Poetic+Terminology

Poetic Terminology Bottom of Page Middle of Page


 *  **O** **ccasional Verse:** a poem that is written about or for an important event, sometimes private but usually of some public significance.
 * **Persona:** a technical word often used to designate the speaker of a poem.
 * **Confessional Poetry:** a form of autobiography poem.
 *  **A** **uditor:** the person or persons being spoken to in a poem.
 * **Genres:** Separate categories delineated by distinct style, form, and content.
 * **Onomatopoeia**: refers to individual words like "splash" or "thud"
 * **Euphony:** A series of pleasant sounds
 * **Cacophony:** A series of unpleasant sounds
 * **Alliteration**: The repetition of the initial consonant sounds
 * **Rhyme**: Most important sound device.
 * **Masculine rhyme**: occurs between single stressed syllables
 * **Feminine rhyme/double** **rhyme:** matches two syllables, one stressed and one usually unstressed
 * **Triple rhyme**: goes further (slithering, withering)
 * **Slant rhyme/near rhyme/ off rhyme:** contains hints of sound repetition
 * **End rhyme:** occurring at the end of lines
 * **Internal rhyme:** found in the interior of lines
 * **Parallel structure:** simply the repetition of grammatically, similar phrases or clauses
 * **Anaphora/epistrophe:** repeated words or phrases at the beginnings and ends of lines
 * **Antithesis:** matching of parallel units
 * **Poetry:** refers to a whole genre of literature
 * **Verse:** refers to a mode of writing in lines of a certain length
 * **Mnemonic Verse:** information like the number of days in the month or simple spelling rules
 * **Light Verse/Occasional Verse:** lines written for a specific event, like a birthday or anniversary
 * **Prose:** When the writer is governor only by the width of the paper being used
 * **Prose Poetry:** Uses language in a poetic manner but avoids any type of meter
 * **Measure**: Method by which a poet determines line lengths.
 * **Prosody**: system of measurement
 * **Syllabic Verse:** the lenght of the line is determine by counting the total number of syllables the line contains
 * **Alexandrines:** French poetry written in 12 lines
 * **Octosyllabic:** denotes a line of eight syllables
 * **Quantitative syllabics:** in stanzas containing the same number of lines with identical numbers of syllables in the corresponding lines of different stanzas.
 * **Accentual:** a prosodic system in which only accented or strongly stressed syllables are counted in a line.
 * **Sprung rhyme:** Accentual meters still supply possibiltes for contemporary poets.
 * **Accentual-syllabic verse**: Most important prosodic system in English.
 * **Metrical feet:** representing the most common patterns.
 * **Iamb**: one unstressed and one stressed syllable
 * **Trochee**: one stressed and one unstressed syllable
 * **Anapest:** two unstressed syllables and one stressed syllables
 * **Dactyl:** one stressed and two unstressed syllables
 * **Double meters:** The first two of iambic (iamb) and trochaic (trochee)
 * **Triple meters**: The second two
 * **Rising meters:** Iambic and anapestic meters
 * **Falling meters:** the opposite of rising meters
 * **Breve:** (U) used to denote unstressed and stressed syllables
 * **Ictus:** (') used to denote unstressed and stressed syllables
 * **Hypermetrical:** Contain an extra unstressed syllable or femine ending
 * **Catalexis:** Missing one and two unstressed final syllable
 * **Rhythm:** plays a subtle counterpoint against the regularity meter
 * **Caesura:** 2 or more pause within a line
 * **Ending stopped lines:** pause at their conclusion
 * **Enjambed:** run on into the next line with no pause
 * **Metrical Substitution:** where feet of a different type are substituted for what the meters calls for
 * **Pyrrhic:** consisting of two unstressed syllables
 * **Spondee:** consisting of two stressed syllables
 * **Concrete/Spatial Poetry**: Similar to the acrostic verse
 * **Acrostic Verse**: Which the first letters of the lines spell a message

  >        >
 * **Apostrophe:** figure of speech used when a nonhuman, inanimate, or abstract thing is directly addressed.
 * **Epigraph:** a brief explanatory statement or quotation.
 * **Dedication:** explains the setting.
 * **Lyric Poetry:** brief poems meant to be sung or chanted to the accompaniment of a lyre.
 * **Epigram:** a short, satirical lyric usually aimed at a specific person.
 * **Elegy**: a lyric on the occasion of a death.
 * **Ode**: a long lyric in elevated language on a serious theme.
 * **Epic:** Aristotle’s second genre,.
 * **Narrative poem:** poetry whose main function is to tell a story.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Folk Epics**: originally intended to public recitation and existed in oral form for along period of time before they were translated.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Literary Epics:** products of known authors who wrote their poems for publication.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Ballads:** shorter narratives with song-like qualities that often include rhyme and repeated refrains.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Folk ballads**: come from the oral tradition and are authored anonymously.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Art & Literary Ballads:** conscious imitations of the ballad style by later poets and are generally somewhat more sophisticated than fold ballads in their techniques.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Metrical Romances:** verse tales of the exploits of knights.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Mock-heroic Narratives:** spoof the conventions of epic poetry for comic or satirical effect.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Realistic Narratives****:** discussed as poetic novellas or short stories in verse.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Dithyrambic:** chanted religious rituals by a chorus and was the forerunner of tragedy.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Dramatic Poetry:** separate genre of drama with lyric and narrative poetry.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Dramatic Monologue:** a speech by a single character, usually delivered to a silent auditor.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Dialogue Poetry:** dramatic poetry in voyage in which two persons speech alternatively.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> **Debat:** type of dialogue poem, or mock debate, in which two characters speak alternatively.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">Idiom: **<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"> the personal use of words that marks poetry; highly idiosynatric.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">Diction: **<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"> refers to individual words in a poem that may be classified in several ways.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">Level of Diction: **<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"> can range from slang at one extreme to formal usage of the other.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">Poetic Diction: **<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"> used to indicate the level of speech somehow refined above ordinary usage and somehow superior to it.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">Archaisms: **<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">words that are no longer in common use.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">Denotation: **<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"> literal meaning.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);">Connotation: **<span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"> the implied meaning or feel that some words have acquired.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 19px;">
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 19px;"><span style="color: rgb(8, 7, 7);"> **Coinage/Neologism:** a word made up by a poet.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Paraphrase:** used when passages are hard to understand.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Syntax:** the order of words in a sentence.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Inversion:** words that fall out of their expected order.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Ellipsis:** words that are consciously omitted by the poet.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Etymology:** the study of the sources of words.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Concrete/Abstract Diction**: words that donate which can be perceived through a sentence.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Imagery**: sensory details denoting specific details of experience.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Visual-** imagery relating to sight
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Auditory**- imagery relating to sight
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Tactile-** imagery relating to touch
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Olfactory-** imagery relating to smell
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Gustatory-** imagery relating to taste
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Hyperbole**- an overstatement
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Allusion**- metaphor making a direct comparison to historical or literary event or character, a myth, a biblical reference, etc
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Personification-** giving human characteristics to nonhuman things or to abstractions
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Apostrophe**- used when a nonhuman, inanimate, or abstract things that is directly addressed.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Oxymoron-** a short paradox, usually consisting of an adjective and noun with conflicting meanings.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Synesthesia-** a conscious mixing of two different types of sensory experience.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">  **Imagism:** concrete details predominate in short descriptive poems.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">     **Pun:** the use of one word to imply the additional meaning.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Paranomasia**: the use of a word to imply the additional meaning.
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