Poetry Terms Quiz

Poetry Terms

• Allegory: A figure of speech where abstract ideas are described through characters, figures, and events.

• Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds, often at the beginning of words.

• Allusion: A brief reference to a person, place, thing, or idea in history or literature.

• Anaphora: Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines.

• Apostrophe: Addressing a person not present, an inanimate object, or an abstract idea.

• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words.

• Ballad: A narrative poem typically composed of quatrains (four-line stanzas).

• Blank Verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

• Cacophony: Harsh or unpleasant sounds.

• Caesura: A pause within a line of poetry; a short but definite break.

• Carpe Diem Poetry: Poetry emphasizing the importance of seizing the day and enjoying the present.

• Common Meter/Hymn Measure: Iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter; a poetic structure.

• Consonance: The repetition of consonant sounds within or at the end of words, in which the vowel sounds are different.

• Couplet: Two successive lines in a poem, usually rhymed.

• Diction: The choice of words used in a literary work; formal, neutral, or informal.

• Doggerel: Crude, simple, or poorly written poetry.

• Dramatic Monologue: A poem where a speaker addresses an audience, revealing his personality.

• End-Stopped Line: A line of poetry that ends with punctuation, creating a pause.

• Enjambment: A line of poetry that flows over to the next line without punctuation; a lack of pause.

• Euphony: Pleasant or harmonious sounds in poetry.

• Explication: A detailed explanation and analysis of a literary work.

• Foot (Prosody): A basic metrical unit of verse, which consists of stressed and unstressed syllables.

• Free Verse: Poetry without a fixed rhyme scheme or meter.

• Heroic Couplet: Two successive rhymed lines of iambic pentameter.

• Hymn Meter/Common Measure: A four-line stanza with alternation between iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter.

• Hyperbole: Exaggeration for effect.

• Iambic Pentameter: A rhythmic pattern using ten syllables, alternating between unstressed and stressed syllables; the most common poetic meter in English.

• Image: A sensory quality or reference in a literary work.

• Internal Rhyme: Rhyme within a single line of poetry, unlike end-rhyme.

• Metaphor: A direct comparison of two unlike things.

• Metaphysical Conceit: An elaborate extended metaphor that links unfamiliar ideas.

• Metonymy: Using a related object or idea to represent a larger concept; substituting a name for a thing.

• Octave: The first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.

• Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate sounds.

• Paradox: A statement that appears contradictory but may be true.

• Personification: Giving human qualities to something nonhuman.

• Petrarchan Sonnet: A sonnet structure with an octave and a sestet.

• Pun: A play on words.

• Pyrrhic Foot: Two unstressed feet (or syllables)

• Quatrain: A four-line stanza or poetic unit.

• Refrain: A repeated line or phrase.

• Repetition (Poetic Device): Repeated words or phrases.

• Rhyme: Repetition of similar sounds at the end of words, creating poetic effect.

• Rhyme Scheme: The pattern of rhymes in a poem.

• Scansion: Examining metrical patterns.

• Sestet: The last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.

• Shakespearean Sonnet: A sonnet with three quatrains and a couplet.

• Simile: A comparison between two things using "like" or "as."

• Sonnet: A 14-line poem, typically in iambic pentameter.

• Stanza: A group of poetic lines.

• Symbol: An object or image representing an idea or quality.

• Synecdoche: Using a part to represent the whole, or vice versa.

• Syntax: The arrangement of words in phrases and sentences.

• Trochee (trochaic): A metrical foot consisting of one stressed followed by one unstressed syllable. (e.g. happy)

• Volta: The shift or turning point in a Petrarchan sonnet.

Additional Terms

• Anapest: Three syllables: unstressed, unstressed, stressed.
• Dactyl: Three syllables: stressed, unstressed, unstressed.
• Spondee: Two stressed syllables.