The Language of Poetry

1. The Language of Poetry English 9 Academic 2012 Ms. Brooks

2. Lyric Poem • Express the speakers emotions or thoughts • Does NOT tell a story • Most will be short

3. Free Verse • Poetry that does not have a regular meter or line scheme. • Poets use free verse in order to capture the natural rhythms of ordinary speech

4. Haiku • A 3 line poem with 17 syllables • Lines 1 & 3 have 5 syllables each • Line 2 has 7 syllables • A haiku usually contrasts 2 images from nature or daily life.

5. Sonnet • A 14 line lyric poem • They are written in iambic pentameter and have a regular rhyme scheme.

6. Catalog Poem • A poem which presents a list of many different images

7. Ballad • A song that tells a story • They usually include a steady rhythm, strong rhymes, and repetition.

8. Image • A word or phrase that appeals to one of our five senses • It is one of a poets strongest tools.

9. Sensory details • Elements or words that help you imagine how something looks, sounds, tastes, or feels. • Sensory details combine to form images.

10. Figures of Speech • Comparisons that are not literarily true.

11. Figurative Language • Expressions that put aside literal meanings in favor of imaginative connections. • It is used by poets to convey an idea that might otherwise take many words to express.

12. Similes • Two unlike things are compared using a word such as like, as, than, or resembles.

13. Metaphor • A comparison of two unlike things in which one thing is said to be another. • Does not use the words like or as.

14. Personification • Human qualities are given to something that is not human, such as an animal, object, force of nature, or even idea.

15. Synecdoche • A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole.

16. Rhyme • The repetitions of a stressed vowel sound and any sounds that follow.

17. End Rhyme • Rhymes in poetry which occur at the ends of lines.

18. Rhyme Scheme • A regular pattern of end rhymes. • Rhyme scheme is described using letter, for example: • Abab • Aabb

19. Internal Rhyme • A rhyme in which at least one of the rhymed words falls within a line.

20. Approximate Rhyme • Rhyming words which repeat some sounds but are not exact echoes. • Also referred to as: • Half rhymes • Near rhymes • Slant rhymes

21. Rhythm • A musical quality based on repetition • This is the “beat” you hear when reading a poem.

22. Meter • A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that in the lines of a poem. • Stressed syllables are marked  • Unstressed syllables are marked 

23. Foot • One stressed and one or more unstressed syllables.

24. Iamb • A foot that has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

25. Trochee • A foot that contains a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.

26. Anapest • A foot with two unstressed syllables, then a stressed syllable

27. Dactyl • A foot with one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables

28. Spondee • A foot with two stressed syllables

29. Blank Verse • A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

30. Free Verse • Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. • The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad.

31. Onomatopoeia • Using words that sound like what they mean

32. Alliteration • Repetition of the same consonant sound in several words

33. Assonance • The repetition of vowel sounds in several words

34. Author’s Purpose • The reason an author decides to write about a specific topic • The way in which an author uses words to achieve that purpose

35. Theme • The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization.

36. Tone • The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work.

37. Style • The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques.