Poetic Terms Glossary

Useful terms for analysing poetry

Apostrophe  A Something or someone absent or dead is addressed as if it were alive and present and able to reply; for example:

Western Wind
(Anonymous 15th Century lyric)

Western wind, when will thou blow
The small rain down can rain?


Iambic pentameter  A line made up of five pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables

Caesura  An audible pause that breaks up a line of verse, usually indicated by punctuation marks

Metre  The basic rhythmic structure of a verse

Foot The basic unit in a description of the rhythm of a poem and can consist of many words and/or syllables

Iamb  Short/ unstressed syllable followed by a long/stressed syllable

Trochee Long/stressed syllable followed by a short/unstressed syllable, creating a strong rhythm

Dactyl  Long/stressed syllable followed by two short/unstressed syllables, creating a waltz like rhythm

Anapaest  Two short/unstressed syllables followed by a long unstressed syllable, allowing a rolling and often, complex rhythm

Antithesis The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, usually in a balanced way

Satire  Writing that contains an element of criticism in the form of irony, parody or exaggeration, sometimes using humour for effect

Free verse  Avoiding regular patterns of rhythm and rhyme, sounding more like natural speech

Mimesis  When the writer shows the reader or enacts what is happening, rather than telling

Diegesis  When the writer tells or recounts a narrative for the reader

Euphemism  A word or expression used in place of something that might be embarrassing or unpleasant

Allusion  Making a conscious reference to another work through direct quotation or obvious borrowing

Pararhyme also known as partial or imperfect rhyme describes a near rhyme in which the consonants in two words are the same, but the vowels are different. It is distinguished from half rhyme in that all the consonants should match rather than just the final ones.

Assonance  The repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds in words which follow one another

Enjambment

Pathetic fallacy  The attribution of human feelings and emotions to inanimate objects/ forces; particularly natural ones like the weather

Oxymoron  A phrase combining two terms that seem to be opposite

Symbolism  Stressing the priority of suggestion and evocation over direct description and explicit analogy

Rhetorical question  The use of interrogative to draw the reader into an argument or explore an aspect of thought

Sense impression  Imagery using sight, touch, taste, sound or smell to convey atmosphere

Internal rhyme  Using rhyme inside lines rather than at the end

Extended metaphor A comparison between two differing things where the ideas linking them are explored over several lines