Poetry Terminology

Alliteration

• The repetition of the same consonant sounds at any place, but often at the beginning of words.

Assonance

• The repetition or a pattern of (the same) vowel sounds

Ballad

• A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain.

Context

• Can be historical, social, linguistic – something outside the text that you need to know to grasp its meaning.

Couplet

• In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and (usually) rhyme and form a complete thought.

Dialect

• Regional English words that don’t belong to Standard English

Dramatic Monologue

• Poem voiced or spoken by a character

Elegy

• A poem that laments the death of a person, or one that is simply sad and thoughtful

End-stopped

• Lines which end - with a full-stop – or with a pause/item of punctuation.

Enjambment

• A line ending in which the sense continues, with no punctuation (so no pause), into the following line or stanza.

• Also called run-on line

• Compare: end-stopped line

Form

• General way of organising a poem

• Similar to genre or sub-genre

• There are some particular forms such as ballads or sonnets

Feminine rhyme

• A rhyme that occurs in a final unstressed syllable e.g. mama/dada

Half-Rhyme

• Imperfect rhyme where just consonants rhyme rather than vowels:

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

Hyperbole

• Exaggeration for effect

Iambic Pentameter

• Line of verse with five (penta) beats

• …where each beat falls on the second syllable in each foot (=bar)

To be / or not / to be/ that is / the quest/ion

(and yes, Shakespeare is breaking his own rule here…)

Imagery

• Word-pictures, figures of speech, descriptions that evoke ideas, feelings, objects actions, states of mind etc.

• Often repeated in patterns of imagery

• Metaphors and similes are kinds of imagery

Masculine rhyme

• A rhyme that occurs in a final stressed syllable:

Metaphor

• A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected.

Narrative

• Telling a story. Ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative poems.

Non-standard English

• A variety of English that is non-standard, such as Caribbean English

Onomatopoeia

• A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic words are:

Personification

• A figure of speech in which nonhuman things or abstract ideas are given human attributes:

Quatrain

• A group of four lines

Refrain

• A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza.

Rhyme

• The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words.

• Technically: the same terminal vowel and consonant pair.

Rhyming Couplet

• A pair of lines that rhyme

Rhyme scheme

• The way rhymes are organised throughout a poem.

• The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for each final sound.

• In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second, and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another.

Rhythm

• the arrangement of beats and stresses in a poem

Sibilance

• Repeated ‘S’ sounds

Simile

• A figure of speech in which two things are compared using the word "like" or "as."

Sonnet

• A lyric poem about love that is 14 lines long. • English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are

composed of three quatrains and a final couplet, with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg.

• English sonnets are written generally in iambic pentameter.

Speaker

• The voice that is speaking in the poem

Stanza

• A verse or chunk of a poem.

• The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme.

Stress

• The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. Stressed syllables usually stand out because they have long, rather than short, vowels, or because they have a different pitch or are louder than other syllables.

Symbol

• When a word, phrase or image 'stands for' an idea or theme i.e. a red rose is a symbol of love

Tercet

• A group of three lines

Tone

• The overall feeling of a poem.

• How the speaking voice of the poem sounds.

Voice

• the speaker who speaks a poem or part of a poem

What is x an example of?

1. the world's a stage, he was a lion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles.

2. "Moses supposes his toeses are roses."

3. pleasure/leisure, longing/yearning

4. tons of money, waiting for ages, a flood of tears

5. She sells seashells by the seashore, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

6. cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve.

7. You are my sun. I give you a red red rose. She had me on the cross.

8. "What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?“

9. buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, tick-tock.

10. the sky is crying, dead leaves danced in the wind, blind justice.