The Buzz words for poetry

All you ever wanted to know about 'technical' poetry words - but were too frightened to ask ...

Alliteration: repetition of closely connected words beginning with the same letter, usually a consonant. It is used to highlight the feeling of sound and movement, to intensify meaning, or to bind words together, e.g. "the burning bushes" or " Sing a song of sixpence"!

Antithesis: contrasting two unlike things, often in the same line, or phrase. Antithesis is often part of the use of Petrachan convention in love poetry, e.g. “Alas, what is this wonder malady? For heat of cold, for cold of heat I die!”

Assonance: repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds in words which follow each other, especially when the vowel is stressed, i.e. "Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs/ About the lilting house and happy as the grass is green."

Ballad: a simple song which tells a story through dialogue, and which is characterized by uncomplicated language and melodic refrain. The literary ballad is a narrative poem written in imitation of the folk ballad. Each verse is made up of four lines, with the second and fourth line endings rhyming.

Bathos: ‘from the sublime to the ridiculous’; a sudden, usually comic, change of tone from the heightened to the down-to-earth.

Couplet: Two successive lines of poetry that rhyme. ‘Heroic Couplets’ are couplets written in iambic pentameter.

Dramatic Monologue: A poem in the first person, which is set as though it were a speech from a play, with an unseen listener to whom it is directed. The monologue is usually ironic, revealing things about the speaker’s character or motives in addition to those things which the speaker intends to reveal.

Enjambement (or enjambment; both spellings are acceptable): a line ending in which the syntax, rhythm and thought are continued and completed in the next line, i.e. "But in contentment I still feel/ the need of some imperishable bliss."

Half-Rhyme: a rhyme which, although it creates a similarity of sound, does not rhyme on every syllable, or (like ‘blue’ and ‘truly’) rhymes on only the first part of the word.

Hyperbole: ‘over the top’ exaggeration

Iambic: A two-beat metre made up of iambs. Each iambic unit has a weak stress followed by a strong stress. Five iambic units of stress make iambic pentameter, e.g. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ (strong stresses underlined).

Imagery: use of pictures, figures of speech and description to evoke ideas feelings, objects actions, states of mind etc.

Irony: saying one thing while implying its opposite, or something that transforms the first idea.

Lyric: originally poetry meant to be sung, accompanied by lyre or lute. Now refers to category of poetry that is short, concentrated in expression, personal in its subject matter, and songlike in quality.

Metaphor: like the simile, is based on a point of similarity between two things; but whereas the simile states that one thing is like another, the metaphor identifies them completely. Thus, "the child chattered like a monkey" is a simile, but "that child is a perfect monkey" is a metaphor.

Metre: The pattern of stress within a line or lines of poetry. Most common metres, like iambic pentameter, rely on alternating strong and weak stresses.

Onomatopoeia: use of words which echo their meaning in sound, e.g. "snap", crackle" and "pop"!

Personification: technique of presenting things which are not human as if they were human, i.e. "The Ballad of John Barleycorn"

Petrachan Conventions: Exaggerated and hyperbolic praise of the beloved, together with the idea that the lover suffers and strives towards an unattainable ideal. The ideas that Shakespeare satirizes in sonnet 130.

Quatrain: A four-line stanza.

Refrain: a recurring phrase or line, especially at the end of a verse, or appearing irregularly throughout a song or poem. It is used to create unity, to accumulate plot and meaning or to maintain rhythm and melody.

Rhyme: The use of words with matching sounds, usually at the end of each line.

Similes: compare things which are alike in some respect, although they may be different in their general nature, i.e. "as light as a feather" or "sleeping like a baby". Similes always use ‘like’ or ‘as’.

Sonnet: A poem of fourteen lines, generally in iambic pentameter, consisting of a closely-rhymed octet followed by a similarly rhymed sestet. Generally, a problem is proposed in the first half of the poem, which is then resolved in the second, with a ‘turn’ between the octet and sestet. Shakespearian sonnets generally end with a couplet.

Stanza: another word for verse. NEVER use ‘paragraph’ to refer to poetry!

Symbol: when a word, phrase or image 'stands for' or evokes a complex set of ideas, the meaning of which is determined by the surrounding context, i.e. the sun can symbolize life and energy, a red rose can symbolize romantic love.

Trochaic: A metre which is the opposite to iambic, consisting of a strong stress followed by a weak stress. A line such as ‘Hubble bubble toil and trouble’ (strong stresses underlined) is an example of trochaic tetrameter—that is, each line is made up of four trochees.