Poetry Terms

speakerThe narrator of a poem (as with other pieces

of literature, the narrator can be first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, or second person)

toneThe mood of the work itself. Tone results

from combinations and variations of such things as meter, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, diction, sentence structure, repetetion, imagery, etc.

Imagery:descriptive language used to create word pictures for the readersensory language: writing or speech that

appeals to one or more of the senses

literal language: the use of words in their ordinary or sense

figurative language: writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally. It is often used to create vivid impressions by setting up comparisons between dissimilar things.

Visual imagery appeals specifically to the sense of sight

Aural imagery appeals specifically to the sense of hearing

Tactile imagery appeals specifically to the sense of touch

Olfactory imagery appeals specifically to the sense of smell

Gustatory imagery appeals specifically to the sense of taste

oxymorona self-contradictory combination of words or

smaller verbal units

Ex. bittersweet; jumbo shrimp

apostrophea figure of speech in which someone (usually,

but not always, absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent person is directly addressed as though present.

Ex: “Age, thou art sham’d!” (William Shakespeare)

metonymyA figure of speech characterized by the

substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself

Ex: speaking of a king as “the crown”

synecdocheA figure of speech in which a part signifies

the whole or the whole signifies the part

Ex. calling clothes “threads” or a car “wheels”

onomatopoeiaThe use of words that by their sound suggest

their meaning

Ex. bang, snap, crackle

assonanceSimilar vowel sounds in stressed syllables

that end with different consonant sounds

Ex: lake and fatemad as a hatterfree and easy

consonanceWords in which the final consonants agree,

but the vowels that precede them differ

Ex. add – readbill – ballblood - food

Rhyme: the repetition of sounds at the ends of wordsEnd rhyme occurs at the ends of lines

Internal rhyme occurs within lines

Exact or perfect rhyme occurs when the the repeated sounds are exactly similar to each other

Slant rhyme (also called imperfect rhyme or near rhyme) refers to words that come close to rhyming, but don’t actually rhyme (see pg. 908)

Rhyme scheme: a regular pattern of rhyming words (lines) in a poem

stanzaa formal division of lines in a poem, considered

as a unit; Stanzas are often separated by spaces

coupleta pair of rhyming lines, usually of the same

length and meter

tercetA stanza comprised of three lines

quatrainA stanza comprised of four lines

octaveA stanza comprised of eight lines

repetitionthe use of any element of language—a sound,

a word, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence—more than once. This is typically done to achieve a particular effect.

AllusionA reference to a well-known person, place,

event, literary work, or work of art

Diction: word choice, including the vocabulary used, the appropriateness of the words, and the vividness of the language

Denotation: the dictionary defintion of a word, independent of other associations the word may have

Connotation: the set of ideas associated with a word in addition to its dictionary meaning

Poetry Unit Objectives

To review/learn poetry terms

To practice/learn to explicate a poem effectively

To read as much poetry as possible

To play and experiment with words, p0etic devices and a variety of forms in the writing of your own poetry in order to create a poetry anthology