Glossary Index
Alliteration
Ascend
Assonance
Beginning Rhyme
Cadence
Caesura
Cinquain
Couplet
Descend
Dissonance
End Rhyme
End-stopped
Enjambment
Eye Rhyme
Foot
Imagery
Internal Rhyme
Metaphor
Meter
Mimetic
Octave
Onomatopoetic
Personification
Point of View
Punctuation
Quatrain
Rhyme
Scansion
Septet
Sestet
Simile
Slant Rhyme
Stanza
Syntax
True Rhyme
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Sound Devices
Mimetic: words that suggest their meanings by the sounds that they make (ex: chunk or sleazy)
Onomatopoetic: words that imitate their meanings by the sounds that they make (ex: splash or boom)
Alliteration: the repetition of initial consonant sounds in two or more words in a line or phrase (ex: Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore)
Dissonance: harsh sounds that can be added to a poem through alliteration
Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds (ex: the w ine became the n ight)
- Ascend: the vowels in a poem move from low, rich o's and u's to short i's and long e's.
- Descend: the vowels move from short i's and long e's to low, rich o's and u's.
Rhyme: two or more words with the same sound
- End rhyme: rhyme that comes at the end of a line of poetry. This is the most obvious rhyme pattern. End rhyme often takes over the poem and makes it sound forced and awkward.
- Beginning rhyme: rhyme that occurs in the first syllable of the line
- Internal rhyme: rhyme that occurs within a line or lines
- True rhyme: the correlation of sound in the accented syllables of the words and the syllables which follow them (ex: wood and good, eaten and beaten)
- Eye rhyme: words that look like they rhyme on paper but actually do not when they are read aloud (ex: cough and though)
- Slant rhyme: rhyme that is imperfect, typically in the vowel sounds (ex: body and bloody)
- Syntax: word order within a poem. You can alter meaning in a poem by switching around the syntax to create irony or confusion.
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The Rhythm of Poetry
Cadence: the natural sound pattern created by the spoken word
Meter: the recurrence of a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
- Scansion: the process of examining a poem's metrical pattern and deviation from the pattern
- Foot: the basic unit of measure. This is a combination of stressed and/or unstressed syllables
Stanza: a certain number of lines grouped together which usually forms a pattern throughout the poem. Common stanza forms are
- Couplet: two-line stanza
- Tercet: three-line stanza
- Quatrain: four-line stanza
- Cinquain: five-line stanza
- Sestet: six-line stanza
- Septet: seven-line stanza
- Octave: eight-line stanza
- Punctuation: can be manipulated to change rhythm. Types:
- End-stopped: when punctuation occurs at the end of a line
- Run-on/enjambment : when there is no punctuation at the end of a line
- Caesura : within a line of the poem; it usually divides a foot and is in the middle of the line.
Punctuation: can be manipulated to change rhythm. Types:
- End-stopped: when punctuation occurs at the end of a line
- Run-on/enjambment : when there is no punctuation at the end of a line
- Caesura : within a line of the poem; it usually divides a foot and is in the middle of the line
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Other Devices
Imagery : Words or phrases that appeal to any sense of any combination of the five senses 2 (ex: blinding or salty)
Personification: Gives non-human things human traits (ex: the tree was sad)
Point of View: The perspective from which the poem is being narrated or told
Simile: Compares two objects which usually uses like or as. (ex: He is as loud as thunder)
Metaphor: Compares two objects that may use words such as is or was (ex: This house is a dump)
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*Sources:
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