1. Poetry Terminology

2. Alliteration
• The repetition of the same consonant
sounds at any place, but often at the
beginning of words.

3. Assonance
• The repetition or a pattern of (the same)
vowel sounds

4. Ballad
• A poem that tells a story similar to a folk
tale or legend and often has a repeated
refrain.

5. Context
• Can be historical, social, linguistic –
something outside the text that you need
to know to grasp its meaning.

6. Couplet
• In a poem, a pair of lines that are the
same length and (usually) rhyme and form
a complete thought.

7. Dialect
• Regional English words that don’t belong
to Standard English

8. Dramatic Monologue
• Poem voiced or spoken by a character

9. Elegy
• A poem that laments the death of a
person, or one that is simply sad and
thoughtful

10. End-stopped
• Lines which end - with a full-stop – or with
a pause/item of punctuation.

11. Enjambment
• A line ending in which the sense
continues, with no punctuation (so no
pause), into the following line or stanza.
• Also called run-on line
• Compare: end-stopped line

12. Form
• General way of organising a poem
• Similar to genre or sub-genre
• There are some particular forms such as
ballads or sonnets

13. Feminine rhyme
• A rhyme that occurs in a final unstressed
syllable e.g. mama/dada

14. Half-Rhyme
• Imperfect rhyme where just consonants
rhyme rather than vowels:
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

15. Hyperbole
• Exaggeration for effect

16. Iambic Pentameter
• Line of verse with five (penta) beats
• …where each beat falls on the second
syllable in each foot (=bar)
To be / or not / to be/ that is / the quest/ion
(and yes, Shakespeare is breaking his own rule here…)

17. Imagery
• Word-pictures, figures of speech,
descriptions that evoke ideas, feelings,
objects actions, states of mind etc.
• Often repeated in patterns of imagery
• Metaphors and similes are kinds of
imagery

18. Masculine rhyme
• A rhyme that occurs in a final stressed
syllable:

19. Metaphor
• A figure of speech in which two things are
compared, usually by saying one thing is
another, or by substituting a more
descriptive word for the more common or
usual word that would be expected.

20. Narrative
• Telling a story. Ballads, epics, and lays
are different kinds of narrative poems.

21. Non-standard English
• A variety of English that is non-standard,
such as Caribbean English

22. Onomatopoeia
• A figure of speech in which words are
used to imitate sounds. Examples of
onomatopoeic words are:

23. Personification
• A figure of speech in which nonhuman
things or abstract ideas are given human
attributes:

24. Quatrain
• A group of four lines

25. Refrain
• A phrase, line, or group of lines that is
repeated throughout a poem, usually after
every stanza.

26. Rhyme
• The occurrence of the same or similar
sounds at the end of two or more words.
• Technically: the same terminal vowel and
consonant pair.

27. Rhyming Couplet
• A pair of lines that rhyme

28. Rhyme scheme
• The way rhymes are organised throughout
a poem.
• The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem
is shown usually by using a different letter
for each final sound.
• In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme,
the first, second, and fifth lines end in one
sound, and the third and fourth lines end
in another.

29. Rhythm
• the arrangement of beats and stresses in
a poem

30. Sibilance
• Repeated ‘S’ sounds

31. Simile
• A figure of speech in which two things are
compared using the word "like" or "as."

32. Sonnet
• A lyric poem about love that is 14 lines long.
• English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are
composed of three quatrains and a final couplet,
with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg.
• English sonnets are written generally in iambic
pentameter.

33. Speaker
• The voice that is speaking in the poem

34. Stanza
• A verse or chunk of a poem.
• The stanzas of a poem are usually of the
same length and follow the same pattern
of meter and rhyme.

35. Stress
• The prominence or emphasis given to
particular syllables. Stressed syllables
usually stand out because they have long,
rather than short, vowels, or because they
have a different pitch or are louder than
other syllables.

36. Symbol
• When a word, phrase or image 'stands for'
an idea or theme i.e. a red rose is a
symbol of love

37. Tercet
• A group of three lines

38. Tone
• The overall feeling of a poem.
• How the speaking voice of the poem
sounds.

39. Voice
• the speaker who speaks a poem or part of
a poem

40. What is x an example of?
1. the world's a stage, he was a lion in battle,
drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles.
2. "Moses supposes his toeses are roses."
3. pleasure/leisure, longing/yearning
4. tons of money, waiting for ages, a flood of
tears
5. She sells seashells by the seashore, Peter
Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
6. cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve.

41. 7. You are my sun. I give you a red red
rose. She had me on the cross.
8. "What happens to a dream deferred?/
Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?“
9. buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-
doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, tick-tock.
10.the sky is crying, dead leaves danced in
the wind, blind justice.