Poetry Terms

Types of Poetry

• Lyric- usually a short poem meant to express emotion

• Narrative- tells a story• Dramatic- from the point of view of a fictitious

character

Forms of Poetry

• Verse- regular rhythm to the lines• Free verse- no regular rhythm• Closed form- specific pattern of rhythm,

rhyme, structure• Open form- no specific pattern of rhythm,

rhyme, or structure

Rhyme

• Perfect—a rhyme with the same last vowel and consonant, e.g., Cat/hat

• Eye—a rhyme in appearance, not sound, e.g., love/prove

• Identical—a repetition of the same word, e.g., cat/cat • Slant—an inexact rime, perhaps the same vowel, but

not the same final consonant, e.g., cat/slap

Allusion

• Reference to familiar people, places, events, or things

Rhyme Scheme

• At the edge of each line, a letter is given that corresponds to the rhyming sound of the line's final word. The pattern of letters, as you follow them down the edge of the page, is called the rhyme scheme of the poem. Rhyme schemes, especially ones that repeat (as this one does), are often written in the following form: a b a b c d e c d e.

Stanza

• 2-line couplet• 3-line tercet• 4-line quatrain• 5-line quintet• 6-line sestet• 7-line septet• 8-line octave

Enjambment

• the running over of a sentence or phrase from one line to the next

Iambic pentameter An iamb is a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. Say the words between, mature, and instead. These are iambs. In poetry, repeated rhythmic units are called “feet.” An iamb is a kind of foot.• Pentameter means that the foot is repeated five times. It has the

Greek root penta-, which means five. (Think of a pentagon; it has five sides.)

• Now put the two terms together: iambic pentameter is a line of poetry with five iambs in it. It has this rhythm:

• da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM

• A lit-/ le more / than kin / and less / than kind. • I wake to sleep and take my waking slow

Sonnet

• A sonnet is a poem consisting of 14 lines (iambic pentameter) with a particular rhyming scheme:

Shakespearean Sonnet

• English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are composed of three quatrains and a final couplet, with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg.

Petrarchan Sonnet

Petrarchan sonnets are divided into two quatrains and a six-line "sestet," with the rhyme scheme abba abba cdecde (or cdcdcd).