Poetry Terms

Lowell Writing Center: LC-406B, 978-656-3365 Bedford Writing Center: LIB 7A, 781-280-3727

Poetry Terms

 Alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Ex: On

the bald street breaks the blank day.

 Allusion – a reference to a person, place, thing, event or idea in history or literature used to

suggest an emotion or idea. Ex: an allusion to the Garden of Eden might suggest a notion

of paradise or a time of purity and innocence. (Allusion is different from illusion, which is a

deception or erroneous perception of reality.)

 Apostrophe – a figure of speech in which the poem’s speaker addresses someone absent or

dead, or something nonhuman as if it were alive and present and could reply.

 Assonance – the repetition, at close intervals, of vowel sounds.

 Ballad – a fairly short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form.

 Consonance – the repetition, at close intervals, of consonant sounds found within or at the

end of words.

 Couplet – 2-line stanza, which may or may not rhyme.

 End rhyme – rhyme that comes at the end of lines. Ex. “It runs and it creeps/ For awhile,

till it sleeps”

 Eye rhyme – words that look alike but do not sound alike. Ex: bough, cough; brow, blow.

 Figurative language – words that are literally inaccurate but are used to describe or define

something. Usually this language makes use of metaphors or similes to compare and

equate something to another.

 Fixed form – poetry that is categorized by its patterns of lines, meter, rhymes and stanzas.

Examples of fixed forms include the sonnet, ballad and villanelle.

 Free verse – poetry that is not in a fixed form. Also called open form.

 Imagery – the use of images, often figurative ones, that appeal to one of the 5 senses.

Images can be olfactory (smell), auditory (sound), tactile (touch), visual (sight), or gustatory

(taste).

 Internal rhyme – rhyme that comes within one or several lines. Ex: I wished upon the

most beautiful moon in June and hope/ that soon I will fall in love.

 Lyric – a short poem that expresses the personal emotions and thoughts of a first-person

narrator and is characterized by its musical qualities.

 Metaphor – an implied comparison in which the figurative word is substituted for the

original term (in contrast to the explicit comparison of a simile). Ex: “He is a lion in the

field.”

Lowell Writing Center: LC-406B, 978-656-3365 Bedford Writing Center: LIB 7A, 781-280-3727

 Meter – the recurrence of rhythmic stresses or accents in a regular pattern.

 Narrative poem – a poem that tells a story.

 Onomatopoeia – use of a word that resembles the sound it denotes. Ex: buzz, bowwow,

choo-choo.

 Personification – giving human characteristics to an animal, object or abstract concept.

 Poetry – literature written in meter or verse. It is characterized by language chosen for its

sound and suggestive power and by such literary techniques as structured meter, rhyme, and

metaphor.

 Prose poem – a poem which is written in prose format; i.e. it has no fixed lines.

 Quatrain – a four-line stanza.

 Rhyme (see also End, Eye, Internal and Slant rhyme) – two or more words that repeat

the same end sounds. ALso called perfect rhyme. Ex: send, bend, trend.

 Rhyme scheme – the pattern of end rhymes denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, d…)

where each letter represents a new rhyme.

 Setting – the place and time in which a poem takes place; not all poems have settings.

 Simile – an explicit comparison of one thing to another using the connecting words like, as,

than, similar to, resembles or sees. Ex: He is like a lion in the field.

 Slant rhyme – words, usually in a set rhyme scheme, which have similar sounds but are not

perfect rhymes. Also called approximate rhyme, imperfect rhyme, or near rhyme. Ex: arrayed/said.

 Sonnet – a 14-line poem that has traditionally followed specific rules of thyme and meter.

 Stanza – a group of lines in a poem. People often mistakenly call them paragraphs.

 Style – the author’s manner of expression. An author’s style is the result of choices about

vocabulary, organization, imagery, pace, and recurring themes.

 Symbol – a figure of speech in which a person or thing stands for some other idea/abstract

concept. Ex: the color white has become a symbol of purity or innocence.

 Theme – the central or unifying idea that is developed in a work.

 Tone – the expressions of the author’s attitude toward the subject matter.

 Verse – another name for poetry derived from the Latin “vers” meaning “to turn.” It refers

to the fact that poetry lines “turn” at a specific point versus prose, which has no fixed lines.