Selected English and American Poems Literary Terms for Discussing Poetry

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1 Selected English and American Poems Literary Terms for Discussing Poetry Alliteration: The repetition of initial sounds or prominent consonant sounds. Examples: All the awful auguries; pensive poets; after life s fitful fever; I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance (from Tennyson s The Brook ) Apostrophe: An addressing to an absent or imagined person or to a thing as if it were present and could listen. Example: Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters: (from William Wordsworth, London, 1802 ) Assonance: The repetition, in words of close proximity, of same or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds. Examples: deep green sea; light / bride; tide / mine (note that tide and hide are rhymes). Ballad: A short narrative poem, especially one that is sung or recited, composed of quatrains, with 8, 6, 8, 6 syllables, with the second and fourth lines rhyming. A ballad often contains a refrain (i.e. a repeated phrase, line, or group of lines). Examples: Jackaroe; The Long Black Veil Blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Examples: Shakespeare's plays Carpe diem poetry: Poems, whose theme is to seize the day, that is concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present. Examples: Herrick s To the Virgins to Make Much of Time ; Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" Consonance: The counterpart of assonance; the repetition of identical consonant sounds in words whose main vowels differ. Also called half rhyme or slant rhyme. Examples: shadow / meadow; pressed / passed; trolley / bully; fail / peel. Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually, but not necessarily, with end-rhymes (i.e. the rhyming words occur at the ends of the lines). Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet. Diction: The choice of vocabulary and of grammatical constructions. In poetry, it can be formal or high proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language; neutral or middle correct language characterized by directness and simplicity; or informal or low relaxed, conversational and familiar language. Example: there is a difference in diction between One never knows and You never can tell. Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme: Rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is accented. Example: flower / shower Dramatic monologue: A poetic form, derived from the theater, in which the poet chooses a moment or a crisis, in which his characters are made to talk about their lives and their minds and hearts to one or more other characters whose presence is strongly felt. In some dramatic monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways. Examples: Robert Browning s My Last Duchess; T. S. Eliot s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; Tennyson s Ulysses Elegy: A lyric poem expressing sadness, usually a lament for the dead. Example: Thomas Gray s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Enjambment: The continuation of the grammatical construction and logical sense of a line on to the next line or lines for the purpose of special effect. Also called run-on lines. Example: The Count your master s known munificence / Is ample warrant that no just pretense / Of mine for 1

2 dowry will be disallowed. (from Browning, My Last Duchess ) Epic: A long narrative poem, dignified in theme and elevated in style, that usually records how a hero, through experiences of great adventure, accomplishes important deeds. Examples: Homer s Odyssey; Milton s Paradise Lost Eye rhyme: Words that look as if they should rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently. Examples: heath / death; watch / catch, bear / fear, dough / cough End rhyme: Identical sounds at the ends of lines of poetry. Also called terminal rhyme. Example: Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night (from William Blake, The Tyger ). Feminine rhyme (double rhyme): Stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables. Examples: fatter / batter; tenderly / slenderly; revival / arrival Foot: A basic metrical unit, consisting of two or three syllables, with a specified arrangement of the stressed syllable or syllables. The repetition of feet can produce a pattern of stresses throughout the poem. The numbers of feet are given here: monometer (one foot); dimeter (two feet); trimeter (three feet); tetrameter (four feet); pentameter (five feet); hexameter (six feet); heptameter or septenary (seven feet); Octameter (eight feet). Free verse: Poetry in lines of irregular length, usually unrhymed and often largely based on repetition and parallel grammatical structure. Examples: Walt Whitman s O Captain! My Captain! ; Gwendolyn Brooks The Bean Eaters Heroic couplet: Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter, often closed, i.e. containing a complete thought. It is called heroic because in England, especially in the 18th century, it was much used for heroic (epic) poems. Examples: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, / Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. (frorm Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism ) Iambic pentameter: The most natural and common kind of metrical pattern in English. Example: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, / The lowing herd wind slowly o er the lea, / The plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to me (from Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ). Image: An Image is language that appeals to the senses, such as sight (visual), sounds (auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). Imagery refers to images throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers. Images frequently do more than offer only sensory impressions. They also convey emotions and moods. Examples: the gray sea and the long black land (visual); and quench its speed i the slushy sand (auditory); sea-scented beach (olfactory); Ezra Pound s In a Station of the Metro (visual and tactile) Lyric poem: A short poem, often songlike, with the emphasis not on narrative but on the speaker s emotion or reverie. Example: Christopher Marlowe s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Masculine rhyme: Rhyme of one-syllable words such as lies / cries or, if more than one syllable, words in which the final syllables are stressed and, after their differing initial consonant sounds, are identical in sound. Examples: stark / mark; support / retort; behold / foretold Metaphor: A kind of figurative language equating two literally incompatible things with each other, without a connective such as like or a verb such as appears or resembles. Examples: Oh, my love is a red, red rose (the speaker s love is equated with a rose); a piercing cry (a cry is compared to a spear or other sharp instrument) Metaphysical conceit: An elaborate and extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently unrelated fields or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas. The term is commonly applied to the metaphorical language of a number of early 17th century poets, 2

3 particularly John Donne. Examples: Donne s A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning; Marvell s To His Coy Mistress Meter: A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The most common kinds of metrical feet in English poetry are the five listed below: Iamb (iambic): An unstressed stressed foot. The most common rhythm in English verse. Examples: alone; away; My heart is like a singing bird Trochee (trochaic): A stressed unstressed foot. Examples: happy; garden, Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright; He was / louder / than the / preacher Anapest (anapestic): An unstressed unstressed stressed foot. Also called galloping meter. Examples: As I came / to the edge / of the wood; There are man / -y who say / that a dog / has his day Dactyl (dactylic): A stressed unstressed unstressed foot. Examples: underwear; constantly; Take her up / tenderly; Sing it all / merrily Spondee (spondaic): A stressed stressed foot. Examples: True-blue; smart lad; sweet rose; dead set; (That the) night come Ode: A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form; Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject. Example: Shelley s Ode to the West Wind Onomatopoeia: A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the sound of the activity being described. Examples: hiss; buzz; murmur; whirr Oxymoron: A self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units. Also can be seen as a compact paradox. Examples: bittersweet; a pleasing pain; hurry slowly. An exaggerated employment of oxymoron can be seen in Romeo s speech early in Romeo and Juliet: Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! Paradox: A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true with a logic structure. Examples: More haste, less speed; less is more; The child is father of the man Pentameter: A line of verse containing five feet. Personification: Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions. Prosody: The principles of versification, particularly as they refer to rhyme, meter, rhythm, and stanza. Quatrain: A four-line stanza or poetic unit. In an English or Shakespearean sonnet, a group of four lines united by rhyme. Rhyme: The repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines. Unlike rhythm, rhyme is not basic to poetry; but it is pleasant, suggests order, and may be related to meaning implying a relationship. Examples: lie / high; June / moon; stay / play; tender / slender; throne / alone; love / dove Rhyme scheme: The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to 3

4 each rhyme at the end of a line of poetry. Example: The rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnet often is abab cdcd efef gg. Scan (scansion): The process of marking the kind and number of feet in poetic lines to establish the prevailing metrical pattern. Example: The scansion of the line The summer thunder, like a wooden bell tells readers that it is iambic pentameter. Shakespearean sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, composed of three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Also called the English sonnet. Shakespeare was its most distinguished practitioner. Slant rhyme: A near or approximate but not true rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels. Also called oblique rhyme, off-rhyme and pararhyme. Examples: sun / noon, should / food, slim / ham. Soliloquy: A speech in a play, in which a character alone on the stage speaks his or her thoughts aloud. Examples: Shakespeare s Hamlet Sonnet: A closed form of poem almost invariably of fourteen lines and following one of several set rhyme schemes. The two basic sonnet types are the Italian or Petrarchan and the English or Shakespearean. The sonnet developed in Italy probably in the 13th century and the form was introduced into England by Thomas Wyatt. Stanza: A group of poetic lines forming a unit corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes are usually repeating or systematic. Terza rima: An interlocking rhyme scheme with the pattern aba bcb cdc, etc. Example: Shelley s Ode to the West Wind Verse: (1) a line of poetry; (2) a stanza of a poem Versification: The art and practice of writing verse. It includes all the mechanical elements making up poetic composition: accent, rhyme, meter, rhyme, stanza form, diction, and such aids as assonance, onomatopoeia, and alliteration. Guidelines for Reading Poetry Responsively The following guidelines can help you respond to important elements that reveal a poem s effects and meanings. The questions listed are general, so not all of them will necessarily be relevant to a particular poem. Many, however, should prove useful for thinking, discussing, understanding, and writing about poetry. 1. Read the poem a few times slowly and aloud. 2. Make sure you understand the grammar of each sentence so that you can follow what each sentence literally says. If there are deviations form normal syntax, consider the reasons for them. 3. Try relating the poem to your own experience in your life, work or study. 4. Pay attention to the title. What does it mean or emphasize? Does it provide any context for the poem? 5. Rephrase the poem in your own words. What does your paraphrase reveal about the poem s subject and central concerns? What is lost or gained in your paraphrase? 4

5 6. Study the poem s voice. Who is the speaker? Is it possible to determine his or her age, sex, level of awareness, and values? Is he or she addressing anyone in particular? How would you characterize the poem s tone? Is it consistent? What is the setting or situation? 7. Analyze the poem s diction. Look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Examine the denotations and connotations of the words the poet chose. Is dialect used? Is word order unusual or unexpected? How does the arrangement of words reveal the meaning or the theme of the poem? 8. Consider the poem s use of allegory, allusion, myth, and symbols. In what way are they related to the poem s theme? Does the poem also use imagery or figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, irony, personification, hyperbole, understatement, metonymy, etc.? How do they enrich the poem s vividness or meaning? 9. Listen to the poem s sound and rhythm. What is the predominant rhythm or meter? Are they regular or irregular? Is the rhythm consistent with the tone of the poem? Does the poem use alliteration? Assonance? Rhyme? What effect do they produce in the poem? 10. Consider the poem s form. Is the poem constructed as a sonnet? An ode? An elegy? A lyric? A free verse? Is the form appropriate for shaping the poem s thought and emotion? 11. Identify the poem s theme. What central theme or themes does the poem explore? How are the themes expressed? 12. Consider the biographical and historical information about the author and the poem which might provide a useful context for interpretation of the poem. 13. Don t expect to produce a definitive reading. Many poems do not resolve all the ideas, issues, or tensions in them. Your reading will explore rather than define the poem. Suggestions for Scanning a Poem 1. After reading the poem through, read it aloud. Try listening for natural emphases or accented syllables in the rhythm of the line. 2. Mark the stressed syllables first, and then mark the unstressed syllables. Several methods can be used to mark lines. One widely used system employs ˊ for a stressed syllable and ˇ for an unstressed syllable. 3. If you are not sure which syllables should be stressed, look for two- and three-syllable words in a line and pronounce them as you would normally pronounce them. For Examples, you'd say below, not Below, MURmuring, not murmuring or murmuring. 4. Try breaking the words into syllables so that you can see them individually instead of as part of a word. For example: You d say The CUR few TOLLS the KNELL of PART ing DAY, not The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. This will make it easier to find the stressed syllables. 5. From your markings, identify the dominant kind of foot (iambic, trochaic, dactylic, or anapestic) and divide the lines into feet. 6. Count up the number of feet in each line (Remember that there may be variations; what is important is the overall pattern). Put the kind of foot together with the number of feet, and you've identified the meter. Examples: The CUR few TOLLS the KNELL of PART 5

6 ing DAY is iambic pentameter whereas As I CAME to the EDGE of the WOODS is anapestic trimeter. 7. Keep in mind that scansion does not always yield a definitive measurement of a line. What really matters is not a precise description of the line but an awareness of how a poem s rhythms contribute to its effects. 6