Poetry Terms Alliteration The repetition of initial consonant

Poetry Terms

Alliteration The repetition of initial consonant sounds in words placed near one another “The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew” From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Ex:

Assonance The repetition of vowel sounds in words placed near one another (the vowel sound can be the beginning, middle, or end of the word) Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Ex: From Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night”

Onomatopoeia The creation of words that imitate natural sounds It's a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes. / The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackasssnorts. / The banjo tickles and titters too awful. Ex: From "Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio" by Carl Sandburg

Rhyme Two or more words or phrases that end in the same sounds Ex of end rhyme: In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly. Scarce heard amid the guns below. From “In Flanders Fields” by Colonel John Mc. Crae

Rhyme cont’d Ex of internal rhyme Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping From “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe

Rhythm A regular, repeated pattern of sounds Ex: Of shot, rebound, dribble, shot Until he is just a shadow and a sound From “Shooting Baskets at Dusk” by Michael Mc. Fee

Line A group of words in a poem Ex: You are so young you heal as you weep, and your tears instead of scalding your face like mine absolve simply as rain. From “Lullaby for 17” by Linda Pastan

Stanza a group of lines in a poem You are so young you heal as you weep, and your tears instead of scalding your face like mine absolve simply as rain. From “Lullaby for 17” by Linda Pastan

Speaker vs. Writer The speaker is the voice or persona of the poem. Some poets create a distinct speaker in poems. Ex: “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes The speaker is an older African-American woman. The poet/writer is Langston Hughes

Voice An author’s style and quality that makes his/her writing unique

Meter is a unit of rhythm in poetry, the pattern of the beats. It is also called a foot. Each foot has a certain number of syllables in it, usually two or three syllables. The difference in types of meter is which syllables are accented and which are not.

Foot The basic unit of measurement of accentual-syllabic meter. A foot usually contains one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. The standard types of feet in English poetry are the iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, and pyrrhic (two unstressed syllables).