This Ultimate Guide: Poetry Terms provides a glossary of terms for teaching and learning poetry. Find the definitions of common poetry terms and their definitions, including stanza lengths, metrical feet, line lengths, alliteration, assonance, consonance, enjambment, refrain, and many more!
This is a list of terms for describing texts, with an emphasis on terms that apply specifically to AP poetry, that appear most frequently in literary criticism.
Poetic devices are a form of literary device used in poetry. A poem is created out of poetic devices composite of structural, grammatical, rhythmic, metrical, verbal, and visual elements. They are essential tools that a poet uses to create rhythm, enhance a poem’s meaning, or intensify a mood or feeling.
The Ultimate Guide of Poetry Terms:
Alliteration—the close repetition of beginning consonant sounds.
Allusion—an indirect reference to a mythological, literary, or historical person, place, or thing.
Anapest—foot consisting of 2 unstressed syllables followed by a stress.
Anaphora—repetition of an opening word or phrase in a series of lines.
Apostrophe—a form of personification in which the absent or dead persons, concepts or ideas, inanimate objects are spoken to directly as if they were present, real persons.
Assonance—the repetition of vowel sounds in a series of words.
Aubade—a poem about dawn
Ballad—a daily short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form.
Beat—a stressed (or accented) syllable.
Blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Cacophony—a harsh, discordant, unpleasant-sounding arrangement of sounds.
Cadence—describes the rhythmic pacing of language to a resolution; used to describe the subtle rise and fall in the natural flow and pause of ordinary speech where the strong and weak beats of speech fall into a natural order restoring the audible quality to poetry.
Caesura—a deliberate rhetorical, grammatical, or rhythmic pause, break, cut, turn, division, or pivot in poetry.
Chapbook—a small book (generally of poetry) of about 24-50 pages.
Consonance—the repetition of a consonant sound with a series of words to produce a harmonious effect.
Couplet—stanza of 2 lines; often, a pair of rhymed lines.
Dactyl—foot consisting of a stress followed by 2 unstressed syllables.
Decasyllable—line consisting of 10 syllables.
Diction—word choice. Formal or informal? Slang or a dialect?
Dimeter—a metrical line consisting of two feet
Double entendre—an ambiguity with one interpretation that is indelicate; a word or remark that has a hidden (or not so hidden) mischievous meaning
Ekphrasis—a literary description of a work of visual art
Elegy—a sad poem, usually written to praise and express sorrow for someone who is dead. Although a speech at a funeral is a eulogy, you might later compose an elegy to someone you have loved and lost to the grave.
Enjambment—the running-on of the sense/meaning of one line of poetry into the next. Continuation of sense and rhythmic movement from one line to the next; also called a “run-on” line.
Envoi—a brief ending (usually to a ballade or sestina) no more than 4 lines long; summary.
Epic—a long narrative poem telling of and celebrating a hero’s deeds
Epigraph—a short verse, note, or quotation that appears at the beginning of a poem or section; usually presents an idea or theme on which the poem elaborates, or contributes background information not reflected in the poem itself.
Epistrophe— repetition of the ends of successive sentences, verses, etc.
Euphony—a smooth, pleasant-sounding choice and arrangement of sounds.
Figurative Language— language employing figures of speech; language that cannot be taken literally
Foot—unit of measure in a metrical line of poetry.
Free verse—non-metrical poetry in which the basic rhythmic unit is the line, and in which pauses, line breaks, and formal patterns develop organically from the requirements of the individual poem.
Hendecasyllable—line consisting of 11 syllables.
Hexameter—line consisting of 6 metrical feet.
Honorarium—a token payment for published work.
Hyperbole—a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for either serious or comic effect.
Iamb—foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stress.
Imagery—the visual (or other sensory) pictures used to render a description more vivid and immediate.
Idiom— an expression whose meanings cannot be inferred from the meanings of the words that make it up; a form of expression that is particular to a certain person or group of people.
Imagery– the use of sensory words/descriptions to represent things, actions, or ideas.
Irony— the contrast between the apparent meaning and the suggestion of a different meaning. It occurs in three varieties:
• Verbal irony is the result of a statement saying one thing while meaning the opposite. Its purpose is usually to criticize.
• Situational irony is when a situation turns out differently from what one would normally expect, though often the twist is oddly appropriate.
• Dramatic irony is when a character says or does something that has more or different meanings from what he thinks it means, though the audience and/or other characters do understand the full ramifications of the speech or action.
Juxtaposition—is an act of placing two elements close together or side by side.
Line—basic unit of a poem; measured in feet if metrical.
Litotes— ironic understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary (e.g., you won’t be sorry, meaning you’ll be glad).
Metaphor—a comparison between two things without the use of like or as. The poet states that one thing is another. It is usually a comparison between something concrete and something abstract.
Meter—the rhythmic measure of a line.
Metonymy—representing something by the name of another thing closely associated with it.
Mood—a literary element that evokes certain feelings in readers through words and descriptions. Mood is the atmosphere of the narrative.
Octave—stanza of 8 lines.
Octosyllable—line consisting of 8 syllables.
Ode—an ode is a form of lyric poetry—expressing emotion—and it’s usually addressed to someone or something, or it represents the poet’s musings on a certain person or thing.
Onomatopoeia—the use of words in which the sounds seem to resemble the sounds they describe.
Oxymoron—a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. It usually serves the purpose of shocking or surprising the reader into awareness.
Palindrome—a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forward, e.g., madam.
Paradox—a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense.
Pastoral—A pastoral poem explores the fantasy of withdrawing from modern life to live in an idyllic rural setting.
Pentameter—line consisting of 5 metrical feet. For instance, iambic pentameter equals 10 syllables (5 unstressed, 5 stressed).
Persona—the “character” the writer assumes for the purpose of the work.
Personification—a kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics or feelings.
Poetry—literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm, poems collectively or as a genre of literature.
Pun—a play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings. Puns may be serious as well as humorous.
Quatrain—stanza of 4 lines.
Quintain—stanza of 5 lines.
Refrain—a repeated line within a poem, similar to the chorus of a song.
Rhyme—words that sound alike, especially words that end in the same sound.
Rhythm—the beat and movement of language (rise and fall, repetition and variation, change of pitch, mix of syllables, melody of words).
Sarcasm—a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it. Its purpose is usually to injure, to hurt or, if satirical, to change.
Scansion—the process of measuring metrical verse, marking accented and unaccented syllables; noting variations in pattern
Sibilance—having, containing, or producing the sound of or a sound resembling that of the s or the sh (as in sash).
Simile—a comparison of two different things or ideas through the use of the words like or as.
Septet—stanza of 7 lines.
Sestet—stanza of 6 lines.
Slant rhyme—a type of rhyme formed by words with similar but not identical sounds, where either the vowels or the consonants of stressed syllables are identical.
Sonnet—a fixed form of 14 lines, normally iambic pentameter, with a fixed rhyme scheme conforming to one of two types— the English or the Italian.
• English (or Shakespearean) sonnet: a sonnet with a fixed rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg.
• Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet: a sonnet consisting of an octave rhyming abbaabba and of a sestet using any arrangement of two or three additional rhymes, such as cdcdcd or cdecde.
Spondee—a metrical foot consisting of 2 stressed syllables.
Stanza—group of lines making up a single unit; like a paragraph in prose.
Strophe—often used to mean “stanza”, also a stanza of irregular line lengths.
Symbolism—the use of one object to suggest another hidden object or idea.
Synecdoche—a form of metaphor in which a part of something is used to signify the whole or the whole can represent a part.
Syntax—the ordering of words into a particular pattern. If a poet shifts words from the usual word order you know you are dealing with an older style of poetry or a poet who wants to shift emphasis onto a particular word.
Tercet—stanza or poem of 3 lines.
Terza Rima—an interlocking rhyme scheme with the pattern aba bcb cdc, etc.
Tetrameter—line consisting of 4 metrical feet.
Theme—the central idea of a literary work.
Tone—the attitude of the speaker. Remember that the voice need not be that of the poet.
Trochee—foot consisting of a stress followed by an unstressed syllable.
Trope—a figure of speech, such as a metaphor
Understatement—a figure of speech that is the opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is.
Valediction—an act or utterance of farewell.
Verse—metrical language; the opposite of prose.
Villanelle—a 19 line fixed form consisting of 5 tercets rhymed aba and a concluding quatrain rhymed abaa, with lines 1 and 3 of the first tercet serving as refrains in an alternating pattern through line 15 and then repeated as lines 18 and 19.
Voice—the “sound” of the author’s or narrative’s voice.
This list offers an emphasis on terms that apply specifically to poetry, that appear most frequently in literary criticism, or for which dictionary definitions tend to be unenlightening. The list is intended as a quick-reference guide and is by no means exhaustive; similarly, the definitions given below aim for practical utility rather than completeness. Check out this AP Poetry Terms list for some more information and examples.
If you are looking for more engaging materials for teaching poetry, check out 7 Steps to Annotating Poetry.
