Poetry glossary

The use of vivid word pictures that appeal to one of the five senses

Shall I / com pare / thee to / a sum / mer's day?"

O where ha' you been, Lord Randal, my son? And where ha' you been, my handsome young man?

He is as strong as Superman.

The repetition of sounds at the ends of words

Poetry not written in a regular, rhythmical pattern, or meter

A poem that includes story elements such as characters, conflict, plot, etc.

He was pale as a ghost!

The use of words that imitate sounds (it helps put the reader in the action of a poem)

A figure of speech in which something is described as though it were something else

I will be the gladdest thing a Under the sun! b I will touch a hundred flowers c And not pick one.

A worm named Maurice took the garden by storm.

Love is a battlefield.

Boots of Spanish Leather

crash, buzz, screech, hiss, neigh, jingle

A unified group of lines in poetry, often marked by spacing between sections of the poem

Anything that stands for or represents something else to highlight certain elements the author wishes to emphasize

She sells seashells by the seashore

It was a dark and stormy night.

metaphors, similes, personification

A reference to a well-known person, event, place, literary work, or work of art

The sky, a canvas of fading oranges,bleeds into a bruised purple,as the sun dips low,a slow goodbye to the day.

The feeling created in the audience through the author’s use of imagery, word choice, descriptive details, etc.

formal/informal, serious/playful, bitter, ironic

The sun dips low, a fiery kiss, painting the sky in hues of bliss, a quiet peace, a gentle breeze

Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater

Writing or speech that is not meant to be taken literally.

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in spoken or written language

The repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning, middle, or end of nearby words

every time/the lines end/a thought

A figure of speech that uses “like” or “as” to make a direct comparison between two unlike ideas

Don't judge a book by it's cover

A poem in which a single speaker expresses his or her thoughts and emotions

Same beginning sound

The repetition of sounds at the ends of words

I will be the gladdest thing a Under the sun! b I will touch a hundred flowers c And not pick one.

Poetry in which every line must have a certain length and a certain number of stresses

A poem’s rhythmical pattern that is determined by the number of stresses, or beats, in each line

Ivan will try to light the fire.

The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyme at the end of a line

formal/informal, plain/fancy, ordinary/technical, old-fashioned/modern

A writer’s or speaker’s word choice

The author’s attitude toward his or her audience and subject

The clouds covered the sky like a warm blanket, making everyone feel safe.

The central message that the poet is trying to deliver

a four leaf clover

The repetition of a vowel sound at the beginning, middle, or end of nearby words

The central message that the poet is trying to deliver

The use, more than once, of any element of language-- a sound, word, phrase, clause, or sentence.