Punctuation in Poetry
-- longer pauses : movement from general to specific ; separating independent clauses and dividing balanced items of equal weight , brief pauses . full long stops ending independent clauses
Poetic Glossary
BASIC TERMS
Denotation: the dictionary meaning of the word
Connotation: the implied or suggested meaning connected with the word
Meter: measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse
Rhyme: correspondence of terminal (ending) sounds of words or of lines of verse
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Hyperbole: exaggeration for emphasis Example: “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse”
Metaphor: comparison between two unlike things; does NOT use like or as Example: “Love is an ever-fixed mark”
Oxymoron: a combination of two words that appear to contradict each other Example: bittersweet
Personification: giving inanimate objects or abstract concepts, animate or living qualities Example: Time let me play
Simile: comparison between two unlike things using words such as like, as, or as though Example: Lava—it squeeze out of a volcano like fiery black toothpaste
POETIC DEVICES
Irony: a contradiction between what is said and what is meant Example: Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea
Imagery: word or sequence of words representing sensory experiences (sight, hearing, smelling, touch, or taste) Example: bells knelling classes to a close
Symbol: an object or action that stands for something beyond itself Example: white = purity, innocence, hope
Alliteration: the repetition beginning of consonant sounds Example: Ingenious iguanas improvising an intricate impromptu on impossibly impractical instruments
Assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds Example: I rose and told him of my woe
Consonance: repeated consonant sound in a line or stanza Example: strong and string; blank and think
Onomatopoeia: the use of words to imitate the words that they describe Example: snap! Crackle! Pop!
Repetition: the repeating of a word or phrase to add rhythm or emphasis Example: the wind hissed, hissed down the alley
Enjambment: continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break We real cool. We
POETIC FORMS
Stanza: a unit of poetic lines; “verse paragraph”
Free verse: lines with no prescribed pattern or structure
Couplet: a pair of lines, usually rhymed In the world of mules There are no rules.
Tercet: a three line poem Kitchen crickets make a din, sending taunts to chilly kin, “You’re outside, but we got in.”
Haiku: three unrhymed lines usually including 17 syllables, arranged in lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables; generally describes scenes in nature
Senryu: a senyru follows the same pattern as a haiku—three lines of 5-7-5 syllables—generally about human nature First day, new school year, backpack harbors a fossil… last June’s cheese sandwich.
Quatrain: four line stanza or grouping of four lines of verse Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Cinquain: five line stanza or a poem in five lines, with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively Sea-foam And coral! Oh, I’ll Climb the great pasture rocks And dream me mermaid in the sun’s Gold flood.
Epic: A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure Example: The Odyssey
Sonnet: Shakespearean sonnet has a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg; is 14 lines long and written in iambic pentameter
Villanelle: this poem includes five tercets followed by a quatrain. Lines 1 and 3 take turns repeating as the third line of the subsequent stanzas, then those lines form the final couplet
Ode: a poem of celebration with usually no rhyme scheme or stanza pattern