Download Poetry Definitions and Meanings - AP Senior English

Advanced Placement Literature & Composition
Poetry Definitions and Meanings
Poetry . . .
etymology: from poiein, to make, do, create, compose.
definition: "A term applied to the many forms in which human beings have given
rhythmic expression to their most imaginative and intense perceptions of the world,
themselves, and the relation of the two" (Holman and Harmon 365).
General Terms
1.
Allegory—a form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative are equated with
meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. Thus it represents one thing through the guise of another—an
abstraction in that of a concrete image. Allegory often clarifies this process by giving patently meaningful
names to persons and places. The characters are usually personifications of abstract qualities, the action and the
setting representative of the relationships among these abstractions. Allegory attempts to evoke a dual interest,
one in the events, characters, and setting presented, and the other in the ideas they are intended to convey or the
significance they bear.
2.
Alliteration—the repetition of an initial identical consonant sound or any vowel sounds in successive or closely
associated syllables, especially stressed syllables (as in wild and woolly or a babbling brook).
3.
Allusion—a figure of speech that makes brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object. Biblical
allusions are frequent in English literature, such as Shakespeare’s “a Daniel come to judgment” in the Merchant of
Venice. Strictly speaking, allusion is always indirect. It seeks, by tapping the knowledge and memory of the
reader, to secure a resonant emotional effect for the associations already existing in the reader’s mind.
4.
Apostrophe—a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always, absent), some abstract quality, or a
nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present.
5.
Assonance—repetition of vowels without repetition of consonants used as an alternative to rhyme in verse.
Example: deep green sea (internal) or story and holy (end)
6.
Caesura—a break in the flow of sound (usually in the middle of a line of verse) caused by the ending of a word
within a foot. A light but definite pause, usually at the fourth, fifth, or sixth syllable in English verse.
And priests in black gownswere walking their rounds
And binding the briarsmy joys and desires
—William Blake
7.
Carpe diem poetry—"seize the day." Poetry concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or
enjoy the present.
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Time still succeeds the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
—Robert Herrick’s "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."
8.
Consonance—the counterpart of assonance; the partial or total identity of consonants in words whose main
vowels differ. Example: shadow, meadow; pressed, passed; sipped, supped. Wilfred Owen uses this "impure
rhyme" to convey the anguish of war and death in his poem “On Seeing A Piece Of Our Artillery Brought Into
Action.”
Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse;
Spend our resentment, cannon,--yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flames, our breaths in storm.
Yet, for men’s sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, they spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!
—Wilfred Owen
9.
Couplet—two successive lines of verse forming a unit Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet.
10. .Diction—the meticulous selection of specific words used to describe and modify other concrete specific
language in poetry or prose.
11. Formal or High Diction—proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language. This type of
language used to be thought the only type suitable for poetry.
12. Neutral or Middle Diction —correct language characterized by directness and simplicity.
13. Informal or Low Diction—relaxed, conversational and familiar language.
14. Dramatic monologue—a type of poem, derived from the theater, in which a speaker addresses an internal
listener or the reader. In some dramatic monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may
reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways.
Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
What? Your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims—
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
—from “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” by Robert Browning
15. End-stopped rhyme—a line ending in a full pause, usually indicated with a period or semicolon.
16. Enjambment—a line having no end punctuation but running over to the next line.
Finally I heard
into music,
that is, heard past
the surface tension
which is pleasure, which holds
the self
afloat, miraculous
waterstrider
with no other home.
—Jorie Graham, "In What Manner the Body is United with the Soule"
17. Explication—a complete and detailed analysis of a work of literature, often word-by-word and line-by-line.
18. Eye rhyme (also called sight rhyme)—words that seem to rhyme because they are spelled identically but
pronounced differently. Example-- bear/fear, dough/cough, through/bough.
19. Hyperbole (overstatement)—extravagant exaggeration; an exaggerated statement for the sake of emphasis.
Example: “I’ve told you a million times not to do that.”
20. Iambic pentameter—the most natural and common kind of meter in English; it elevates speech to poetry. It
consists of 10 syllables or 5 feet, all iambs.
21. Image—images are references that trigger the mind to fuse together memories of sight (visual), sounds
(auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile).
22. Imagery—a special usage of words in which there is a change in their basic meanings. Imagery refers to
images throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers.
23. Irony—the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.
24. Litotes—a form of understatment in which something is affirmed by stating the negative of its opposite.
Example: “How are you? Not bad at all.” Or “I am a citizen of no insignificant city.” Or “By no means did
Beowulf allow Grendel to escape with his life.”—Beowulf
25. Metaphor—figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in
place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them. Usually a one-to-one comparison between two
unlike things, one abstract, the often concrete as in “drowning in money” or “love is a rose.”
26. Metaphysical conceit—an elaborate and extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently unrelated fields
or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas. The term is commonly applied to the metaphorical
language of a number of early seventeenth-century poets, particularly John Donne. Example: stiff twin
compasses / the joining together of lovers like legs of a compass. See "To His Coy Mistress."
27. Metonymy—figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of
which it is an attribute or with which it is associated. Example: Living in lands belonging to the
crown. Or “The White House decided” where “White House” is a metonymy for “president.” “The
pen is mightier than the sword.”—by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Or, “Her voice is full of money.”—by F.
Scott Fitzgerald.
In the following poem the “cradle” is a metonymy for birth and “grave” is one for death:
A little rule, a little sway,
A sun beam on a winter’s day.
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.
—by John Dyer
28. Oxymoron—a combination of contradictory or incongruous words. Example: a cold sweat.
29. Octave—the first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, unified by rhythm, rhyme, and topic.
30. Onomatopoeia—formation of words in imitation of natural sounds; the use of words whose sounds suggest the
sense. Examples: splash, drip, slap, etc.
31. Paradox—a statement that seems to contradict common sense and yet is nonetheless true.
32. Personification—attribution of personal qualities to inanimate things; a figure of speech in which a lifeless
object or abstract quality is spoken of as if alive.
33. Prosody—pronunciation of a song or poem.
34. Quatrain—a four-line stanza or poetic unit. In an English or Shakespearean sonnet, a group of four lines
united by rhyme.
35. Refrain—repetition of a line or phrase at regular intervals (often at the end of each stanza).
36. Rhythm—a flow of rising and falling sounds in language that is produced in verse by a regular recurrence of
stressed and unstressed syllables.
37. Rhyme—"close similarity or identity of terminal sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding
positions in two or more lines of verse. The correspondence of sound is based on the vowels and succeeding
consonants of the accented syllables, which must, for a true rhyme, be preceded by different consonants"
(Holman and Harmon). There are several kinds of rhyme:
38. Masculine rhyme—single syllable rhyme: may, hey.
39. Feminine rhyme—rhyme of more than one syllable: river, giver.
40. Near rhyme—words that almost rhyme (also called half rhyme). The vowels may be the same:
Enough, love; face, ways. Or the final consonants may be the same: storm, room; world, told.
41. End rhyme—rhyming of words that appear at the end of lines of poetry.
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower
But only so an hour . . .
—Robert Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
42. Internal rhyme—rhyming words that appear in the same line of poetry.
From my home I shall not roam
Or
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell,
Though he'd often say in his homely way that 'he'd sooner live in hell.
—Robert W. Service, "The Cremation of Sam McGee"
43. Rhyme scheme—the pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyming
sound.
44. Satire—a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.
45. Scansion—a system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into feet, indicating the locations of
accents and counting the syllables.
46. Sestet—a stanza or a poem of six lines; specifically the last six lines of an Italian sonnet.
47. Setting—time (temporal) and place (spatial) of a poem's actions.
48. Situation—context of the poem's actions, what is happening when the poem begins.
49. Simile—similar to metaphor; a figure of speech in which unlike objects are compared by the use of the word
like or as. Example: Love is like a red, red rose.
50. Slant rhyme—a near rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels.
Example: sun / noon, should / food, slim / ham.
51. Speaker or Persona—a person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of the poem.
52. Stanza—a group of poetic lines corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually
repeating or systematic.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
couplet: two-line stanza
triplet: three-line stanza
quatrain: four-line stanza
quintet: five-line stanza
sestet: six-line stanza
septet: seven-line stanza
octave: eight-line stanza
60. Synaesthesia—a rhetorical figure that describes one sensory impression in terms of a different sense, or one
perception in terms of a totally different or even opposite feeling. Example: "darkness visible", "green
thought."
61. Synecdoche—a form of metonymy in which a part signifies the whole or the whole signifies a part. Example:
“A roof over one’s head” or “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?”—Christopher Marlowe
62. Syntax—word order and sentence structure.
63. Tone—a musical quality in language; the author’s attitude towards the subject.
64. Understatement—the opposite of hyperbole; deliberately underplaying or undervaluing a thing to create
emphasis. Example: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”—by Robert Frost.
Versification
65. Verse is metrical poetry.
66. Meter—the patterned repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. We have names for
variations of these patterns. Any of the first four listed below—anapestic, dactylic, iambic, and trochaic—
may predominate in a given poem: in a poem written in anapestic verse, for example, the majority of the
feet will be anapestic. The poet may also choose to vary the meter (to create emphasis and variety). In
doing so, the poet may make use of the remaining two kinds of meter—pyrrhic and spondaic—which, by
their very nature, rarely predominate in a poem. Generally, pyrrhic feet speed a poem up, while spondaic
feet slow a poem down.
67. Anapest (anapestic)—unstressed, unstressed, stressed; a metrical foot consisting or two short syllables
followed by one long syllable or two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable (as in the
accused). Also called galloping meter. Often, anapestic meter occurs in light verse (such as
limericks).
'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
Or
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.
68. Dactyl (dactylic)—stressed unstressed unstressed; emphasis, juniper. This pattern is more common (as
dactylic hexameter) in Latin poetry than in English poetry.
Grand go the years in the Crescent above them
Worlds scoop their arcs
and firmaments row . . .
—Emily Dickinson
Or
Long long ago when the world was a wild place
Planted with bushes and peopled by apes, our
Mission Brigade was at work in the jungle. . .
—George MacBeth, "Bedtime Story"
69. Iamb (iambic)—unstressed, stressed; a metrical foot consisting of one short syllable followed by one
long syllable or of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
That time of the year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold . .
—William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
70. Trochee (trochaic)—stressed, unstressed; a metrical foot consisting of one accented syllable followed
by one unaccented syllable. Example: Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright! Or . . .
Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester . . .
—Robert Frost, "To the Thawing Wind "
71. Pyrrhic—unstressed, unstressed; two unstressed feet (an "empty" foot). Example: “in a” or “of the”.
72. Spondee (spondaic)—stressed, stressed; a two-syllable foot with two stressed accents. The opposite of
a pyrrhic foot, this foot is used for effect. Example: : taut skin, or
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur" (Here the first line is mostly
iambic, while the second line is mostly or entirely spondaic.)
73. Foot (prosody)—a measured combination of heavy and light stresses. The numbers of feet are given below.
74. monometer (1 foot)
75. dimeter (2 feet)
76. trimeter (3 feet)
77. tetrameter (4 feet)
78. pentameter (5 feet).
79. hexameter (6 feet)
80. heptameter or septenary (7 feet)
81. octometer. (8 feet)
82. Blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter. Example: Shakespeare's plays.
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees
I like to think some boy's been swinging them . . .
—Robert Frost, "Birches"
83. Free verse—verse with irregular meter in some respect or whose rhythm is not metrical. Poetry that does not
have meter (and generally does not rhyme either).
So my bare feet
and my thin green silks
my bells and finger cymbals
offend them--frighten their old-young bodies . . .
—Diane Wakoski, "Belly Dancer"
84. Heroic couplet—a pair of rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. William Shakespeare provides us with examples
throughout his plays and in the last two lines of every sonnet:
Away, and mock the time with fairest show,
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
—Macbeth (1.7.81-81)
Or
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
—Sonnet 138
85. Syllabic verse—the poet establishes a set number of syllables to a line and repeats the pattern.
wade
through black jade
of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash heaps
opening and shutting itself like
(1)
(3)
(9)
(6)
(9)
an
injured fan
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide . . .
—Marianne Moore, "The Fish"
(1)
(3)
(9)
(6)
POETIC FORMS
86. Ballad—this is a narrative poem describing a past happening that is sometimes romantic but always ends
catastrophically. The saga described is usually in an impersonal voice with the speaker some distance from the
action. Ordinarily a ballad is written in quatrains with four accented syllables in the first and third lines and
three accented syllables in the second and fourth lines (iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter
usually rhyming x—a—x—a); the shorter lines usually rhyme. Ballads may use refrains
The King sits in Dunfermline town,
Drinking the blood-red wine;
'O where shall I get a skeely skipper
To sail this ship of mine?'
Then up and spake an eldern knight,
Sat at the King's right knee:
'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever sailed the sea.'
—Anonymous
87. Concrete poetry or shaped verse—an attempt to supplement (or replace) verbal meaning with visual devices
from painting and sculpture. An example is a poem in the shape of an apple or bottle.
88. Elegy—a poem, usually personal, of grief or mourning.
Yet once more, o ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year,
Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your seasons due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas?
—John Milton, "Lycidas"
89. Epic—a long narrative poem about a hero, usually starting with an invocation to the muse and beginning in
medias res (in the middle of the story).
Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down
furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver
upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage
that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with
a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot
his arrow in the midst of them. First he smote their mules and their hounds,
but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves,
and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.
—Homer, The Iliad
90. Haiku—this form consists of seventeen separate syllables arranged in three lines according to a 5-7-5 count. It
usually has a plain style and everyday language.
oh snail
climb Mount Fuji
but slowly, slowly
—Issa
91. Limerick—a type of poem that consists of two lines of rhymed anapestic trimeter, two lines of rhymed
anapestic dimeter, and an additional line of anapestic trimeter, the last word of which is the same as, or rhymes
with, the last word of the first line.
I sat next the Duchess at tea.
It was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were simply abominable
And everyone thought it was me!
—Anonymous
92. Lyric—"a relatively short poem concerning itself mainly with the speaker's emotional state, or else with the
process of the speaker's thought and feelings" (Ellman and O'Clair). Poems that are not narrative, didactic, or
satiric are lyric.
93. Occasional poetry—this is poetry written for a particular event or happening, the event being usually
ceremonial or honorific.
I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter's night.
—William Butler Yeats, "On Being Asked for a War Poem"
94. Ode—this is a longer lyric poem, usually meditative or philosophical. It is oftentimes of considerable length
and has recognizable stanza patterns.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk . . .
—John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
95. Sonnet—a poem of 14 lines usually in iambic pentameter rhyming according to a prescribed scheme.
96. Petrarchan or Italian sonnet—a fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. An Italian
sonnet has an octave with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba and a sestet rhyming variously, but usually cdecde
or cdccdc. The octave typically introduces the theme or problem, with the sestet providing the resolution.
As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;--when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields:
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd:
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me
My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell'd.
—William Butler Yeats, "To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses"
97. Shakespearean—a fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. The lines are
grouped in three quatrains with alternating rhymes (ababcdcdefef) followed by an heroic couplet (gg)
that is usually epigrammatic.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
—Shakespeare, “Sonnet 58”
98. Villanelle—a poem with five triplets and a final quatrain; only two rhyme sounds are permitted in the entire
poem, and the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated, alternately, as the third line of subsequent
stanzas until the last, when they appear as the last two lines of the poem.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
—Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"