhythm as by the meaning of the words, that it is time to hang up. Frequently such conversations end with Conversant A uttering a five- or six-syllable line, followed by Conversant B's five to six syllables, followed by A's two- to four-syllable line, followed by B's two to four syllables, and so on until the receivers are cradled.
Well I gotta go now.Okay, see you later.Sure, pal. So long.See you. Take care.Bye bye.Bye bye.In poems, as in songs, a rhythm may be obvious or muted. A poem like Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo" consciously recreates the rhythms of a tribal dance:
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,Pounded on the table,Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,Hard as they were ableBoom, boom, BOOM,With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.On the other hand, some "free verse" has underlying rhythmical patterns that, while variable and not "regular" like Vachel Lindsay's, do nonetheless give a feeling of unity to the work. For example, read aloud the following lines a few times:
A chimney, breathing a little smoke.
The sun, I can't see
making a bit of pinkI can't quite see in the blue.The pink of five tulipsat five P.M. on the day before March first.: Repetition
Repetition of a sound, syllable, word, phrase, line, stanza, or metrical pattern is a basic unifying device in all poetry.
Repetition of sounds is the basis for rhyme and alliteration. Repetition of patterns of accents in the basis for rhymth. Repetition of key workds, phrases, and sentence patterns is often important in poetry. Sometimes, repetion reinforces or even substitutes for meter (the beat), the other chief controlling factor of poetry.
Primitive religious chants from all cultures show repetition. Frequently, the exact repetition of words in the same metrical pattern at regular intervals forms a refrain, which serves to set off or divide narrative into segments, as in ballads.
Repetition is found extensively in free verse, which does not have a traditional, recognizable metrical pattern. Repetition in free verse includes parallelism (repetition of a grammar pattern) and the repetition of important words and phrases. This helps to distinguish free verse from prose (anything that is not poetry).
In short, although poetry is often about conciseness and novelty, it's also about repetition.
The repetition of similar endings of words or even of identical syllables (rime riche) constitutes rhyme, used generally to bind lines together into larger units or to set up relationships within the same line (internal rhyme).
Front-rhyme, or alliteration, the repetition of initial sounds of accented syllables frequently supplements the use of other unifying devices, although in Old English poetry it formed the basic structure of the line and is still used occasionally in modern poetry. The exact repetition of sounds within a line serves as a variety of internal rhyme ("Come here, thou worthy of a world of praise," Chapman, "The Odyssey"). Another repetitional device is assonance, the use of similar vowel sounds with identical consonant clusters.
The repetition of a complete line within a poem may be what's called an envelope stanza pattern or may be used regularly at the end of each stanza as a refrain.
Rarely a line may be repeated entire and immediately as a means of bringing a poem to a close, as in the ending of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening": And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
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