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Definitions of Poetry Terms and Devices

alliteration: the repetition at close intervals of the initial consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words (for example, map-moon, kill-code, preach- approve). Important words and accented syllables beginning with vowels may also be said to alliterate with each other inasmuch as they all have the same lack of an initial consonant sound (for example, "Inebriate of air am I")

apostrophe: A figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and could reply.example: "To an Athlete Dying Young" by A.E. Housman "The time you won your town the race,We chaired you through the market-place..."

consonance: The repetition at close intervals of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words (for example, "book-plaque-thicker")

connotation: What a word suggests beyond its basic definition; a word's overtones of meaning. example: "The words childlike and childish both mean 'characteristic of a child,' but childlike suggests meekness, innocence, and wide-eyed wonder,..."

denotation: The basic definition or dictionary meaning of a word.

paradox: A statement or situation containing apparently contradictory or incompatible elements. example: "When Alexander Pope wrote that a literary critic of his time would 'damn with faint praise,' he was using a verbal paradox, for how can a man damn by praising?"

irony: A situation, or a use of language, involving some kind of incongruity or discrepancy. Three kinds of irony are distinnguished in this book: verbal, dramatic, and irony of situation. example: "When Coleridge's Ancient Mariner finds himself in the middle of the ocean with 'Water, water, everywhere,' but not a 'drop to drink,' we call the situation ironic."

synecdoche: A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole. In the book it is subsumed under the term Metonymy. example: "redhead for a red-haired person, hands for manual workers, highbrow for the sophisticate, tongues for languages, ..."

hyperbole (overstatement): A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used in the service of truth. example: "I'm starved!"

meiosis (understatement): A figure of speech that consists of saying less than one means, or of saying what one means with less force than the occasion warrants. example: "If, for instance, upon sitting down to a loaded dinner plate, you say, 'This looks like a nice snack,' you are actually stating less than the truth..."

litote: A figure of speech in which affirmative is expressed by the negation of the opposite. "This is no small problem" "I don't dislike you" "he's no dummy"

pathetic fallacy: The attributing of human emotions and characteristics to nature: "The leonine old illustrator never let his
pupils fall for the pathetic fallacy, that empty barrels are lonely."

pastoral: adj. of shepherds or country life:a play, poem, or novel dealing with shepherds or country life. Such works as type or class: there are some things of an established nature in pastoral, which are essential to it, such as a country scene, innocence, simplicity...

iambic pentameter: A basic measure of English poetry, five iambic feet in each line. Blank verse is in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Heroic verse is in rhymed orunrhymed iambic pentameter.

meter (and variants): Regularized rhythm; an arrangement of language in which the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time.

rime (and variants): The repetition of the accented vowel sound and all succeeding sounds in important or importantly positioned words (for example, "old-cold,vane-reign, court-report, order-recorder"). The above definition applies to perfect rime and assumes that the accented vowel sounds involved are preceded by differing consonant sounds. If the preceding consonant sound is the same (for example, "manse-romance, style- stile"), or if there is no preceding consonant sound in either
word (for example, "aisle-isle, alter-altar"), or if the same word is repeated in the riming position (for example, "hill-hill"), the words are called identical rimes. Both perfect rimes and identical rimes are to be distinguished from approximate rimes.

sonnets (Shakespearean vs Italian): Shakespearean sonnet-A sonnet riming ababcdcdefefgg. Its content or structure ideally parallels the rime scheme, falling into three coordinate quatrains and a concluding couplet; but it is often structured, like the Italian sonnet, into octave and sestet, the principal break in thought coming at the end of the eighth line.

Italian sonnet: A sonnet consisting of an octave riming abbaabba and of a sestet using any arrangement of two or three additional rimes, such as cdcdcd or cdede.

enjambment: n. Prosody. the continuation of a sentence form one line or couplet into the next.

caesura: Grammatical pause- A pause introduced into the reading of a line by a mark of punctuation. Grammatical pauses do not affect scansion.

Rhetorical pause: A natural pause, unmarked by punctuation, introduced into the reading of a line by its phrasing or syntax. Rhetorical pauses do not affect scansion.

scansion: n. the marking off of lines of poetry into feet; scanning. The marks for scasion are -or' for a long....etc.

lyric poetry: poetry with a lyrical or song-like quality.

epic poetry: a long poem that tells of the adventures of one or more great heroes; epopee. An epic is written in a dignified, majestic style, and often gives expression to the characters and ideals of a nation or race.

metonymy: A figure of speech in which some significant aspect or detail of an experience is used to represent the whole experience. In this book the single term METONYMY is used for what are sometimes distinguished as two separate figures: SYNEDCOCHE (the use of the part for the whole) and METONYMY (the use of something closely related for the thing actually meant). 65-66

epithet: n. a descriptive expression; a word or phrase expressing some quality or attribute. In "crafty Ulysses," "Richard the
Lion-Hearted," and "Honest Abe,"the epithets are "crafty,"...

archetype: n. the original model or pattern from which copies are made, or out of which later forms develop; prototype: That little engine is the archetype of huge modern locomotives.

euphemism: n. the use of a mild or indirect expression instead of one that is harsh or unpleasantly direct. a word or expression used in this way. "pass away" is a common euphemism for "die."

allegory: A narrative or description having a second meaning beneath the surface one. 88-89

blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. 187

free verse: Nonmetrical verse. Poetry written in free verse is arranged in lines, may be more or less rhythmical, but has no fixed metrical pattern or expectation. 186-87.

analogy: n. a likeness in some ways between things that are otherwise unlike; similarity: There is an analogy between the human heart and a pump. SYN: resemblance, correspondence, equivalence....

bucolic: Pastoral form of the middle ages.

doggerel: Light verse; humorous, comic and scatological by nature, base, vulgar, crude (dirty)

burlesque: n. a story, play, or essay, that treats a serious subject ridiculously, or a trivial story...

villanelle: see p. 221 exercise 2 French fixed form.

sonnet: Shakespearean-A sonnet riming ababcdcdefefgg. Its content or structure idally parallels the rime scheme, falling into three coordinate quatrains and a concluding couplet; but it is often structured, like the Italian sonnet, into octave and sestet, the
principal break in thought coming at the end of the eighth line. 219-220(exercise 1)

Petrarchan: A sonnet consisting of an octave riming abbaabba and of a sestet using any arrangement of two or three additional rimes, such as cdcdcd or cdecde. 218-19, 220 (exercise 1)

aubade: A poem about dawn; a morning love song; or a poem about the parting of lovers at dawn. 52-301. Poem about love. "dawn song"-awakening-early European form (12 century)

elegy: n. a mournful or melancholy poem, usually a lament for the dead. Milton's Lycidas and Shelly's Adonias are elegies. a poem written in elegiac verses

ballad: A fairly short narrative poem written in a song like stanza form.

Folk ballad-A narrative poem designed to be sung, composed by an anonymous author, and transmitted orally for years or generations before being written down. It has usually undergone modification through the process of oral transmission. 13-14

haiku: A three-line poem, Japanese in origin, narrowly conceived of as a fixed form in which the lines contain respectively five, seven, and five syllables (in American practice this requirement is frequently dispensed with). Haiku are generally concerned with some aspect of nature and present a single image or two juxtaposed images without comment, relying on suggestion rather than on explicit statement to communicate their meaning. 223

onomatopoeia: The use of words that supposedly mimic their meaning in their sound (for example, "boom, click, plop"). 198

trope: n. the use of a word or phrase in a sense different from its ordinary meaning; use of a figure of speech. SYN: metonymy. a word or phrase so used; figure of speech; figurative language.