1. Poetry Terms to Know
Poetry Unit
2013

2. Rhyme Scheme the arrangement of lines in a poem or stanza
Usually shown with descending letters of the alphabet (a, b, a, b, c, c)

3. Rhyme Scheme Example
There once was a big brown cat      a  That liked to eat a lot of mice.         b  He got all round and fat                   a
Because they tasted so nice.            b

4. Rhyme Scheme continued…
Alone Edgar Allen Poe From childhood’s hour I have not been                   a As others were; I have not seen                               a As others saw; I could not bring                              b My passions from a common spring.                       b From the same source I have not taken                    c My sorrow; I could not awaken                               c My heart to joy at the same tone;                             d And all I loved, I loved alone.                                 d Then—in my childhood, in the dawn                      e Of a most stormy life—was drawn                          e From every depth of good and ill                            f The mystery which binds me still:                           f From the torrent, or the fountain,                            g From the red cliff of the mountain,                         g From the sun that round me rolled                          h In its autumn tint of gold,                                        h From the lightning in the sky                                   i As it passed me flying by,                                       i From the thunder and the storm,                             j And the cloud that took the form                            j (When the rest of Heaven was blue)                      k Of a demon in my view.                                        k

5. Onomatopoeia The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe
Examples: crash, bang, pow, splash,

6. Connotation/denotation
Connotation - The implied meanings of a word; its overtones and associations over and above its literal, dictionary meaning.
Denotation - The basic dictionary meaning of a word without any of its associated meanings.

7. examples
Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the "dictionary definition."¨ For example, if you look up the word snake in a dictionary, you will discover that one of its denotative meanings is "any of numerous scaly, legless, sometimes venomous reptiles¡ having a long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most tropical and temperate regions."
Connotation, on the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word. The connotative meanings of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. The connotations for the word snake could include evil or danger.

8. caesura Natural pause or break within a line of a poem
Usually indicated by punctuation marks – comma, semi-colon, dash
Cynthia was the first; Cynthia will be the last" — Propertius

9. enjambment
Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break.
Trees by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth's flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

10. Epic and ballad Ballad – narrative poem intended to be sung
Epic - An epic is a long narrative poem celebrating the adventures and achievements of a hero... epics deal with the traditions, mythical or historical, of a nation.
Beowulf, The Odyssey, The Aenied, The Iliad
Ballad – narrative poem intended to be sung
Red, Red Rose, John Barley Corn, Annabelle Lee
What songs do you know that are ballads?

11. Tone
Author’s attitude toward the subject of the poem

12. Couplet and heroic couplet
Two lines of poetry – usually rhymed
“For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo” (V,iii, )
Heroic Couplet
Stanza composed of two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter
Excerpt from Cooper's Hill by John Denham
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.

13. lyric Lines of poetry meant to be sung
Deals with emotion rather than telling a story

14. elegy
Mournful, melancholy or plaintive poem – funeral song, lament for the dead

15. Slant Rhyme vs. True Rhyme
rhyme in which either the vowels or the consonants of stressed syllables are identical
Eyes, light
Soul, all
Arm, barn
True Rhyme
A rhyme in which two (or more) words begin with different consonant sounds, then have identical stressed vowel sounds. Any other following sounds are also identical.
Hat, cat, bat, sat, gnat, fat

16. Narrative Poetry
Poem that tells a story
Epics, ballads, odes

17. Free Verse
Poetry written without proper rules of rhyme, rhythm, meter etc
Example of Free Verse
Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul, I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

18. Blank Verse Regular meter, but no rhyme
Most popular form is Iambic Pentameter
...bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower; Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears; Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, O’er covered quite with dead men’s rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; Or bid me go into a new-made grave, And hide me with a dead man and his shroud – Romeo and Juliet

19. sonnet
14 line poem
Usually about love
Shakespeare wrote MANY sonnets