Poetry Vocabulary

1. Poetry Vocabulary

2. Stanza • Definition: • a group of consecutive lines that forms a single unit • Example:

3. Figurative language • Definition: • language that uses words in forms other than their literal sense • Example: • Similes • Metaphors • Personification

4. simile • Definition: • a comparison between two unlike things, using words such as likeoras • Example: • Her hair was as golden as sunshine

5. metaphor • Definition: • comparison between two unlike things where one thing is said to be like the other • Example: • I was a lonely, wandering cloud

6. Extended metaphor • Definition: • a metaphor that is developed, or extended through several lines or the whole selection • Example: • Cars are little blood cells, we are oxygen • City is the airway, suburbs appendages

7. imagery • Definition: • language that appeals to the senses • Example: • Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn yard.

8. personification • Definition: • a nonhuman or nonliving thing or quality is talked about as if it were human or alive • Example: • The sun played hide and seek with the clouds.

9. tone • Definition: • The attitude that a writer takes toward the audience, a subject, or a character • Example:

10. alliteration • Definition: • the repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in words that are close together • Example: • And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.

11. onomatopoeia • Definition: • the use of words whose sounds echo their sense • Example: • Oh, the bells, bells, bells! . . . How they clang, and crash, and roar!