Poetry Terms to Love and Learn

afflatusa Latin term for poetic inspiration.

alliterationthe repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words.

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

assonancethe repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables of neighboring words without the repetition of consonants.

THE RED WHEELBARROW

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

LIFE IS MOTION
In Oklahoma, Bonnie and Josie, Dressed in calico, Danced around a stump. They cried, Ohoyaho, Ohoo . . . Celebrating the marriage Of flesh and air.

blank verseunrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.

We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable.
Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning

caesuraa pause, metrical or rhetorical, in a line of poetry; the pause may or may not be indicated typographically.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old . . . I grow old . . . I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock

cantoa division of a long poem; a subdivision of an epic or other narrative poem, equivalent to a chapter in a prose work.

consonancethe repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighboring words whose vowel sounds are different (coming home, hot foot).

the path sick sorrow took

coupleta pair of rhyming verse lines, usually of the same length.

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag Its so elegant So intelligent T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

For I have known them all already, known them all Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Im still Jenny from the block Used to have a little, now I have a lot J-Lo, Jenny From the Block

end-stoppedbrought to a pause at which the end of a verse line coincides with the completion of a sentence or clause; the opposite of enjambment.

I celebrate myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

enjambmentthe running over of the sense and grammatical structure from one verse line to the next without a punctuated pause.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.

But now the stark dignity of entranceStill, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken

foota unit of meter which denotes the combination of stressed and unstressed syllables; an iamb is a type of foot.

free versea type of poetry that does not conform to any regular meter or rhyme scheme.

The atmosphere is not a perfumeit has no taste of the distillationit is odorless; It is for my mouth foreverI am in love with it; I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; I am mad for it to be in contact with me. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

iamba metrical unit (foot) of verse, having one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
(com pla cen cies)

imagerya critical term used to describe the words or phrases which bring forth a certain picture or image in the mind of the reader.

BETWEEN WALLS the black wings of the hospital where nothing

will grow lie cinders

in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle

lyricany fairly short poem expressing the personal mood, feeling, or meditation of a single speaker.

meterthe repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.

pentameterfive feet.

rhythmthe ordered or free occurrences of sound in poetry; regular rhythm which recurs is called meter.

stanzaone of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines.

THE SNOW MAN One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

versea metric line of poetry; it is named according to the kind and number of feet composing it (iambic pentameter, iambic hexameter, trochaic tetrameter).

Definitions Swiped From:

Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.