Alliteration - The repetition of initial consonant sounds. Assonance - The repetition of vowel sounds.

Imagery - Words or phrases that appeal to any sense or any combination of senses. Metaphor - A comparison between two objects with the intent of giving clearer meaning to one of them. Often forms of the "to be" verb are used, such as "is" or "was", to make the comparison. Onomatopoeia - The use of words which imitate sound. Personification - A figure of speech which endows animals, ideas, or inanimate objects with human traits or abilities. Point-of-view - The author's point-of-view concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or "teller", of the story or poem. 1st person: the speaker is a character in the story or poem and tells it from his/her perspective (uses "I") 3rd person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters but limits information about what one character sees and feels. 3rd person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to "know" and describe what all characters are thinking. Repetition - the repeating of words, phrases, lines, or stanzas. Rhyme - The similarity of ending sounds existing between two words. Rhyme Scheme - The sequence in which the rhyme occurs. The first end sound is represented as the letter "a", the second is "b", etc. Simile - A comparison between two objects using a specific word or comparison such as "like", "as", or "than". ``He blew a solo like a blind man; she really dug his saxophone.'' (Christie Lee) ``Clear as a crystal, sharp as a knife, I feel like I'm in the prime of my life.'' Stanza - a grouping of two or more lines of a poem in terms of length, metrical form, or rhyme scheme. Metaphor: A comparison between two concepts, tightened by the omission of any adjoining words. ``When you wake up in the morning with your head on fire...'' (Big Shot) ``But here you are, in the ninth, two men out and three men on...'' (Pressure) ``I'm her machine, and she can push all the keys, she can punch any button I was programmed through.'' (Laura) Allusion: A reference to another time, work, person, etc. ``They burned the churches up in Harlem, like in that Spanish Civil War.'' (Miami 2017) ``I heard the man knew `The Bird' like the Bible.'' (Christie Lee) ``I walked through Bedford Stuy alone.'' (You May Be Right) Hyperbole: An exaggeration of any sort, added for effect. ``All the waiters in your grand caf leave their tables when you blink.'' (Don't Ask Me Why)

``I'll either come back a bum or a king, baby, I don't know.'' (Easy Money) Euphemism: An understatement, used to lessen the effect of a statement. ``We had the Midas Touch, until we met the Dutch, and they exhausted our supplies. ``Though it's awful hard to try to make love long-distance...'' (Sometimes a Fantasy) Personification: A description of a non-human or its actions that seem to give it human characteristics. ``Sunday came and trashed me out again.'' (You May Be Right) ``Sweet Virginia Cigarette burning in my hand, well, you used to be a friend of mine, but now I understand.'' (Somewhere Along the Line) ``I don't change channels so they must change me.'' (Close to the Borderline) Pathetic Fallacy: A special type of personification where the narrator's own feelings influence the way in which something is personified. ``Sit around with the folks, tell the same old tired jokes, bored to death on Sunday afternoon.'' (The Great Suburban Showdown) Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds, usually at the beginning of words. ``Be better baby, but believe me, it's the next-best thing.'' (Sometimes a Fantasy) ``And if I must wait a lonely lifetime, until I am with you, my love...'' (You Can Make Me Free) Assonance: The repetition of a vowel sound within a line. ``I'm a statistic in a system that a civil servant dominates.'' (Running on Ice) ``Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, Punk Rock.'' (We Didn't Start the Fire) Consonance: The repetition of a consonant sound in a line, but not necessarily at the beginning of words (as in alliteration). ``We might be laughing a bit too loud, but that never hurt no-one...'' (Only the Good Die Young) Internal Rhyme: A rhyme contained within a line, rather than at the more traditional ends of lines. (Usually examples of both consonance and assonance). ``Rock and roll just used to be for kicks, and nowadays it's politics, and after Nineteen Eighty-Six, what else could be new?'' (Modern Woman) ``I've read where it's said that she sleeps in a bed made of satin.'' (That's Not Her Style) ``It's a bad waste, a sad case, a rat race-- it's breaking me.'' (Running on Ice) ``It's back-breakin', bone-shakin', belly-achin', hard-working, two more hours to go.'' (Weekend Song) Paradox: A statement that initially appears to the reader/listener to be contradictory. ``And when can get gas, you know you can't drive fast any more on the parkways.'' (Close to the Borderline) ``Oh, the place hasn't changed, and that's why I'm going to feel so strange.'' (The Great Suburban Showdown). ``She cuts you out, she cuts you down, and carves up your life. But you won't do

nothin' as she keeps on cuttin', 'cause you know you love the knife.'' (Stiletto) Oxymoron: A type of paradox which is contradictory in a quick, two-part statement. ``I once believed in causes, too. I had my pointless point of view...'' (Angry Young Man) Image: A mental picture made of words. ``Once upon a time in the land of misty satin dreams...'' (Falling of the Rain) ``I've seen those big machines come rolling through the quiet pines.'' (No Man's Land) Apostrophe: The addressing of a person, place, object, etc. which is not there. ``Oh, Eliza, you must begin again. And all the roads that you have walked are coming to an end.'' (Turn Around) ``Roberta, how I've adored you. I'd ask you over, but I can't afford you.'' Synecdoche: The indication of a person, object, etc. by naming only a certain part of it. ``But I don't want some pretty face to tell me pretty lies...'' (Honesty) Metonymy: The signification of a concept, group, etc. by naming some object or idea which is not actually part of it, but associated with it. ``But something happened on the way to that place; they threw an American flag in our face.'' (Allentown) Meter A poem's meter is described using two factors. The first factor is the foot: it shows the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables repeated within a single line. The second factor indicates how many feet there are in a line. Metrical Pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a single foot. When we speak of stressed and unstressed syllables, we speak about the difference in emphasis that a syllable receives. But, not all of stresses are equal. In determining the base meter of a poem don't worry about those small differences. A syllable is either stressed or unstressed. The table below shows metrical feet in English. Stressed syllable: 2 syllables and 3 syllables Last Syllable Accented iamb: inspire anapest: anymore First Syllable Accented trochee: travel dactyl: dinosaur Both first and last syllabled accented spondee: spice rack amphimacer: amazon

Neither syllable accented pyrric: and a Middle syllable of three accented: amphibrachys: amoeba Examples: Bold indicates a stress Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able Ever to come up with dactyl trisyllable. Iambics march from short to long; -With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng; One syllable long, with one short at each side, Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride:-First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer. -- From "Metrical Feet" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Comments Very few English words are anapestic. In poetry, this foot is often made up of a prepositional phrase or other word group: "See a man in a boat on the sea with a fish ." The dactyl gets its name from the Greek word for "finger," The ancient Greek poets, who came up with these foot names, compared the "strong-weak-weak" pattern to the structure of the human finger, in which the first bone is the longest. Other spondees include ingrown, ice pick, and android. Notice that the two syllables tend to be separated by a consonant cluster which forces them to each stand alone instead of one swallowing up the other. There is also such a thing as a monosyllabic foot, which is usually found replaced a normal 2- or 3-syllable foot for variety or emphasis. Meter - foot length The second half of the meter name is just a number -- the number of feet in a line. 1. monometer 2. dimeter 3. trimeter (another seldom used meter) 4. tetrameter 5. pentameter 6. hexameter (also known as alexandrine) 7. heptameter 8. octameter

9. nonameter 10.decameter Anything longer than heptameter is fairly rare Scansion - determing the basic meter of the poe Together, the two elements become a meter name. Some common meters, with poetic examples: iambic pentameter -- This is the king of English meters, established firmly at the top of the chain by the Elizabethan poets because it sounds like the natural rhythm of spoken English. Most sonnets are in this meter, including those of Shakespeare; one modern non-sonnet examples is Wilfred Owen, "Dulce Et Decorum Est". iambic tetrameter -- Robert Herrick, "Upon Julia's Clothes"; Tennyson, "The Eagle". iambic heptameter -- when written as two lines, one of four feet and the next of three, this is known as "ballad meter" from its common use in folk and popular song, but also used in serious poetry -- Emily Dickinson uses this meter extensively ("Tell All The Truth But Tell It Slant", among others). trochaic dimeter -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume" trochaic tetrameter -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha; Robert Browning, "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" trochaic octameter -- Edgar Allen Poe, "The Raven" anapestic dimeter -- Dr. Seuss, "The Cat in the Hat" anapestic tetrameter -- Clement Moore, "A Visit From St. Nicholas"; Dr. Seuss, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Notice that triple meters tend to be associated with a light or comic tone. However, this can be used to create an ironic effect, as in W.H. Auden, "The Unknown Citizen". Amphimacer dimeter -- The energy of the triple meter can also be used for dramatic effect, as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" --UCLA English Department and others