A | B |
alliteration | The repetition of consonant sounds in a poem to create pleasing musical effects. |
allusion | A reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art. |
blank verse | Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines and each iambic foot has unstressed then stressed syllables. |
free verse | Poetry not written in a regular rhythmical pattern, or meter. |
lyric | A highly musical verse that expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker. |
metaphor | A figure of speech in which one thing is spoken of as though it were something else. |
simile | A figure of speech that makes a direct comparison between two subjects using either like or as. |
onomatopoeia | The use of words that imitate actual sounds. |
narrative | A poem that tells a story and has one or more characters, a setting, a conflict, and events bringing about a conclusion. |
speaker | In a poem the voice of the poet or the voice of a character invented by the poet. |
dramatic | Poetry in which one or more characters speak to tell directly what is happening. |
extended metaphor | A comparison made by equating two different items throughout the entire poem. |
personification | A figure of speech in which an object, animal, or idea is given characteristics of a human. |
repetition | The repeating of words of phrases gives a poem the sound of a song. |
parallelism | refers to the repetition of the same grammatical form or structure. |
rhyme scheme | A regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem, described by using letters of the alphabet for the different sounds at the ends of lines. |
rhyme | The repetition of sounds at the ends of words. |
rhythm | The pattern of beats, or stresses, in spoken or written language used to emphasize ideas and feelings. |
assonance | The close repetition of similar vowel sounds in a poem. |