AP Poetry Terms (1)
Attributing human characteristics to an animal or inanimate object: "The wind whispered secrets."
Personification
An adjective or descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned: “The Boy Who Lived.”
Epithet
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."
Alliteration
A group of lines in a poem.
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.
Sonnet
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang...
The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named: "Tick tock went the old grandfather clock."
Onomatopoeia
Understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary: "You're not wrong."
Litotes
The repetition of the sound of a vowel or diphthong in nonrhyming stressed syllables followed by consonant sounds: He claps his hands and stamps his feet."
Assonance
The use of words with similar sounds, creating a musical effect and often following a specific scheme.
Rhyme
Three lines of usually un-rhymed words totaling 17 syllables: a five-syllable line followed by a seven-syllable line followed by a five-syllable line.
Haiku
An old silent pond . . .
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
A concise, cleverly worded expression of a general truth or principle: "You can't always get what you want."
Aphorism
A figure of speech in which two contradictory terms or ideas are intentionally paired: "Jumbo shrimp." "Wireless cable."
Oxymoron
Rhyme that occurs in the middle of lines of poetry, instead of at the ends of lines: "I drove myself to the lake / and dove into the water."
Internal Rhyme
A single row of words in a poem.
Line
Five lines or poetry that follows an AABBA rhyme scheme. The first two lines contain seven to ten syllables. The third and fourth lines contain five to seven syllables. The final line contains seven to ten syllables.
Limerick
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
A phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought: "The grass is always greener on the other side."
Cliché
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?"
Apostrophe
The literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests: "A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
Denotation
A poetic stanza consisting of four lines, often having alternate rhymes.
Quatrain
A poem without a consistent rhyme scheme and meter. It can be long or short, and it can cover any subject matter.
Free Verse
A touch of cold in the Autumn night— I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer. I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children.
Contrasting ideas, images, characters, or actions placed side-by-side to highlight their differences and create a specific effect or meaning: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Juxtaposition
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
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"
Enjambment
Rhythmic structure of a line of verse determined by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Meter
A poem with no specific length or form rules except that it is about death.
Elegy
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned...