Poetry Terms
ridiculing to show weakness in order to make a point, teach.
What is satirical, or satire?
a basic comparison of two generally unlike things that produced insight; does not use the words "like" or "as"
What is metaphor?
Ex: My love for you is a ticking clock
a combination of sounds that produces a harsh or discordant effect.
What is cacophony?
Honking, crashing
the rhythm or "music" of a sentence that come through parallel elements and repetition.
What is cadence?
Shall I compare thee too a summer's day?
instructive; author attempts to educate or instruct the reader.
What is didactic?
Ex: news articles
an elaborate simile that compares an ordinary event or situation with the more complex idea in the text that is often recognized by the use of "just as, so then."
What is an epic or Homeric simile?
Ex: "Like sands through the hourglass, so too are the days of our lives."
what a word suggests beyond its denotative (precise or dictionary) meaning, including social or emotional connections.
What is connotation?
"Died" vs. "Passed away"
a figure of speech in which some significant aspect of an experience is used to represent the whole experience.
What is metonymy?
Ex: get in my ride; I gave you my heart; grilled cheese is my favorite dish
the repetition of consonant sounds in several words, usually at the beginning of the word
What is alliteration?
Kevin can't count
a clever little story; a short account of an interesting situation relevant to the text and used as example.
What is an anecdote?
Imagine I tell a story about my student who didn't study for the AP Lit exam and later failed. I tell this story to a group of students about to take their test.
what we call a sentence where the most important idea comes first and the rest of the sentence unfolds easily after that (revealing information not critical to the climax).
What is a loose sentence?
Ex: Your AP lit exam is on Wednesday, which is interesting for the fact that the date changed, and of course I was not made aware.
short, to the point.
What is terse?
Ex: "It's too late," he said grimly.
an elaborate, intellectually ingenious metaphor that shows the poet's realm of knowledge; it may be brief or extended.
What is a metaphysical conceit (or simply conceit, for short)?
Ex: In a poem, two lovers are compared to two ends of an arrow in a compass
represented by a two syllable foot that contains one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
What is iambic meter?
Shall I compare thee too a summer's day?
a moment of insight, spiritual or personal; a character's sudden revelation about life or his or her own circumstances.
What is epiphany?
Usually immediately follows or precedes a climax when a character realizes the solution to their conflict.
this type of sentence construction (or even paragraph construction) contains balanced grammatical structures that provide similar rhetorical value.
What is parallel sentence or parallel structure?
Ex: I am afraid of the dark. I am afraid of failure. I am afraid of what I do not know. I am afraid that I have to go.
learned, polished, scholarly.
What is erudite?
Ex: The differences between memoir and biography are quite simple; one is a simulacrum of experience, while the other simply reports facts. Both contain multitudinous truths.
a short quotation or verse that precedes a poem (or any text) to set the tone, provide a setting, or give other context for the poem.
What is an epigram (or epigraph)?
Ex: Dante's "Inferno" at the start of "Prufrock"