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the line. Only when he had anapestic foot: a three- finished each line did he syllable foot with stress on the Some reassemble the lines into a third: --/ poem. dactylic foot: a three- syllable foot with stress on the Elements Ironically, the one poetic first: /-- technique that everyone immediately associates with spondaic foot: a spondee poetry, rhyme, is probably the is two stressed syllables: // one that is least used in pyrrhic foot: two of modern poetry. Instead, most unstressed syllables, --. Rare. modern poets use far subtler dipodic foot: a four- and less obvious techniques to syllable foot consisting of an create—and conceal—their art. unaccented, lightly accented, Poetry Many of them are explained unaccented, and heavily below. accented syllable. anacrusis: prefixing an Michael Clay Thompson unstressed syllable to a line of which it forms no metrical Those who are not well Meter part: Sport that wrinkled Care acquainted with good poetry meter: the pattern of derides / And Laughter might imagine that poetry is a stressed (accented, long) and holding both his sides. spontaneous emotional unstressed (unaccented, short) feminine ending: a final production, involving perhaps syllables in poetry. unstressed syllable appended some rhyme, but relying cadence: rhythm not truly to an iambic or anapestic line. largely on intuition and regular. Walt Whitman wrote To be or not to be, that is the fortuitous accident, the muse, in cadences rather than in question. for the details of genius which meters. catalexis: dropping one make great poems great. scansion: the analysis of or two unaccented syllables Actually, poets work in a meter and its variations in from the end of a line-- manner more similar to great poetry. necessarily a trochaic or composers; there is a current foot: a unit of meter with dactylic line. Dust thou art to of inspired genius, but this two or three syllables of which dust returnest / Was not genius is worked out in one is usually stressed. spoken of the soul. meticulous professional detail. iambic foot: a two-syllable metrical lines: Just as a composer foot with the stress on the monometer, dimeter, trimeter, consciously places each second. It is the most common tetrameter, pentameter, separate note of a symphony foot in English poetry: -/ hexameter, heptameter, on musical staff, so a poet trochaic foot: a two- octameter. consciously controls each syllable foot with the stress on sprung rhythm: Gerard separate vowel and consonant the first: /- Trochees are often Manley Hopkins’s term for sound, organizing them within used to suggest evil, as in the variable meter combining a the structure of rhythm. trochaic tetrameter of stressed syllable with any Shakespeare’s witches in number of unstressed Dylan Thomas’s habit was to Macbeth: “Double, double, toil syllables. write each line of a poem at the and trouble,” or in the trochaic top of a separate sheet of octameter of Poe’s “Raven”: paper, so that he would have “Once upon a midnight room below to laboriously dreary, while I pondered, weak solve the poetic problems of and weary.” Copyright 2006, Royal Fireworks Press www.rfwp.com an example. concluding quatrain, rhyming Stanza elegy: a poem mourning the abaa. Lines 6, 12, and 18 stanza: a division of a death of someone. repeat line one; lines 9, 15, poem based on thought or allegory: a story in which and 19 repeat line 3. form. Stanzas based on form characters represent abstract Theodore Roethke’s “The are shown by their rhyme values or ideas, such as John Waking” is a nearly perfect scheme. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. villanelle. Dylan Thomas’s verso: a line of a poem. There is a meaning below the "Do Not Go Gentle into That arte menor: 1-8 syllables surface of the story. Good Night” is a villanelle. per line of poetry. rime royal: seven lines of tercet: a three-line stanza arte mayor: 9 or more iambic pentameter, ababbcc. in which all lines rhyme either syllables per line of poetry. Named because King James I with each other or with the couplet: a two-line stanza, of Scotland used it. lines of an adjoining tercet. aa. ottava rima: eight lines of Shakespeare concluded “The triplet: a three-line stanza, iambic pentameter, abababcc. Phoenix and the Turtle” with aaa. From the Italians. five tercets. Sestets rhyming quatrain: a four-line Spenserian stanza: a nine- cdecde contain two tercets. stanza, aaaa, abab, abba, aabb, line stanza consisting of eight rondel: a fourteen-line abac. iambic pentameter lines poem rhyming quintet: a five-line stanza. followed by an alexandrine, abbaabababbaab. Lines 7 and sestet: a six-line stanza. ababbcbcc. Named for 8 and lines 13 and 14 repeat septet: a seven-line stanza. Edmund Spenser, who lines 1 and 2. octave: an eight-line stanza. invented this form for his distich: a couplet. nine-line, ten-line, etc., "Faerie Queene." canto: a section or division stanzas: alexandrine: a line of of a long poem, such as the heroic couplet: Also called iambic hexameter. The ninth cantos of the Divine Comedy closed couplet. Two line of a Spenserian stanza is or Don Juan. successive rhyming verses with an alexandrine. a complete thought within the haiku: a three-line poem two lines. Usually iambic of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, pentameter. unrhymed, concerning nature, Rhyme and terza rima: a three-line and presenting juxtaposed stanza with an interwoven images which are Sound rhyme scheme: aba, bcb, cdc, uninterpreted. rhymed verse: verse with ded, etc. Usually iambic sonnet: a fourteen-line end rhyme and usually regular pentameter. Shelley’s “Ode stanza in iambic pentameter. meter. to The West Wind” Italian or Petrarchan blank verse: iambic limerick: a five-line sonnet: a sonnet with an pentameter without end nonsense poem in anapest, octave and a sestet, abbaabba rhyme. aabba. Lines 1,2, and 5 have 3 and cdecde or cdcdcd. The free verse: verse with no feet; lines 3 and 4 have only octave makes a statement or regular meter and no end two. states a problem, and the sestet rhyme. ballad: four lines, abcb, makes a summary of gives a rhyme: a similarity of lines 1 and 3 are iambic solution. sound between two words. tetrameter, and lines 2 and 4 English or True rhyme is identical are iambic trimeter. Shakespearean sonnet: three sounding stressed syllables in ode: a complex, long lyric quatrains and a couplet, abab which the letters before the poem, in formal style, on a cdcd efef gg. vowel sounds are different. sublime subject. Shelley’s villanelle: a poem of five end rhyme: rhyme at the “Ode to the West Wind” is tercets, all rhyming aba, and a ends of the lines in a stanza. Copyright 2006, Royal Fireworks Press www.rfwp.com internal rhyme: rhyme enjambment: running of litotes: emphasis through within a line of poetry. one line into another. opposite statement. Calling a masculine rhyme: one- end-stopped: lines not fat boy Skinny. syllable rhyme. enjambed. antithesis: balancing or feminine or double caesura: a break in the contrasting terms. Fair is rhyme: two-syllable rhyme. middle of a line of five or more foul, and foul is fair. triple rhyme: three- feet. Represented by the apostrophe: addressing syllable rhyme. syllable //. To err is human, // someone absent as though leonine rhyme: a scheme to forgive, divine. present. O Captain! in which the word preceding a Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29: symbol: a word or image caesura rhymes with the last Haply I think on thee—. that represents something word of the line: I bring fresh else. The cross. showers // for the thirsting epithet: a descriptive name flowers. such as Catherine the Great, rhyme scheme: the pattern or the wine-dark sea. of end rhyme. Sounds are Ideas oxymoron: a figure of identified by letters, aabb, abab, figure of speech: nonliteral speech that combines opposite abc abc, etc. expression ideas, such as living death or reversal: sense/madness, simile: a like or as sweet sorrow. Emily Dickinson comparison. He swims like a allusion: a reference to alliteration: repetition of fish. something in literature or the initial letter or sound. epic simile or Homeric history. Yeats’s “No Second assonance: repetition of a simile: a simile as found in Troy,” or Keats’s vowel sound. Homer’s Iliad, in which the “Chapman’s Homer” consonance: repetition of a poet compares something in contain examples. consonant sound. his poem to an elaborately cacophony: bad-sounding onomatopoeia: word described scene, such as sounds. imitation of natural sound. hunters and dogs in pursuit of juxtaposition: stark side- The words whippoorwill and a lion or stag. by-side contrast of two bang are examples. different voices, elements, or repetition: reiterating of a metaphor: an implied phenomena, as in “After word or phrase in a poem. comparison. He is a fish. Taught Me.” incremental repetition: Whitman’s poem about the voice: the personality the repetition of a line or lines, death of Lincoln refers to adopted by the poet for the but with a variation each time Lincoln as Captain. speaking tone of the poem. that advances the narrative. extended metaphor: an trope: a figure of speech, refrain: repetition of one or elaborate comparison; much or figurative language. more phrases or lines at longer than the typical one- intervals. phrase or one-clause metaphor. elision: running together of personification: vowels in adjacent words in describing inhuman things in order to eliminate a syllable: human terms. The sad fish. th’eternal. synecdoche: letting a part eye-rhyme: words or represent the whole. All hands syllables spelled alike but on deck. pronounced differently: some metonymy: letting a related and home. object represent something.