Poetry Techniques

accent: stressed syllable

alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds. This device enlivens language and is often used
for emphasis. For example, And dances with the daffodils William Wordsworth
allusion: often biblical, historical, mythological, or literary, these references to other works, people
and events rely on the readers prior knowledge.
antithesis: opposite words, ideas or images placed in close proximity for a contrasting effect.
assonance: repetition of vowels sounds, which may soften lines or establish connections as with
near-rhyme. For example, and twinkle on the milky way William Wordsworth.
ballad: metered poetry, usually in rhyming quatrains that describes heroic actions in a narrative
form. These were aural texts originally meant to be sung.
blank verse: unrhymed, hence blank, lines of iambic pentameter.
caesura: A forced pause or break within a line, usually indicated with a full stop or comma or
semicolon.
Hinged grasshopper legs kick
Back. So
quick off the mark, so
sprightly. They set
David Malouf
couplet: two rhymed lines of equal length.
dramatic monologue: a poem presented as the voice of a person addressing himself and expressing
his innermost thoughts.
elegy: a poem expressing loss, usually in three distinct parts: grief/loss, praise for the dead,
consolation.
enjambment: lines set up so that a sentence spills or runs over into the next line. For example,
each rifleshot hammerstroke another notch
in the silence.
David Malouf
extended metaphor: an intricate metaphor sustained throughout a poem (also a conceit).
figurative language: language which links or compares a familiar object to an idea which is
mysterious or abstract or unknown in some way. Subclasses of figurative language are metaphors,
similes and personifications.
foot: a stressed syllable and its associated unstressed syllable that make up a metrical unit of a line.
A metric line is named according to the number of feet composing it:
tetrameter: four feet
pentameter: five feet
hexameter (iambic = Alexandrine): six feet

form: How a poem is classified according to its structure and purpose. Subclasses of poetic forms,
include lyric, narrative, epic, ballads.
free verse: open form which like traditional verse is printed in short lines (unlike prose) but
maintains a rhythmic pattern that is not organised into meter that is, into feet, or recurrent units
of weak- and strong-stressed syllables. Most free verse also has irregular line lengths and lacks
rhyme.
imagery: the use of mental pictures appealing to one or more of the senses (visual, aural, olfactaory,
gustatory, tactile, kinesthetic) synesthaesia is the use of imagery appealing to more than one sense.
The poet Mary Oliver explains Imagery generally means the representation of one thing by another.
A statue is an image; When Robert Burns wrote, O, my luve is a red red rose, that rose is an image;
Burns was using imagery. If Burns had written My love is sweet, wild, wonderful, you would like
her, he would have been using descriptive language, but no imagery.
dramatic irony: when the audience understands more about the implications of what a character
says or does than the character him/herself.
situational irony: when an outcome or event is the opposite of that which is expected.
verbal irony: a play on self-contradictory words. (similar to pun).
metaphor: a type of comparison in which the quality shared between the known (vehicle) and the
unknown (tenor) is indirect or implied. For example, My love (tenor) is a red red rose (vehicle).
simile is a particular type of metaphor in which the shared quality is stated using the words like or
as. For example, I wandered lonely as a cloud William Wordsworth.
metonomy: using a closely associated object to represent something (by order of the crown)
meter: rhythm that is structured in that it uses regular units of stress pattern. (see rhythm)
onomatopoeia: words spelled to mimic the sound they signify. buzz hiccup.
purpose: The poets aim, usually to express an emotion, communicate an idea, or relate and reflect
on an experience.
paradox: a statement which appears to contradict itself but on an abstract level makes sense.
persona: The voice thought to be speaking through the poem when not the poet.
personification: a type of figurative language (or trope) in which one gives a physical characteristic
or innate quality of animation to something that is inanimate or to an abstraction. The yellow fog
that rubs its back upon the window panes,/The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-
panes,/Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, T.S.Eliot
prose: lines that are not written in meter with attention to line breaks.
repetition: Repeating a word or line for effect. For example, I gazedand gazedbut little
thought/what wealth to me the show had brought: William Wordsworth.
sight rhyme: visual rather than auditory rhyme (come, home).
slant rhyme, near rhyme: rhymes with similar vowel or consonant sounds that are used to elevate
the word choice or concept over the dictates of sound.
rhythm: a recognizable though variable pattern in the beat of the stresses in sound.
iambic: unstressed + stressed
trochaic: stressed+unstressed
dactylic: stressed+unstressed+unstressed
anapaestic: unstressed+unstressed+stressed
spondaic (spondee): stressed+stressed
pyrrhic: unstressed+unstressed

sonnet: a 14-line poem in iambic pentameter often used for expressions of love and longing. A lyric
poem consisting of 14 iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two
major patterns of rhyme:
1. Italian or Petrarchan (named for the fourteenth century Italian poet Petrarch who
composed elaborate love poetry for Laura) eight lines (octave) abbaabba plus
six lines (sestet) cdc cdc or cdcdcd
2. English or Shakespearean sonnet, free verse, sonnet
3x four line stanzas (quatrains) abab cdcd efef plus two lines (couplet) gg
sound devices: Devices used to enhance meaning or effect of the language in poetry. Subclasses of
sound devices include alliteration, assonance, consonance and onomatopoeia.
stanza: a group of lines set apart using space. As with a paragraph in prose, a stanza usually suggests
cohesion such a unifying idea or particular space in time by which the lines within a stanza are
related. The number of lines in each stanza affects the pace and effect on the reader.
Quatrain: four line stanzas are fairly common and traditional and tend to feel self-contained
and suggest completion. They have the effect of lengthening the pause between stanzas.
Tercet: three line stanzas have the opposite effect. They often feel unfinished and rush the
reader forward into the next stanza for a sense of completion and thus speed up the poem
as a whole.
Couplet: a pair of rhymed lines that strongly connects the ideas in each and would have a
sing song effect if not reserved for elevated subjects as with heroic couplets (couplets in
iambic pentameter) or the moment of epiphany as with the couplet at the end of the English
sonnet.
synechdoche: using a part to represent the whole (take her hand in marriage).
tone: the attitude of the poet towards his subject; the attitude of the persona created through the
use of diction, imagery, details, language and syntax (sentence structure).