Poetry Terms
The narrative voice of the poem.
What is the speaker?
Ridiculing to show weakness in order to make a point or teach.
What is satirical?
The main idea or most important point in a story.
What is climax?
The emotional quality or perceived attitude in a passage.
What is tone?
A basic comparison of two unlike things that produces insight.
What is a metaphor?
A combination of sounds that produces a harsh or discordant effect.
What is cacophony?
The author’s choice of words for effect.
What is diction?
The rhythm or "music" of a sentence.
What is cadence?
Instructive; the author attempts to educate or instruct the reader.
What is didactic?
An elaborate simile comparing an ordinary event with a complex idea.
What is an epic or Homeric simile?
The repetition of vowel sounds.
What is assonance?
What a word suggests beyond its dictionary meaning.
What is connotation?
The pace or speed of a sentence or group of sentences.
What is narrative pace?
Serious in purpose and convention.
What is formal?
A figure of speech where a significant aspect represents the whole.
What is metonymy?
The speaker addresses something or someone that cannot answer.
What is apostrophe?
A clever short story relevant to the text, used as an example.
What is an anecdote?
A sentence where the most important idea comes first.
What is a loose sentence?
Short, to the point.
What is terse?
An elaborate, intellectually ingenious metaphor.
What is a metaphysical conceit?
A two-syllable foot with one unstressed followed by a stressed syllable.
What is iambic meter?
Learned, polished, scholarly.
What is erudite?
Balanced grammatical structures providing similar rhetorical value.
What is parallel structure?
A short quotation or verse that precedes a poem to set the tone.
What is an epigram?
A moment of insight or sudden revelation.
What is epiphany?