A Glossary of Some Helpful Poetry Terms
A Glossary of Some Helpful Poetry Terms
Poetry: A verbal composition designed to convey experiences, ideas, or emotions in a vivid and imaginative way, characterized by the use of language chosen for its sound and suggestive power and by the use of literary techniques such as meter, style, metaphor, and rhyme.
Prose: Anything that isn't poetry. Prose is ordinary speech or writing, without metrical structure. It has a commonplace expression or quality. Prose is spoken or written language as in ordinary usage, distinguished from poetry by its lack of a marked metrical structure. A short story and a letter are prose. Prose Poetry -- Prose that uses poetic techniques such as metaphor.
Figurative Language: Language that contains or uses figures of speech, especially similes and metaphors.
Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our God.”. It is a comparison of two separate things side by side.
Simile: A figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”. It is a form of figurative language
Some Examples of Simile are; “cute as a kitten,” comparing the way someone looks to the way a kitten looks, “as busy as a bee” comparing someone’s level of energy to a fast-flying bee "as snug as a bug in a rug" comparing someone who is very cozy to how comfortable a bug can be in a rug "as happy as a clam" comparing someone's happiness to the contentment of a clam "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." comparing the uncertainty of life to the uncertainty of choosing a chocolate from a box "as agile as a monkey" implying someone can move as well as a monkey does "as black as coal" comparing the color of something dark to the very-dark coal color "as blind as a bat" indicating that the person cannot see any better than a bat Similes Add Depth to Language Similes can make our language more descriptive and enjoyable. Most of the examples given here are over-used clichés and I encourage my students to come up with fresh new ways of expressing these old adages.
Writers, poets, and songwriters make use of similes often to add depth and emphasize what they are trying to convey to the reader or listener. Similes can be funny, serious, mean, or creative. It is a good idea to try to use new and unique similes in writing poetry. Try to take an overused simile and rewrite it in a fresh, inspiring way. Let's give those redundant similes a face lift! (This is an example of personification -- see below).
Personification is another form of figurative language through giving and object, animal, any aspect of nature, and idea or thought human-like qualities.
Examples of Personification:
The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky -- giving the stars the human-like quality of 'dancing'. The run down house appeared depressed -- the house has the human-like quality of being depressed. The first rays of morning tiptoed through the meadow. She did not realize that opportunity was knocking at her door.
He did not realize that his last chance was walking out the door. The bees played hide and seek with the flowers as they buzzed from one to another. The wind howled its mighty objection. The snow swaddled the earth like a mother would her infant child. The river swallowed the earth as the water continued to rise higher and higher. My computer throws a fit every time I try to use it. The thunder grumbled like an old man. The flowers waltzed in the gentle breeze. The sun glared down at me from the sky. The moon winked at me through the clouds above. Now, try to come up with some of your own!
Alliteration; Assonance and Consonance
Alliteration: The repetition of identical or similar sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables, as in "on scrolls of silver snowy sentences" (Hart Crane). Modern alliteration is predominantly consonantal; certain literary traditions, such as Old English verse, also alliterate using vowel sounds. Alliteration is a very helpful tool in writing poetry when done tastefully. I have seen it not used at all and then sometimes way over-used in writing, which to me takes away from the quality of the poem.
Assonance: A form of alliteration that uses resemblance of sound f the vowel sounds in words, as in: "that dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea" (William Butler Yeats). It is the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, such as in the phrase 'tilting at windmills'.
Consonance: is a poetic device characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "pitter patter" or in "all mammals named Sam are clammy". Consonance should not be confused with assonance, which is the repetition of vowel sounds.
Consonance is the repeating of consonants in words, which are all other sounds but vowel sounds. Often one will be using both assonance and consonance together in words. It is important to realize that assonance and consonance can be the beginning, middle and/or ending of words. When consonance or rarely assonance is at the beginning of words, it's alliteration. There are online dictionaries for looking up words for consonance and assonance. Just Google it. Have fun!
Vowels -- A unit of speech; a,e,i, o, and u that are a integral part of the written and verbal English language. Vowels have different pronunciations according to the words they are used in, primarily short and long vowel-sounds. A dictionary is helpful with deciphering whether a vowel is short or long. One can also do this through listening and practice.
Structure: Structure in poetry is best described as how the poet chooses to break the lines.
Stanza: In poetry writing stanzas are how lines are grouped together in a write.
Enjambment: This is a poetic device when a line leads to the next without punctuation or a complete thought.
Free-verse: Poetry written in free verse are lines described as any length and where the poet chooses to break them.
Stanza: One of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines. In poetry writing stanzas are how lines are grouped together in a write.
Verse: This term refers to many possibilities in poetry. A single metrical line in a poetic composition; one line of poetry. A division of a metrical composition, such as a stanza of a poem or hymn. A poem. Metrical or rhymed composition as distinct from prose; poetry. The art or work of a poet. A group of poems: read a book of satirical verse.
Prose: Anything that isn't poetry. Ordinary speech or writing, without metrical structure. Commonplace expression or quality. Spoken or written language as in ordinary usage, distinguished from poetry by its lack of a marked metrical structure. A short story and a letter are prose, for example.
Syllables: Syl·la·ble -- an uninterrupted segment of speech consisting of a vowel sound, a diphthong, or a syllabic consonant, with or without preceding or following consonant sounds: "Eye," "sty," "act," and "should" are English words of one syllable. "Eyelet," "stifle," "enact," and "shouldn't" are two-syllable words.
Syllabic Verse: Syllabic verse is the most simple form of metered poetry. It is a basic verse based on how many syllables there are in each line. Within syllabic verse there are many forms, but the most fundamental one, which is a poem written with the same syllable count per line. This is your basic syllabic verse and it is the foundation for writing more complex metered verse.
Dipthong: A complex speech sound or glide that begins with one vowel and gradually changes to another vowel within the same syllable, as (oi) in boil. Therefore the word 'boil' is only one syllable.
Structure: Structure in poetry is best described as how the poet chooses to break the lines.
Enjambment: This is a poetic device when a line leads to the next without punctuation or a complete thought.
Free-verse: Poetry written in free verse are lines described as any length and where the poet chooses to break them.
Juxtaposition: Lines or words placed side by side or otherwise in a poem, for comparison or contrasting effect.
Refrain: Phrases, lines, or entire stanzas in poetry and songs that repeat throughout the poem
Some Types of Rhyming:
⦁ perfect rhyme, full rhyme, true rhyme: These terms refer to the immediately recognizable norm: true/blue, mountain/fountain.
⦁ imperfect rhyme, slant rhyme, half rhyme, approximate rhyme, near rhyme, off rhyme, oblique rhyme:i These are all general terms referring to rhymes that are close but not exact: lap/shape, glorious/nefarious.
⦁ eye rhyme: This refers to rhymes based on similarity of spelling rather than sound. Often these are highly conventional, and reflect historical changes in pronunciation: love/move/prove, why/envy.
⦁ identical rhyme: A word rhymes with itself, as in Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could not Stop for Death"
⦁ rich rhyme (from French rime riche): A word rhymes with its homonym: blue/blew, guessed/guest.
⦁ assonant rhyme: Rhyming with similar vowels, different consonants: dip/limp, man/prank.
⦁ consonant rhyme: Rhyming with similar consonants, different vowels: limp/lump, bit/bet.
⦁ scarce rhyme: Rhyming on words with limited rhyming alternatives: whisp/lisp, motionless/oceanless.
⦁ macaronic rhyme: Macaronic verse uses more than one language, as in medieval lyrics with Latin refrains. Macaronic rhyme is also bilingual: glory/pro patria mori, sure/kreatur, queasy/civilisé.
Some Poetry Forms:
Quatrain -- a basic form of poetry written in 4 line stanzas with varying rhyming schemes.
Chain Quatrain -- poetry written in quatrain form with more than one quatrain.
Quatern -- a type of French poetry form written in quatrains, containing 16 lines in all using a one line refrain in a specific 'stepping' pattern in each stanza.
Cinquaine -- an unrhymed brevity form consisting of 22 syllables distributed specifically in 5 lines.
Brevity -- any short form of poetry that limits the amount of words used.
Refrain -- in poetry it is when a word, group of words, line(s) or stanza(s) are repeated somewhere in the poem.
Poetry form -- a poem written in very specific structure with certain qualifications, such as a certain number of lines per stanza, rhyming pattern, refrains and syllable count.
(c) 2018 by Karen Eisenlord
Photo is original by me.
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