| A | B |
|---|
| alliteration | the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words; e.g. pen pal or last laugh |
| ballad | tells a story;usually written in four-line stanzas;1st & 3rd lines have 4 accented syllables;2nd & 4th lines have 3 accented syllables; e.g. The Cremation of Sam McGee" |
| end rhyme | rhyming words at the end of two or more lines of poetry; e.g. "A cheerful old bear at the zoo/Could always find something to do. |
| extended metaphor | series of comparisons between two unlike things that have elements in common; e.g. the poem "Fueled" compares the launch of a rocket into space to the sprouting of a seedling |
| free verse | poetry which does not require meter or a rhyme scheme |
| hyperbole | exaggeration for emphasis; e.g."I'm dying of thirst" |
| limerick | a humerous verse of 5 lines; rhyme scheme is AABBA; e.g. "There was an old man from Peru./ .... |
| metaphor | a direct comparison between two unlike things that have something in common; e.g. My pillow is a cloud. |
| mood | a feeling created by a literary work |
| narrative poem | tells a story; has characters, setting, & plot and other elements of poetry; e.g. "Casey at the Bat" or "The Highwayman" |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words to imitate sounds; e.g. Pop! Whack! Zoom! Twinkle. |
| parallelism | the technique of repeating a grammatical pattern in a sentence or series of sentences; e.g. "with rapture, with power, with ease" |
| personification | the giving of human qualities to an object, animal, or idea; e.g.In "Sea Lullaby", the sea is personified into a woman: "She leaps on her prey" |
| refrain | a phrase or a sentence, one or more lines in length, that is repeated, usually at the ends of stanzas; e.g. Dylan Thomas, "Rage, rage, against the dying of the light" |
| repetition | the technique of using a sound,a word, a phrase, or a sentence over again for emphasis |
| rhyme scheme | the pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines. This pattern is charted by using letters of the alphabet to show which lines end with the same sounds (e.g. ABBA) |
| rhythm | the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem. Rhythm gives poetry a musical quality and helps to create mood and suggest movement. |
| sensory images | words or phrases that appeal to the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell; e.g. "A sunlit pasture field with cattle and horses feeding," |
| simile | a comparison using like or as; e.g. pretty as a picture |
| speaker | the voice that talks to the reader |
| stanza | a group of lines that form a unit in a poem; they are like paragraphs in a prose selection |
| shape | the way that words look on a page; words may be arranged in such a way as to suggest the poet's subject |
| sonnet | a 14-line poem which states a poet's personal feelings; each line is 10 syllables in length; e.g. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" |
| symbol | a person,place, or object that stands for something beyond itself; e.g. the stars and stripes symbolize the United States |
| paradox | a statement that seems to contradict itself; e.g. "less is more" |
| irony | a contrast between what is expected and what actually exists or happens; e.g. "finding the'man of your dreams' and then meeting his beautiful wife" |
