Poetry
Poetry – language arranged in lines
• Like prose, poetry tries to recreate emotions and experiences
• Unlike prose, poetry is usually more compressed and suggestive
Verse – a poem with a regular meter and a fixed rhyme scheme
Types of Poetry
Lyric –short poem – a single speaker expresses personal thoughts and feelings
Epic – a long narrative poem on a serious subject presented in a formal style
Specific Forms of Lyric Poetry
Haiku – a Japanese lyric poem with 17 syllables divided among 3 lines
Tanka – a Japanese lyric poem with 31 syllables divided among 5 lines
Villanelle – a lyric poem with 5 tercets, a final quatrain, and a specific scheme for rhyme and repetition
Pantoum – a poem with a highly repetitive scheme – the second and fourth lines of one stanza become the first and third lines of the next stanza
Sonnet – a lyric poem of 14 lines, usually written in iambic pentameter with a specific rhyme scheme
English (Shakespearean) sonnet – 3 quatrains with a specific rhyme scheme followed by a final couplet
Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet – an octave followed by a sestet, or sometimes 2 quatrains followed by 2 tercets, both with a specific rhyme scheme
Blank verse – unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Free verse – poetry without regular patterns of meter or rhyme
Other Forms and Genres
Ode – a poem that celebrates someone or something
Elegy – a lyric poem that laments the dead
Ballad – a narrative poem originally meant to be sung
Limerick – a humorous verse usually with the rhyme scheme aabba
Acrostic – a poem where each line begins with one letter of a word
Concrete – a poem that introduces shape, color, or other elements to enhance meaning
The Sound of Poetry
Alliteration – repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words
Assonance – repetition of vowel sounds within nonrhyming words
Consonance – repetition of consonant sounds within and at the ends of words
Onomatopoeia – creating or using words that imitate sounds
Meter – a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
Poetic foot – a unit of sound made up of 2 or more syllables
Iamb – unstressed, stressed
Examples: because, unless, a rose, the sky
Trochee – stressed, unstressed
Examples: happy, sonnet, poet, get it
Anapest – 2 unstressed, stressed
Examples: on a boat, in a book, with a friend, on a roll
Dactyl – stressed, 2 unstressed
Examples: happily, carpenter, rhapsody, excellent
Rhyme – identical sounds at the end of words beginning with their accented vowels
Rhyme scheme – pattern of end rhyme in a poem – letters of the alphabet are used to chart the rhyme scheme
• book, smile, cook, file = a, b, a, b
• rack, sack, meet, seat = a, a, b, b
• nice, big, rig, spice = a, b, b, a
• say, trip, glad, gray, slip, sad = a, b, c, a, b, c
• go, ride, slow, tide, great, mate = a, b, a, b, c, c
Rhyme – exact rhyme: part, heart – approximate or slant rhyme: hearth, cart
Eye rhyme – looks like it rhymes: food, hood
Internal rhyme – rhyming words within a single line: They rest with the best of their comrades
Terza Rima – An interlocking rhyme scheme using tercets
• Dante invented and used terza rima for The Divine Comedy
• the second line of one stanza rhymes with the first and third lines of the next stanza
• aba, bcb, cdc, ded, and so on
The Structure of Poetry
Stanza – one, two, or more lines of poetry presented as a group
Couplet – two lines of poetry that rhyme
Tercet – a stanza containing 3 lines of poetry
Quatrain – a stanza containing 4 lines of poetry
Sestet – a stanza containing 6 lines of poetry
Octet (Octave) – a stanza containing 8 lines of poetry
Other Literary Devices
Allusion – a reference to another work or to someone or something famous
Analogy – point-by-point comparison between two things
Imagery – words or phrases that appeal to the senses
Metaphor – a comparison of two things without using like or as
Mood – the feeling or atmosphere the writer creates
Oxymoron – a phrase made up of two contradictory terms
Personification – giving human qualities to an object, animal, or idea
Simile – a comparison of two things using like or as
Symbol – something that stands for something beyond itself
Theme – the main idea in a poem or other work
Tone – a writer’s attitude toward the subject