1. Poetry Terms
Everything you ever wanted to know about poetry, but didn’t know you wanted to know…
so, now you’ll know.

2. ALLITERATION
The repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) in neighboring words or at short intervals within a line or passage, usually at word beginnings, as in "wild and woolly" or the line from Shelley's "The Cloud,"
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

3. ASSONANCE
A form of ALLITERATION that can be described as a repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonants in two or more words. Assonance differs from RHYME in that rhyme is a similarity of vowel and consonant. "Lake" and "fake" demonstrate a rhyme; "lake" and "fate" demonstrate assonance.

4. BALLAD
A short narrative poem that relates the details of a story through stanzas of two or four lines and usually contains a repeating refrain. The story of a ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter, but most frequently deals with folklore or popular
legends. They are written in straight-
forward verse, seldom with detail,
but always with graphic simplicity
and force. Most ballads are suitable
for singing.

5. BLANK VERSE … come on, you know this from Shakespeare
Poetry written without rhymes, but which retains a set metrical pattern or rhythm of sound, usually iambic pentameter (or five iambic feet per line) in English verse.

6. COUPLET
Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal length and rhythmic correspondence, with end-words that rhyme
A SMALL COUPLE ≠ A COUPLET

7. FREE VERSE FREE BIRD…… oops!
Poetry that does not follow a fixed rhythm or rhyme scheme. Free verse poems have an irregular rhythm scheme or irregular meter. Free verse relies on the recurrence, with variations, of phrases, images, and syntactical patterns rather than the conventional use of METER. RHYME may or may not be present in free verse, but when it is, it is used with great freedom.

8. RHYME SCHEME
The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, such as ababbcc.

9. RHYTHM
the pattern of stresses and pauses in a poem; also called a poem’s METER.

10. Last one! STANZA
A group of lines in a poem, separated from others by a blank space on the page, that forms a unit of thought, mood, or meter. Common stanzaic forms include the COUPLET (two lines), quatrain (four lines), and octave (eight lines).