Terms Related to Defining Poetry

Prose –

the use of language in day-to-day situations including business settings and which generally follows conventional practices such as grammatical rules; non-poetic style of language

Text –

any written body of words; may be either prose or poetry

Poem –

non-prose use of words to express a feeling or idea usually associated with repetition of sounds, patterned sequences of words and/or lines, figurative language and other poetic devices, and has a highly focused purpose either to tell a story or express an emotion or idea.

Poetry –

use of language in non-everyday ways such as repetition of sounds and rhyme or focus on an observation or feeling using figures of speech and imagery and other devices to compress meaning resulting in more intense communication.

Form (poetic form) –

poetry has two forms: narrative which tells a story and lyric which expression an emotion or idea

Line –

a line of poetry is what is written on one line; not necessarily a sentence

Stanza –

a group of lines generally completing an idea

Closed form (fixed form) –

poetry which follows a pattern of sounds, rhyme, or meter

Iambic pentameter –

a common type of pattern of sounds and rhythm used in poetry created by pairing ten syllables for each line into five pairs. Commonly used by Shakespeare in his sonnets.

Common measure –

a ballad stanza generally rhyming in alternating pairs

Couplet –

a poem or stanza of two lines

Heroic couplet –

two lines of rhymed verse in iambic pentameter; generally used in epic poems

Tercet –

a three-line poem or stanza in a poem

Quatrain –

a poem or stanza of four lines

Octave–

a poem or stanza of eight lines in a poem

Ottava rima–

a poem or stanza of eight lines with a specific rhyme pattern: iambic pentameter with ab ab ab cc

Terza rima –

a poem or stanza in three lines with the first and third line rhyming: aba bcb cdc and so on

Blank verse –

unrhymed iambi pentameter

Prose poem –

an open-form of poetry that is presented as prose

Open form (free verse, vers libre) –

poetry that does not follow any specific pattern of form, rhyme, or meter

Poetic devices –

ways of using language such as imagery, figures of speech, irony, symbolism, allusion, fantasy, point of view, rhyme, rhythm, and theme; used in poetry to compress meaning into fewer words and more intense expression.

Ancient Poetry –

poetry created before the late 500s AD having roots in an oral tradition of creating and performing poetry verbally. Surviving poetry includes love poem from Ancient Sumeria, poetic verses in ancient religious texts including the Bible and Koran, and epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey.

Middle Ages –

an historic period from the late 500s AD to the middle of the 1400s.

Anglo-Saxon era –

poetry created from the beginning of the Middle Ages (late 500s AD) into the end of the Middle Ages (mid-1400s) usually associated with tales of heroic deeds and non-romantic love.

Troubadours –

traveling poets/performers from the Provencal region of France during the Middle Ages reciting lyric poetry about courtly love

Renaissance –

from the French for rebirth; a period ranging from the mid-1400s to the mid-1500s associated with a renewed interest in science, philosophy, and arts including literature. William Shakespeare wrote during this period.

Metaphysical poets –

a poetic movement during the 1600s characterized by analysis, complex form, and themes associated with intellect over emotions.

Romanticism –

a poetic movement beginning in the 1700s characterized by emotion and appreciation for nature and the supernatural and mysterious along with a return to using first-person lyric form.

Modernism –

a poetic movement beginning in the early 1900s spurred by the industrial age, a first World War I, and challenges to established Christianity which characterized by feelings of loss of “old ways” and an unknown, insecure future.

Imagism –

a poetic movement beginning in the early 1900s where poets began experimenting with open verse and focused on the poet’s response to a situation or object stressing concrete imagery.

Harlem Renaissance –

a movement during the 1920s starting in Harlem which focused on Black culture

Black Mountain poets –

a movement during the 1930s starting in Black Mountain, North Carolina which stressed the process of writing instead of the completed poem.

Beat poets –

a movement beginning in the late 1940s where poets turned to the use of psychogenic drugs for mind expansion and where social and political criticism was a common theme.

Confessional poems –

a movement beginning in the 1950s where the subject of poems were the very personal experiences of the poet beyond just a yearning for love or a specific emotional reaction.

Black Arts Movement –

a movement beginning in the 1960s where poets focused on social and political situation of African-Americans.

Slam poetry –

a movement characterized by the competitive art of performance poetry

Spoken word movement –

a movement starting in the 1990s to make poetry more popular and accessible to everyone; some consider rap an example of this movement

Poetic liberty –

taking the liberty for the purpose of creating an image, feeling, or idea to stray from standard language usage including spelling, definition, and grammar and even linear placement of letters or words; does not have to be only in a poem although that is the most frequent acceptable use.

Poetic license –

the term used to describe the justification for taking poetic liberty

Terms Related to Types of Poetry

Allegory –

a type of poem where a pattern of symbols is used to tell a story within a story

Aubade –

a lyric poem about morning or the rising sun

Ballad –

a narrative poem telling a story a person or event often about love usually told in rhymed stanzas and which includes a repeated refrain.  Ballads are often sung.

Ballad stanza –

a stanza of four lines (quatrain) with the second and fourth lines rhyming

Concrete poem –

a poem whose words or letters are laid out on the page to reflect the theme of the poem.

Confessional –

a form of poem that reveals highly personal experiences

Dramatic monologue –

a lyric poem where the speaker expresses strong emotions or ideas to silent listeners.

Elegy –

a lyric poem which mourns the death of a particular person

Epic –

a narrative poem which tells a story of a great adventure or battle and which involves humans of exceptional stature such as kings who often have superior strength or skills or includes gods. The results of the adventure, battle or war has drastic consequences beyond the fate of the participants often for an entire country or kingdom.

Epigram –

a short clever poem making a pointed, sometimes paradoxical, observation

Haiku –

a form of Japanese verse with three lines which are not rhymed and which have five, seven, and five syllables usually involving some aspect of nature.

Hip-hop –

musical verse which uses rhyme, repetition of sounds and phases

Lyric –

a form of poetry which expresses feelings or observations

Meditation –

a lyric poem which starts by observing a specific object and then drawing some philosophical inferences

Narrative –

a form of poetry which tells a story

Occasional poem –

lyric poetry written about an occasion

Ode –

a lyric poem explicating the attributes or aspects of nature or a specific object or living creature such as “Ode to a Nightingale.” Uses complex stanza patterns.

Pastoral –

a lyric poem which observes the simple pleasures of rural life

Petrarchan sonnet –

a lyric poem about unattainable love

Prose poem –

is poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effect

Rap –

vocal style of performing hip-hop verse

Rhyme royal –

a poetic form using seven line stanzas in iambic pentameter with a rhyme pattern of ababbcc.

Sestet –

a poem or stanza of six lines in a poem

Sestina –

a thirty-nine line poem consisting of six six-line stanzas with a three-line stanza (tercet) at the end

Shakespearean sonnet –

a sonnet that has three four-line stanzas (quatrains) and a two-line stanza (couplet)

Slam poetry –

the competitive art of performance poetry

Sonnet –

a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme scheme

Villanelle –

a nineteen-line poem of five three-line stanzas (tercets) followed by a four-line stanza (quatrain) and which includes two repeating rhymes and two refrains.

Terms Related to Poetry – Point of View

Point of view –

the perspective from which an author tells a story point of view – the perspective from which an author tells a story.

First person –

first person point of view tells the story from the narrator’s personal perspective using I, we, me, my, us, our.  First person narration is used when a person is writing about themselves such as in an autobiography where it is purportedly telling the truth.  In fiction, first person is where telling the story as though it is about a personal occurrence, but it could be completely fictional where the author simply uses first person to make the story seem like a true event when it is a fiction.  First person narrators are not necessarily reliable to be telling an actual series of events.

Narrator –

the person through whose voice a story is told

Speaker –

the narrator of a poem

Persona –

the personality a narrator assumes; a mask used in Ancient Greek theater by the actors playing a particular role

Irony –

created when  there is a discrepancy between an expectation and an actuality

Dramatic irony (tragic irony) –

an irony created when the audience knows something a character does not know

Situational irony –

an irony created when there is a discrepancy between what is expected to have occurred and what has actually occurred in the situation

Verbal irony –

an irony created within a sentence where there is a difference between what is said and what is meant

Unreliable narrators –

a narrator who is either not omniscient or is deliberately misleading the reader

Third person –

third person point of view tells the story from the perspective of an outsider as opposed to first person where the narrator is telling a story about him or herself using the word "I"

Omniscient –

an omniscient narrator knows everything about the events and the characters

Limited omniscient –

a limited omniscient narrator only knows about the story and characters from a limited perspective such as one of the characters who does not know everything.

Objective –

relates the story as a sequence of events without commenting or judging the characters or their action or situation.

Stream-of-consciousness –

a style of writing that writes how a person is thinking; written-down thoughts.

Tone –

the attitude with which the story is told as expressed in particular words; a description of people laughing and enjoying themselves conveys a happy tone, for example.

Sarcasm –

a form of expression which says something opposite from what is meant in a way to criticize or insult or express anger such as describing a bad day by saying, “What a great day I had!”

Terms Related to Poetry – Figures of Speech

Figurative language –

language that is used to mean some other or something more than it says; language that is used in a non-literal way

Figures of speech –

various ways speech is used figuratively

Simile –

a comparison using the word "like" or "as"

Metaphor –

a direct comparison or equivalence

Extended simile – 

comparison using the word "like" or "as" which is repeated in the poem; more commonly used in an epic poem where the same comparison is used throughout.

Extended metaphor –

direct comparison which is repeated in the poem; more commonly used in an epic poem where the same comparison is used throughout

Personification –

attributing human qualities to a non-human or non-living object

Hyperbole –

saying more than what is meant; exaggeration

Understatement –

saying less than what is meant

Metonymy –

referring to one thing by something else it is associated with: the crown refers to the king

Synecdoche –

use of a part of a person to object to refer to the person or the object: the hand that rocked the cradle refers to the person rocking the cradle.

Apostrophe –

where the speaker speaks to a dead or non-present person

Allusion–

a reference to an historical event, aspect of culture, character or content in a piece of literature, or other widely known type of information to convey a feeling, idea, or image; serves to convey information using a few words.

Terms Related to Poetry – Symbol and Allegory

Symbol –

something that is what it is and also represents something else

Universal symbols (archetypes) –

symbols that seem to be part of the human psyche which are generally accepted across time and culture such as the Old Man representing experience and wisdom or the Grim Reaper representing death.

Archetypal images –

images that are generally accepted as representing something such as the Statue of Liberty representing freedom and opportunity.

Conventional symbols –

symbols with a generally understood meaning across cultures with similar usages such as the various road signs or even computer icons.

Literary symbols –

symbols that are used within a piece of literature to represent a person, object, or situation in that piece of literature such as pink ribbons representing the purity and innocence of a character who is wearing them.

Allegory –

a pattern of using symbols to tell a story in a story

Allegorical figures –

the symbolic character representing something in an allegory such as the character Faith representing religious faith in “Young Goodman Brown”

Allegorical framework –

the overall organization of an allegory

Figurative level –

the non-literal level; the place where the story behind the story is told

Terms Related to Poetry – Imagery

Imagery –

the creation of sensory images through words

Pattern of imagery –

the systematic use of imagery in a work

Synesthesia –

the combining of sensory images

Visual imagery –

the creation of an image of sight

Auditory imagery –

the creation of an image of sound

Tactile imagery –

the creation of an image of touch

Olfactory imagery –

the creation of an image of smell

Gustatory imagery –

the creation of an image of taste

Static imagery –

an image which is unchanging

Kinetic imagery –

an image which creates a sense of motion or movement such as the wind in the trees

Connotation –

the understood or implied meaning of a word as opposed to the literal meaning such as the word home which has more meaning than just where a person lives.

Atmosphere –

the general feeling of the surroundings that is created by the work such as peaceful

Mood –

the feeling that is created in the reader as a result of the tone or atmosphere in a work such as anger.

Terms Related to Poetry – Sound and Rhythm

Alliteration –

the repetition of sounds in the beginnings of word; front rhyme

Anaphora –

repetition of word or words at the beginning of lines or stanzas

Approximate rhyme –

near rhyme

Assonance –

use of vowel sounds for rhyming

Cacophony –

unrhymed or discordant sounds

Caesura –

a pause or stop in the middle of a verse

Consonance –

use of consonants for rhyming

End-stopped line –

a pause at the end of a line of verse

Enjambment/run-on line –

continuation of a thought or sentence onto a new line

Euphony –

good or pleasing sound

Eye rhyme –

a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently

Falling meter –

movement from stressed to unstressed meter

Imperfect rhyme –

close but not exact rhyme; near rhyme; approximate rhyme

Meter –

the recurring pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in lines of poetry of specific length

Near rhyme –

approximate rhyme

Onomatopoeia –

words that sound like the sound they mean: buzz

Perfect rhyme –

when a sound in a word is the same as the sound in another word

Rhyme –

the repetition of similar sounds

Rhythm –

is the movement of sound in a recurrent pattern; the beat

Rising meter –

movement from unstressed to stressed meter

Run-on line/enjambment –

the continuation of a sentence or thought onto the next line

Scansion –

a way of marking the metrical pattern in a poem

Slant rhyme –

close but not exact rhyme; near rhyme; approximate rhyme

Stress –

the emphasis on particular syllables