Concrete Poetry: Poetry that uses words--and, sometimes, different fonts and type sizes--to shape a picture on the page.

Figures of Speech

Simile: A verbal comparison in which a similarity is expressed directly, using like or as: ex. houses leaning together like conspirators.

-- James Joyce

Metaphor: A figure of speech that makes an imaginative comparison between two literally unlike things.

ex. Sylvia’s face was a pale star.

Personification: Giving human qualities to nonhuman things.

ex. The craft pranced and reared, and plunged like an animal.

-- Stephen Crane

Hyperbole: A purposeful exaggeration.

ex. I tried for hours to get in touch with you (I called twice and then gave up).

Understatement: A form of ironic expression that intentionally minimizes the importance of an idea or fact. This is the opposite of hyperbole--saying less than is meant.

Metonymy: A figure of speech in which the name of one thing is substituted for that of something else closely associated with it.

ex. We are reading Poe. The White House (meaning the President or the whole executive branch).

Synecdoche: A figure of speech in which some prominent feature is used to name the whole, or vice-versa.

ex. A sail in the harbor (meaning a ship), or call the law (meaning call the law enforcement officers).

Apostrophe: A form of personification in which the writer or poem’s speaker addresses the dead, the absent, or the inanimate as if they were alive, present, and sentient.

ex. Roll on, thou dark and deep blue Ocean, roll. You sea! I resign myself to you also--I guess what you mean.

-- Walt Whitman

Rhythm: The regular recurrence of sounds.

ex. The beating of a heart.

Meter: The recurrence of regular units of stressed and unstressed syllables.

A stress or an accent: occurs when one syllable is emphasized more than another, unstressed, syllable.

ex. for * ceps, ba * sic, il * lu * sion, ma * lar * i * a

Foot: The basic unit of meter. A group of syllables with a fixed pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Elegy: A poem commemorating someone’s death but usually encompassing a larger issue as well.

Epigram: A short, witty saying that often conveys a bit of wisdom:

Heaven for climate; hell for society.

-- Mark Twain

Epigraph: A quotation at the beginning of a poem, novel, play, or essay that suggests the theme of the work.

Caesura: A Latin word meaning “a cutting”-- within a line. A pause in the rhythm of a line of poetry. When scanning a poem, you indicate a caesura with two parallel

lines: II. ex. How do I love thee? II Let me count the ways.

-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Onomatopoeia: A word that sounds like what it names.

ex. Hiss of the snake. Chirp of a bird. whoosh, clang, babble.

Alliteration: Repetition of the same consonant sounds, usually at the beginning of words. ex. Should the glee--glaze--

In Death’s--stiff--stare--

-- Emily Dickinson

Assonance: The repetition of similar vowel sounds within syllables.

ex. On desperate seas long wont to roam

-- Edgar Allan Poe

Allegory: A form of symbolism in which ideas or abstract qualities are represented as characters or events in a story, novel, or play.

Allusion: An indirect reference to some character or event in literature, history, or mythology that enriches the meaning of the passage.

Myth: A traditional story involving deities and heroes, usually expressing and inculcating the established values of a culture.

Poetic Forms

Free Verse: Poetry that does not have regular rhythm, rhyme, or standard form.

Blank Verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter, the line that most closely resembles speech in English.

ex. When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

-- Robert Frost

Couplet: Two rhymed lines of poetry.

Quatrain: A four-line stanza of poetry, with any number of rhyme schemes.

Sonnet: A poem of fourteen ten-syllable lines, arranged in a pattern of rhyme schemes. The English or Shakespearean sonnet uses seven rhymes that divide the poem into three quatrains and a couplet: abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Taken from: Kirszner & Mandell’s Literature: Reading Reacting Writing and McMahan, Day, and Funk’s Literature and the Writing Process.