Poetry Terms
the narrative voice of the poem.
What is the speaker?
the emotional quality of a passage or the perceived attitude of a speaker towards a thing or idea in the text.
What is tone?
a reference to something or someone that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, etc.
What is an allusion?
ridiculing to show weakness in order to make a point, teach.
What is satirical?
a basic comparison of two generally unlike things that produced insight.
What is metaphor?
a metrical unit of poetry
What is a foot?
the author's choice of words based on their exact or connotative meaning for effect.
What is diction?
the associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase
What is connotation?
instructive; author attempts to educate or instruct the reader.
What is didactic?
a mid-line stop to make an impact
What is a caesura?
the repetition of vowel sounds: “which din dims the light.”
What is assonance?
what a word suggests beyond its denotative (precise or dictionary) meaning, including social or emotional connections.
What is connotation?
a word or phrase in everyday use or in conversation or informal writing, pertaining to a particular time or location
What is a colloquialism?
serious in purpose and convention (no slang, contractions; no idioms).
What is formal?
a figure of speech in which some significant aspect of an experience is used to represent the whole experience.
What is metonymy or synechdoche?
the speaker addresses something or someone that cannot answer, something nonliving or inanimate.
What is apostrophe?
a device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are plaiced next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit.
What is juxtaposition?
a form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form
What is litote?
the use of repetition at the beginning of two or more sentences
What is anaphora?
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)?
represented by a two syllable foot that contains one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
What is iambic meter?
a moment of insight, spiritual or personal; a character's sudden revelation about life or his or her own circumstances.
What is epiphany?
this type of sentence or paragraph construction contains balanced grammatical structures that provide similar rhetorical value.
What is parallel sentence or parallel structure?
learned, polished, scholarly.
What is erudite?
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?