Terms in Poetry

Below are some common literary terms associated with poetry. There’s no need for a budding poet to learn them all, but they might give you some ideas to try in your own poems.

Allegory: a story or poem in which characters, settings, and experiences represent other people, events, or abstract ideas.

Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words found in the same line of poetry: “Love, like life’s little lesson…”

Allusion: a reference in a literary work to a character, place, or situation from history, art, music, popular culture, or from another work of literature.

Analogy: a comparison based on a similarity between things that are otherwise dissimilar, as in comparing the passage of a human life to the passage of the sun through the sky.

Anapest: a metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.

Assonance: the repetition of the same vowel sound in words that end with different consonants: “So long lives this, and this gives life…”

Ballad: a narrative song or poem that recounts an exciting or dramatic story.

Blank verse: lines of poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Caesura: a pause or break within a line of poetry.

Cliché: an overused word or phrase: “fat as a pig.”

Colloquial language: everyday speech. Gwendolyn Brooks often uses this type of language in her poetry.

Conceit: an elaborate metaphor that compares two very dissimilar things. The metaphysical poets of the English neoclassical period often used conceits.

Connotation: the implied meaning associated with a word beyond its dictionary definition.

Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds in the beginning or at the end of words found in the same line of poetry: “agaiNst pouNding JaNuary wiNds…”

Couplet: two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry, often forming a stanza.

Dactyl: a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

Denotation: the dictionary meaning of a word.

Dialect: a variety of language spoken by a specific group or in a specific geological region. Robert Burns is famous for the Scottish dialect he used in his poems.

Dialogue: conversation between characters in a literary work.

Diction: the writer’s choice of words, an integral component of the writer’s individual style or voice. Diction is of utmost importance in writing poetry.

Dramatic monologue: a type of dramatic poetry in which one speaker addresses a silent listener.

Elegy: a poem, usually formal, that mourns a death or other loss.

Enjambment: the running on of sense from the end of one line of poetry into the next line, without the use of punctuation.

Epic: a long narrative poem that traces the adventures of a hero.

Extended metaphor:  a metaphorical comparison that continues through a paragraph, poetic stanza, or an entire literary work.

Figurative language: expressions that are not literally true but express some truth beyond the literal level, especially important in poetry:  “The sun was a red rubber ball.”

Foot: the basic measurement of rhythm in a poem, consisting of one stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables.

Free verse: poetry unconstrained by fixed pattern, meter, or rhyme scheme, often mimicking human speech.

Haiku:  a form of Japanese poetry that has three lines and seventeen syllables. The first and third lines of haiku have five syllables each, and the second line contains seven syllables.

Hyperbole: a figure of speech that uses exaggeration: “I must have walked a thousand miles today.”

Iamb: a metrical foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.

Iambic pentameter: poetic meter consisting of five iambic feet to a line. Each foot is made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. Most of Shakespeare’s plays are written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Inversion: reversal of the usual word order: “A melody I thought I heard.”

Metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things, without the use of like or as: “He’s a grizzly bear in the mornings before that first cup of coffee.”

Meter: a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that gives a poem a predictable rhythm.

Mood: the emotion created by a poem or other literary work. The mood of a poem might be sad, funny, angry, scary, happy, or regretful.

Octave: a poetic stanza consisting of eight lines.

Ode: a serious lyric poem written in a dignified manner.

Onomatopoeia: a word that imitates the sound it describes: bang, buzz, smack.

Oxymoron: a figure of speech consisting of two seemingly contradictory terms: jumbo shrimp, student teacher, pretty ugly.

Pastoral: a poem that presents an idyllic view of rural life, often about shepherds, meadows, and nature.

Personification: a figure of speech in which an animal, object, or idea is given human characteristics: “The dry fields want rain.”

Quatrain: a poetic stanza consisting of four lines.

Refrain: a line or lines repeated at usually regular intervals in a song or poem.

Rhyme: the repetition of the same vowel sounds in two or more words. When the words at the end of lines of poetry rhyme, it is called end rhyme. When words within the same line occur, it is called internal rhyme.

Rhyme scheme: the pattern that end rhymes form in a stanza or in an entire poem, designated by a different letter of the alphabet for each new rhyme. For example, the rhyme scheme in the following  lines by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is abab:

     Tell me not, in mournful numbers,         a

     Life is but an empty dream!                     b

     For the soul is dead that slumbers,         a

     And things are not what they seem.       b

Rhythm: the pattern of beats made by the stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem.

Scansion: dividing a line of poetry into feet.

Sensory details: words that evoke sensory perception: seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling, or hearing.

Sestet: a poem or stanza containing six lines.

Simile: a comparison of two seemingly unlike things, using like or as: “The red peppers looked like little flames.”

Sonnet: a lyric poem containing fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter.

Speaker: the voice that communicates with the reader of a poem. The speaker might be the poet, another person, an animal, an object, or an abstract idea.

Spondee: a metrical foot consisting of two stressed syllables.

Stanza: a group of lines in a song or poem.

Symbol: a person, place, object, or experience that stands for more than what it actually is. For example, washing one’s hands might be symbolic of denying guilt or involvement.

Synesthesia: the use of one sense to describe something that appeals to a different sense: sweet music, golden touch, loud color.

Tanka: a type of Japanese poetry consisting of five lines. The first and third lines each have five syllables, and the other lines each have seven syllables.

Tercet: a poetic stanza containing three lines.

Tone: the speaker’s attitude toward the subject of a poem or other literary work. The tone can range from sympathetic to ironic to humorous.

Trochee: a metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable: candy, saucer, landscape.

Villanelle: a nineteen-line poem made up of five tercets with an aba rhyme scheme, followed by a quatrain with an abaa rhyme scheme.

Voice: the author’s use of language used to convey his unique personality to readers.