Poetry Appendix:

Teachable Terms

POETRY TERMINOLOGY: POETIC FORMS

Stanza -- Two or more lines of poetry that form one of the divisions of a
poem. The stanzas of a poem are roughly analogous in verse to the paragraph’s
function in prose. They are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of
meter and rhyme. The precise name for a stanza depends on the number of lines in
it:
Couplet: two line stanza Sestet: six line stanza
Tercet or triplet: three line stanza Septet: seven line stanza
Quatrain: four line stanza Octave: eight-line stanza
Quintet: five line stanza

Canto – A chapter-like division of a long poem as employed originally by

Dante in The Divine Comedy. Spencer in the 16th century was the first to use cantos
in English in The Faerie Queene. Byron’s Don Juan in the 19th century followed suit.

Fixed Form – Any of a number of kinds of poems in which the length, meter
and rhyme scheme have been prescribed by previous usage or tradition, such as the
sonnet, limerick, villanelle, rondeau, sestina, haiku and so on.

Sonnet – a poem consisting of 14 lines of iambic pentameter. There are two

popular forms:
Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet has two parts: an octave (eight lines)
and a sestet (six lines), usually rhyming abbaabba, cdecde. Often a question is
raised in the octave and answered in the sestet.
Shakespearean (English or Elizabethan) sonnet consists of
three Quatrains and a final rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef,
gg. Usually, the question or theme is set forth in the quatrains while the answer or
resolution appears in the final couplet.

Haiku -- A three-line poem, Japanese in origin, in which the lines contain

respectively 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Haiku are generally concerned with some aspect of
nature and present a single image without comment, relying on suggestion to
communicate their meaning.

Limerick -- A fixed form used exclusively for humor or nonsense verse. It

consists of five lines of anapestic meter; the first, second and fifth lines are trimeter;
the third and fourth are dimeter; the rhyme scheme is aabba.

Refrain – A repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines, normally at some

fixed position in a poem written in stanzaic form.

Envoy – Parting words of a poem, especially in the form of a final stanza of

fewer lines than the preceding ones.
Poetry Appendix:
Teachable Terms

Ballad -- A poem that tells a story in a songlike stanza form.

Elegy – A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a sustained

way. Elegies often use the recent death of someone known by the poet as a starting
point.

Lyric – A type of poetry that expresses the poet’s personal interpretation of

and feelings about the world. A lyric quality in poetry connotes a sweet, emotional
melodiousness.

Ode – A long lyric poem that addresses a person, thing, or place, or

celebrates a notable event. Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” is an example
as is Keats’s “To a Nightingale.”

Pastoral – A poem set in tranquil nature, idealizing rural life and sometimes
contrasting its purity with urban corruption; originally, it was a poem about the
innocent life of shepherds. Also known as an “eclogue” or “idyl.”

Doggerel – An informal term both for comic verse, especially if it has an

irregular rhythm, and verse dismissed as crude or trivial.

Continuous form – in contrast with “stanzaic form.” That form of a poem in

which the lines follow each other without formal grouping, the only breaks being
dictated by units of meaning.

Concrete poem – also known as “shaped poetry.” Poetry in which words

and letters form significant visual shapes or patterns. For example, George Herbert
in the 16th century wrote poems in the shape of wings or an altar.

RHYME-RELATED TERMS
Rhyme – A likeness or similarity of sound existing between two words.
Sat/cat are said to be “perfect” or “identical” rhymes because the vowel and final
consonant sounds are exactly the same although the initial consonant sounds differ.

End Rhyme – A rhyme placed where you generally expect it, at the end of
the line.

Internal Rhyme – When two words inside the same metered line rhyme.

Feminine Rhyme – When the rhyming element in two words appears prior
to the last syllable. Example: hurrying/scurrying, contentment/resentment,
pleasure/leisure
Poetry Appendix:
Teachable Terms

Slant Rhyme – When the rhyming words have some kind of sound
correspondence but not a perfect rhyme. For example, arrayed/said in “Richard
Cory” by Edward Arlington Robinson. Emily Dickinson made an art form of slant
rhyme (which is also known as “imperfect,” “oblique” or “near rhyme.”

SOME MISCELLANEOUS POETRY TERMS

Denotation and Connotation – Denotation is the literal meaning of a
word or phrase. Connotation is the penumbra of emotional associations that
accompany the word or phrase. Greasy is a completely innocent word: some things,
like car engines, need to be greasy. But greasy has a host of negative associations,
whether you are talking about food or people. Connotations are important in poetry
because poets employ them to further develop or complicate a poem’s meaning.

Tone – The tone of a poem is the attitude toward a subject conveyed in the
literary work. The tone is created by the devices that the poem employs, such as
meter or repetition, as much as by the literal content. If you find a poem exhilarating,
maybe it’s because the anapestic meter mimics galloping. If you find a poem
depressing, perhaps the shadow imagery is helping generate your reaction. Tone
may be playful, sarcastic, ironic, sad, solemn, or any other possible attitude. Tone is
not in any way divorced from the other elements of the poem; in fact, it is directly
traceable to them.

Poetic diction – Diction refers to the choice and order of words. In the 18th
century, an artificial poetic style prevailed in which fanciful epithets such as the finny
tribe for fish and feathered songsters for birds; stock adjectives as in balmy breezes,
purling brooks, honied flowers; and ornate phrases and classical references held
sway. In 1742, Thomas Gray wrote that ‘the language of the age is never the
language of poetry.’ This view was challenged explicitly by Wordsworth at the turn of
the 19th century. Wordsworth argued against ‘what is usually called poetic diction’ in
favor of the language of everyday life. Despite Wordsworth’s declaration and the
spareness and simplicity of much modern poetry, poetic diction continues to be
regarded as more rarefied or ‘flowery’ than most kinds of prose.