Poetry Fundamentals
Literary Devices
Look at those feet!
Speak to the senses
Formalities
100
the three branches of poetry
What are narrative, lyric, and dramatic?
100
"My love is like a red, red rose."--Robert Burns
What is a simile?
100
The most common foot in English poetry, with one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
What is the iamb (iambic)?
100
The dominant device in the line "scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
What is sibilance?
100
Pantoums are written in this kind (length) of stanza.
What is the quatrain?
200
This word can be used (with an article) to reference a line of poetry, or poetry in general.
What is verse?
200
"We need to put our heads together on this question."
What is synecdoche?
200
This uncommon foot has two unstressed syllables.
What is pyrrhic?
200
"Meow," "Bark," and "rustle" are examples of this poetic device.
What is onomatopoeia?
200
This type of verse, common in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) poetry, has a common number of stressed syllables in each line.
What is accentual verse?
300
The dramatic monologue has this kind of speaker.
What is a persona?
300
This device appears in all but one of the following lines: "In fair Provence, the land of lute and rose, / Arnaut, great master of the lore of love, / first wrought sestines to win his lady's heart, / Since she was deaf when simpler staves he sang, / And for her sake he broke the bonds of rhyme..."
What is alliteration?
300
"Garrulous," "management," "imminent," and "sympathy" are pronounced according to the pattern of this metrical foot.
What is a dactyl?
300
The slash-mark refers to this feature in the following lines: "Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
What is a line break?
300
This is the name given to the "turn" in a sonnet, where the poet shifts from problem to resolution. In the Petrarchan sonnet it generally falls after line 8, and in the Shakespearean after line 10.
What is a volta?
400
Literally meaning "station," "room," or "stopping place," this structural unit of a poem establishes a regular pattern of rhyme and meter that repeats throughout the poem.
What is a stanza?
400
The two parts of a metaphor, the first expressing the metaphor's main idea and the second forming its comparative means of expression.
What are tenor and vehicle?
400
The name given to an extra (unstressed) syllable at the end of a metrically structured line
What is a tag?
400
This feature marks the relationship between lines two and three as well as between lines three and four: "When you're away I sleep a lot, / Seem to pee more often, eat / Small meals (no salad), listen / to German symphonies and... listen."
What is enjambment?
400
This type of poem, like John Hollander's "Crise de Coeur" or e.e. cummings' "Grasshopper," uses its space on the page as part of its meaning.
What is a concrete poem?
500
A pair of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter
What is the heroic couplet?
500
Language that appeals to the senses.
What is imagery?
500
This uncommon foot has two stressed syllables.
What is a spondee?
500
The two types of rhymes (not placement of them) appear in the following stanza: "In the hall of mirrors nobody speaks. / An ember smolders before hollowed cheeks. / Someone empties pockets, loose change, and keys, / into a locker. My god, forgive me. / Some say love, disclosed, repels what it sees, / yet if I touch the darkness, it touches me."
What are perfect rhyme and rime riche?
500
Find at least ten of our vocab terms in the following two stanzas: "We think by feeling. What is there to know? / I hear my being dance from ear to ear. / I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. // Of those so close beside me, which are you? / God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,/ And learn by going where I have to go."
What are (lyric poetry, perfect rhyme, slant rhyme, line breaks, end-stopped lines, meter, iambic pentameter, speaker, stanza, alliteration, figurative language, extended metaphor, villanelle...)?
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