Poetry Terms

1. Poetry Terms

2. Form • The appearance of the words on the page By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house. His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead. He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light. But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen: For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

3. Line • A group of words together on one line of a poem By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house. His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead. He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light. But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen: For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

4. Stanza • An arrangement of lines within a poem • A grouping of lines into different sections

5. I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

6. Couplet • Two back-to-back lines of poetry in which the last word of each line rhymes. Example: There was a little hermit crab
Who thought his tank was rather drab
At first he didn't know what to do
Then decorated with pink and blue.
Now he is no longer crabby
With his new home, he's rather happy!

7. Syllable • A unit of measuring sounds How many syllables are in the word capable?

8. Refrain • Lines or stanzas that are repeated in a poem. Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

9. Rhyme Scheme • The pattern to how lines in a poem rhyme. A hippo sandwich is easy to make. All you do is simply take One slice of bread, One slice of cake, Some mayonnaise, One onion ring, One hippopotamus, One piece of string, A dash of pepper-- That ought to do it. And now comes the problem... Biting into it!