Popular Poetry Terms

Assonance
Definition
A repetition of vowel sounds within syllables with changing consonants.
Example
Hear the mellow wedding bells. — Edgar Allan Poe
Try to light the fire.
Rumbling thunder
He gave a nod to the officer with the pocket.
Mankind can handle most hassles.
Tilting at windmills
Caesura
Definition
A caesura, in poetry, is an audible pause that breaks up a line of verse. This may
come in the form of any sort of punctuation which causes a pause in speech; such as
a comma; semicolon; full stop etc. It is also used in musical notation as a
complete cessation of musical time.
Example
Arma virumque cano, || Troiae qui primus ab oris
("I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy. . .")

Cynthia prima fuit; || Cynthia finis erit.

("Cynthia was the first; Cynthia will be the last" — Horace)

Hwæt! we Gar-Dena || on geardagum

("Lo! we Spear-Danes, in days of yore. . .")

Consonance
Definition
A stylistic device, often used in poetry. It is the repetition of consonant sounds
in a short sequence of words, for example, the "t" sound in "Is it blunt and flat?"
Alliteration differs from consonance insofar as alliteration requires the repeated
consonant sound to be at the beginning of each word, where in consonance it is
anywhere within the word, although often at the end. In half rhyme, the terminal
consonant sound is repeated. A special species of consonance is using a series of
sibilant sounds (/s/ and /sh/ for example); this is sometimes known simply as
sibilance.
Example
Several good examples of sibilance come from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" For
example: "And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" (note that
this example also contains assonance around the "ur" sound).
Another example of consonance is the word 'sibilance' itself.
Dactyl
Definition
An element of meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a
dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables. In accentual verse, such
as English, it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
Example
An example of dactylic meter is the first line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem
Evangeline, which is in dactylic hexameter:

This is the / forest prim- / eval. The / murmuring / pines and the / hemlocks,
End Rhyme
Definition
A rhyme that occurs at the ends of lines.
Enjambment
Definition
Enjambment (also spelled "enjambement") is the breaking of a syntactic unit (a
phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. Its
opposite is end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with a single
line. The term is directly borrowed from the French enjambement, meaning
"straddling" or "bestriding".
Example
The following lines from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (c. 1611) are heavily
enjambed:

I am not prone to weeping, as our sex

Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.
Envoi
Definition
A short stanza at the end of a poem used either to address an imagined or actual
person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.
Example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envoi

Foot (Feet)
Definition
The units used in poetry- Feet are composed of syllables arranged in some kind of
pattern of accented and unaccented syllables. There are five most commonly used
sets of feet are iambic (iamb), trochaic (trochee), anapestic (anapest), dactylic
(dactyl), and spondaic (spondee).
Hexameter
Definition
A literary and poetic form, consisting of six metrical feet per line.
Example
An example from Drayton:
Nor any other wold like Cotswold ever sped,
So rich and fair a vale in fortuning to wed.
Iamb
Definition
A foot consisting of two syllables where the first is short or unstressed and the
second is long or stressed e.g. as in 'beSIDE'.
Line
Definition
A basic structural component of a poem. Lines can be written in free form, in
syllabic form (e.g. haiku) or in metrical form. In the official classification,
metrical lines can vary in length from the monometer (one foot) to the octameter
(eight feet).
Meter
Definition
The measured arrangement of words in poetry, as by accentual rhythm, syllabic
quantity, or the number of syllables in a line. The definitive pattern established
for a verse (such as iambic pentameter).
Octave
Definition
A stanza comprising of eight lines; sometimes known as an octet or octastich.
Pentameter
Definition
A pentameter is a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet. Iambic pentameter
is one of the most commonly used meters in English.
Poet Laureate
Definition
Formerly one who received a degree in grammar (i.e. poetry and rhetoric) at the
English universities: a poet bearing that honorary title, a salaried officer in the
royal household, appointed to compose annually an ode for the king's birthday and
other suitable occasions.

Originally the poet appointed by the king or queen of England to write occasional
verse to celebrate royal or national events. In return the poet laureate received a
stipend. Ben Jonson was the first unofficial poet laureate although Edmund Spenser
did receive a pension from Elizabeth I after flattering her in The Faerie Queene.
Jonson was succeeded by Sir William D'Avenant but John Dryden became the first
official poet laureate in 1668. Traditionally English poets laureate are appointed
for life but Andrew Motion, the current laureate, is the first to be appointed for
ten years. The requirement to write occasional verse is no longer enforced. See
complete list of UK Poets Laureate.
Refrain
Definition
A refrain (from the Old French refraindre "to repeat," likely from Vulgar Latin
refringere) is the line or lines that are repeated in poetry, usually after every
stanza.
Example
For example, one version of the traditional ballad The Cruel Sister includes a
refrain mid-verse:
There lived a lady by the North Sea shore,
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
Two daughters were the babes she bore.
Fa la la la la la la la.
As one grew bright as is the sun,
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
So coal black grew the other one.
Fa la la la la la la la.
Rhyme scheme
Definition
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a rhyming poem or in lyrics for
music. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme.
Example
For example "abab" indicates a four-line stanza in which the first and third lines
rhyme, as do the second and fourth. Here is an example of this rhyme scheme from To
Anthea, Who May Command Him Any Thing by Robert Herrick:

Bid me to weep, and I will weep,

While I have eyes to see;
And having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.