The Poet’s Toolbox

A brief poetic glossary

Poetry is concerned Clearly some of the terms listed here may be considered to belong to more with patterns of: than one area - e.g. “syllable” is a unit of sound which plays a part in the metre of a poem. Sound • alliteration Repetition of the same consonant sounds in a stretch of Metre language. Usually the initial sounds of words or of stressed syllables. Form Meaning • anapaest A three syllable metrical foot having the stress pattern di-di-DUM.

• assonance Repetition of the stressed vowel sounds but not the consonant sounds.

• blank verse Unrhymed iambic pentameter.

• caesura A pause in a line of poetry which may correspond to a punctuation mark or be due simply to the natural organisation of the language.

• connotation The associated meanings of a word rather than its denotative meaning.

• dactyl A metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables: DUM-di-di.

• denotation The defined, dictionary meaning of a word.

• end-stopped Describes a line of poetry which ends with a natural grammatical pause, often indicated by a punctuation mark.

• enjambment Describes a line of poetry which is not end-stopped, but where, instead, the sentence runs straight on to the following line. Even in enjambed lines where there is no grammatical need for a pause, it is common for the pitch of the voice to rise slightly and the final word of a line to carry a slight stress.

• eye-rhyme Two words which are spelled in such a way as to appear to rhyme although their pronunciation is different, e.g. know and now.

• feminine rhyme Rhyme of multi-syllabic words where the rhyme oc- curs before the final syllable.

• foot Each of the sets of weakly and strongly stressed syllables into which a line of poetry is divided. Iamb, trochee, anapaest and dactyl are the most common metrical feet in English poetry.

Coventry University Technology Park, Puma Way, Coventry CV1 2TT | +44 (0) 247 722 0299 | [email protected] | tantamount.com 1 The Poet’s Toolbox

Sound • formal verse A term sometimes used to include all the traditional poetry forms such as sonnets, villanelles, rondels, sestinas, decimas, etc and to Metre distinguish them from free verse. Form Meaning • free verse Poetry that does not have a regular pattern of meter or line length. Free verse may still contain patches of regularity, and makes use of enjambment, half-rhyme, and phonic patterning.

• haiku A Japanese form of three line poem with the lines having 5-7-5 syllables. Traditional haiku are usually nature poems, contain a ‘kigo’ or season word and do not use rhyme; they do not have titles, and punctuation is minimal. The skill consists in juxtaposing two images and causing a moment of realisation or recognition in the reader. Since English and Japanese are such different languages, the word haiku (or sometimes simply ‘ku) is now often used to describe any short nature poem and the imagery is considered more important than the syllable count. There are a number of spin-off forms, including scifai’ku. Associated traditional Japanese forms include Senryu, Tanka and Hai’bun.

• half-rhyme An imperfect rhyme which helps create a phonic pattern - and, thus, coherence - in a poem without the potential heavy chiming of full rhyme.

• iamb The most common metrical foot in English poetry: a weak stress followed by a strong stress: di-DUM.

• imagery Figurative language. • IP Iambic pentameter. Five iambic feet to a line.

• masculine rhyme Monosyllabic rhyme on the final syllable of lines of poetry. (N.B. the rhyming words do not have to be monosyllabic.)

• metaphor Describing of one thing as another.

• metre The regular pattern of stresses and non-stressed syllables which distinguish (English) poetry from prose.

• pentameter A line with five feet.

• quatrain A four-line stanza. • schwa The sound which occurs in the unstressed syllables of the word America. The schwa does not correspond to any single letter or combination of letters and can occur in any position of the word. (It can be heard in glossary, happen, common, suppose, Britain... )

• silent stress (Catalexis) Omission of the final (weak) syllable of a line. Common in trochaic metre.

• simile Comparison of one thing with another.

Coventry University Technology Park, Puma Way, Coventry CV1 2TT | +44 (0) 247 722 0299 | [email protected] | tantamount.com 2 The Poet’s Toolbox

Sound • sonnet A traditional form of 14 lines of IP following a set rhyme scheme, often divided into an octet and a sestet where there is a “turn” between the Metre two sections - a twist in the argument or mood. There are various accepted Form rhyme schemes and, more recently, unrhymed sonnets with different metrical Meaning patterns are also common.

• spondee A metrical foot of two strong stresses DUM-DUM.

• stanza A unit of a poem set off by blank lines. Often characterised by a fixed number of lines and a set pattern of rhyme or metre.

• stress In English, any multi-syllabic word has a recognisable stress pattern where one syllable may be stronger than the others. Note how the stress pattern can differentiate between meanings: “He wanted to reCORD a REcord.” Single syllable words may or may not be stressed, depending on their function in a phrase. Occasionally stress shifts in the same word depending on context. Cf. “a cigarETTE” and “a PACKet of CIGarettes”.

• syllable Sounds uttered in a single effort of articulation. Note that this reflects how a word is pronounced, not how it is written. Cf. the two syllables of “café” with the monosyllabic “safe”.

• trochee A metrical foot with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable: DUM-di.

Coventry University Technology Park, Puma Way, Coventry CV1 2TT | +44 (0) 247 722 0299 | [email protected] | tantamount.com 3