Download Basic Versification Terms

R. Zaslavsky/Basic Versification Terms
Foot: Unit of meter or rhythm (can only be two or three syllables long).
Types of Feet [x = unstressed syllable; / = stressed syllable]:
[Note: keep in mind that syllables are relative to each other and to the context in regard to whether they are stressed or not.]
Common
Coleridge
x / x /
e.g., I am; begin
iamb/iambus [x /],
{adjective: iambic}
march
{adjective: trochaic}
trip / stumble
xx /
e.g., rearrange
{adjective: anapestic}
jumps
/ x x
/ x x
e.g., happiness; metrical
{adjective: dactylic}
run purposefully
/ /
e.g., Monday
{adjective: spondaic}
strong / powerful
----------------------
{adjective: pyrrhic}
/ x
/ x
e.g., present; golden
trochee [/ x],
[run]
anapest [x x /],
[strike back]
dactyl [/ x x],
[finger]
Less Common
spondee [/ /],
[libation/feast]
pyrrhic [x x],
amphibrach [x / x],
[both (ends) short]
amphimacer [/ x /],
[both (ends) long]
Lengths of lines:
monometer one foot
dimeter
two feet
trimeter
three feet
tetrameter
four feet
pentameter five feet
hexameter
six feet
heptameter seven feet
octameter
eight feet
Groups of Lines:
couplet [rhymes]
tercet
quatrain
cinquain/quintain
sestet
octave
x / x
x / x
e.g., department; momentous
/ x
/
e.g., Jack and Gill
{adjective: amphibrachic}
{adjective: amphimacer}
dignity
e.g., Jack and Gill [amphimacer monometer] 1
e.g., Went up the hill [iambic dimeter]
e.g., To fetch a pail of water [trimeter, 2 iambs + 1 amphibrach]
e.g., Had we but world enough and time [iambic tetrameter] 2
e.g., It is the grave of Jesus where he lay [iambic pentameter] 3
e.g., For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam: I and you [anapestic hexameter] 4
e.g., The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes [iambic heptameter]5
e.g., Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary [trochaic octameter] 6
two lines
three lines
four lines
five lines
six lines
eight lines
The most common basic poem form is the sonnet, a poem composed of fourteen lines.
Rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes in a poem.
Scansion is the process of determining the rhythm (the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables) of a poem.
Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Internal rhyme is the rhyme of a word within a line of poetry with the word at the end of the line.
Onomatopoeia is the process of making a word whose sound imitates or echoes its meaning, e.g., “buzz,” “boom.”
Alliteration is (strictly) the repetition of the same letter/sound at the beginning of words in a line of poetry or (loosely) the
repetition of the same sound anywhere in a word.
An allusion is an indirect reference to well-known event or story or literary work.
1
Mother Goose Rhyme.
Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress.”
3
Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning.”
4
William Butler Yeats, “The White Birds.”
5
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
6
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven.”
2