speaker The narrator of a poem (as with other pieces of literature, the narrator can be first person, third person limited, third person omniscient, or second person)
tone The mood of the work itself. Tone results from combinations and variations of such things as meter, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, diction, sentence structure, repetetion, imagery, etc.
Imagery: descriptive language used to create word pictures for the reader sensory language: writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the senses literal language: the use of words in their ordinary or sense figurative language: writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally. It is often used to create vivid impressions by setting up comparisons between dissimilar things.
Visual imagery appeals specifically to the sense of sight Aural imagery appeals specifically to the sense of hearing Tactile imagery appeals specifically to the sense of touch Olfactory imagery appeals specifically to the sense of smell Gustatory imagery appeals specifically to the sense of taste
oxymoron a self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units Ex. bittersweet; jumbo shrimp
apostrophe a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always, absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent person is directly addressed as though present. Ex: “Age, thou art sham’d!” (William Shakespeare)
metonymy A figure of speech characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself Ex: speaking of a king as “the crown”
synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part signifies the whole or the whole signifies the part Ex. calling clothes “threads” or a car “wheels”
onomatopoeia The use of words that by their sound suggest their meaning Ex. bang, snap, crackle
assonance Similar vowel sounds in stressed syllables that end with different consonant sounds Ex: lake and fate mad as a hatter free and easy
consonance Words in which the final consonants agree, but the vowels that precede them differ Ex. add – read bill – ball blood - food
Rhyme: the repetition of sounds at the ends of words End rhyme occurs at the ends of lines Internal rhyme occurs within lines Exact or perfect rhyme occurs when the the repeated sounds are exactly similar to each other Slant rhyme (also called imperfect rhyme or near rhyme) refers to words that come close to rhyming, but don’t actually rhyme (see pg. 908) Rhyme scheme: a regular pattern of rhyming words (lines) in a poem
stanza a formal division of lines in a poem, considered as a unit; Stanzas are often separated by spaces
couplet a pair of rhyming lines, usually of the same length and meter
tercet A stanza comprised of three lines
quatrain A stanza comprised of four lines
octave A stanza comprised of eight lines
repetition the use of any element of language—a sound, a word, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence—more than once. This is typically done to achieve a particular effect.
Allusion A reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art
Diction: word choice, including the vocabulary used, the appropriateness of the words, and the vividness of the language Denotation: the dictionary defintion of a word, independent of other associations the word may have Connotation: the set of ideas associated with a word in addition to its dictionary meaning
To review/learn poetry terms To practice/learn to explicate a poem effectively To read as much poetry as possible To play and experiment with words, p0etic devices and a variety of forms in the writing of your own poetry in order to create a poetry anthology