Poetry Terms

When two or more words rhyme within the same line of poetry

poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme

A poem which expresses personal emotions, typically in the first person. It’s very “sing-songy”

Matching placement of vowel and consonant sounds in two or more words

A brief reference something of historical, cultural, literary or political significance.

An individual fact or feature, or is a small or minor part of something

An extreme exaggeration of something

A four-line stanza in a poem

Language use in which writers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words

A fourteen-line poem characterized by three rhyming quatrains and final couplet

The pattern of rhymes in a poem, marked by letters to symbolize correspondences (abab)

The voice or "persona" of a poem; it may or may not be the poet.

The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work

An object that stands for something more than its physical meaning

A group of lines of verse in a poem, usually set off from other groups by a space

The author’s message in a poem

The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words

The ordinary language people use in speaking or writing

A literary device that repeats the same words, sounds or phrases to make an idea clearer

A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though

The general atmosphere created by the author's words; how the words affect the reader

A pair of rhymed lines that may be part of a bigger stanza, or their own stanza in a poem

A poem that tells a story and has a plot

The dictionary meaning of a word

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry

The selection of words in a literary work; a fancy word for “word choice”

The beat in a line of poetry

A comparison between unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as

Giving human qualities to an object or animal

The way a poem is put together on the page

When words at the end of lines rhyme

The associations that a word invokes beyond to its literal or primary meaning

An educated guess made through observation; “reading between the lines”