AP Poetry Terms (1)
Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object: "The wind whispered secrets."
What is personification?
The repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect: "We real cool. We / Left school. We / Lurk late. We / Strike straight."
What is anaphora?
The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."
What is alliteration?
A group of lines in a poem.
What is a stanza?
Three four-line sections followed by a two-line section resulting in fourteen total lines. Typically follows an ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG rhyme scheme.
What is an English or Shakespearean sonnet?
The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named: "Tick tock went the old grandfather clock."
What is onomatopoeia?
A pause in a line: "Ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince."
What is an caesura?
The repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong (two vowels) in nonrhyming stressed syllables followed by consonant sounds: He claps his hands and stamps his feet."
What is assonance?
Also called a visual rhyme or a sight rhyme, is a rhyme in which two words are spelled similarly but pronounced differently: "move" & "love"
What is eye rhyme?
A lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter.
What is an ode?
When the sounds of a poem are harsh and grating: "Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles / Proceed from your great lips."
What is cacophony?
A figure of speech in which two contradictory terms or ideas are intentionally paired: "jumbo shrimp" or "wireless cable"
What is oxymoron?
Rhyme that occurs in the middle of lines of poetry, instead of at the ends of lines: "I drove myself and dove into the water."
What is internal rhyme?
A single row of words in a poem.
What is a line?
This is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.
What is an elegy?
A harmonious succession of words having a pleasing sound: "Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor."
What is euphony?
Addressing an absent person, an abstract idea, or an inanimate object, as if they were present and/or capable of responding: ""O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
What is an apostrophe?
A figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something associated with that thing or concept: "The pen is mightier than the sword!"
What is metonymy?
A poetic stanza consisting of four lines, often having alternate rhymes.
What is a quatrain?
A poem without a consistent rhyme scheme and meter. It can be long or short, and it can cover any subject matter.
What is free verse?
An extended, elaborate metaphor or simile that creates a strikingly unusual comparison between two seemingly dissimilar things to reveal a complex idea or emotion: "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne, which compares the souls of two lovers to the legs of a drawing compass, showing the steadfast nature of their love even when separated.
What is a conceit?
A figure of speech in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed by parallelism of words that are the opposites of each other: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
What is antithesis?
The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line or stanza: "April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing"
What is enjambment?
Rhythmic structure of a line of verse determined by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
What is meter?
This is a 19-line poem with a strict structure of five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by a final quatrain (four-line stanza). It uses only two rhymes, following an ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA rhyme scheme, and features two refrains.
What is a villanelle?