GLOSSARY OF POETIC TERMS

ABCEDARIAN POEM (ay-bee-see-DARE-ee-un)

A poem having verses beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet.
(Compare Acrostic Poem, Serpentine Verses)

AB OVO (ab OH-voh)

See under In Medias Res

ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE (a-ka-day-MEE frwah-SEHZ)

See under Poet Laureate

ACATALECTIC

A verse having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final foot.
(Compare Catalectic, Hypercatalectic)

ACCENT

The rhythmically significant stress in the articulation of words, giving some syllables more relative prominance than others. In words of two or more syllables, one syllable is almost invariably stressed more strongly than the other syllables. In words of one syllable, the degree of stress normally depends on their grammatical function; nouns, verbs, and adjectives are usually given more stress than articles or prepositions. The words in a line of poetry are usually arranged so the accents occur at regular intervals, with the meter defined by the placement of the accents within the foot. Accent should not be construed as emphasis.

Sidelight: Two degrees of accent are natural to many multisyllabic English words, designated as primary and secondary.

Sidelight: When a syllable is accented, it tends to be raised in pitch and lengthened. Any or a combination of stress/pitch/length can be a metrical accent.

Sidelight: In English, when the full accent falls on a vowel, as in PO-tion, that vowel is called a long vowel; when it falls on an articulation or consonant, as in POR-tion, the preceding vowel is a short vowel. In the classical Greek and Latin quantitive verse, however, long and short vowels referred to duration, i.e., how long they were held in utterance.

(See also Cadence, Ictus, Modulation, Rhythm, Sprung Rhythm, Wrenched Accent)
(Compare Caesura)

ACCENTUAL VERSE

Verse in which the metrical system is based on the count or pattern of accented syllables, which establish the rhythm. The accents must be normal speech stresses rather than those suggested by the metrical pattern. The total number of syllables may vary.

Sidelight: Most modern English poetry is a combination of accentual and syllabic verse.

(Contrast Quantitive Verse)

ACEPHALY (ay-SEF-uh-lee)

The omission of a syllable at the beginning of a line of verse. Such a line is described as acephalous.
(Compare Catalectic)
(Contrast Anacrusis)

ACROSTIC POEM

A poem in which certain letters of the lines, usually the first letters, form a word or message relating to the subject. Of ancient origin, examples of acrostic poems date back as far as the fourth century.

Sidelight: Strictly speaking, an acrostic uses the initial letters of the lines to form the word or message, as in the Argument to Jonson's Volpone. If the medial letters are used it is a mesostich; if the final letters, a telestich. The term acrostic, however, is commonly used for all three. When both the initial and final letters are used it is called a double acrostic.

(Compare Abcedarian Poem, Serpentine Verses)

ADONIC

A verse consisting of a dactyl followed by a spondee or trochee. It is believed to be so named because of its use in songs during the Adonia, an ancient festival in honor of Adonis.

Sidelight: The festival of Adonia was celebrated by women, who spent two days alternating between lamentation and feasting.

(See also Sapphic Verse)

ADYNATON (uh-DYE-nuh-tahn)

A type of hyperbole in which the exaggeration is magnified so greatly that it refers to an impossibility, as "I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles."

AEOLIC ODE

See Horatian Ode

AFFLATUS (uh-FLAY-tus)

A creative inspiration, as that of a poet; a divine imparting of knowledge, thus it is often called divine afflatus.
(See also Helicon, Muse, Numen)

ALBA

See Aubade

ALCAIC VERSE

A Greek lyrical meter, said to be invented by Alcaeus, a lyric poet from about 600 B.C. Written in tetrameter, the greater Alcaic consists of a spondee or iamb followed by an iamb plus a long syllable and two dactyls. The lesser Alcaic, also in tetrameter, consists of two dactylic feet followed by two iambic feet.

Sidelight: Though seldom appearing in English poetry, Alcaic verse was used by Tennyson in his ode to Milton.

ALEXANDRINE

An iambic line of twelve syllables, or six feet, usually with a caesura after the sixth syllable. It is the standard line in French poetry, comparable to the iambic pentameter line in English poetry. It probably received its name from an old French romance, Alexandre le Grand, written about 1180, in which the measure was first used.

Sidelight: The last line of the Spenserian stanza is an Alexandrine.

(See Hexameter, Poulter's Measure)

ALLEGORY

A figurative illustration of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience in a narrative or description by the use of symbolic fictional figures and actions which resemble the subject's properties and circumstances.

Sidelight: Though similar to both a series of symbols and an extended metaphor, the meaning of an allegory is more direct and less subject to ambiguity than a symbol; it is distinguishable from an extended metaphor in that the literal equivalent of an allegory's figurative comparison is not usually expressed.

Sidelight: Probably the best-known allegory in English literature is Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

(Compare Aphorism, Apologue, Didactic Poetry, Epigram, Fable, Gnome, Proverb)
(See also Metaphor, Personification)

ALLITERATION

Also called head rhyme or initial rhyme, the repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) of stressed syllables in neighboring words or at short intervals within a line or passage, usually at word beginnings, as in "wild and woolly" or the line from Shelley's "The Cloud,"

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

Sidelight: Alliteration has a gratifying effect on the sound, gives a reinforcement to stresses, and can also serve as a subtle connection or emphasis of key words in the line, but alliterated words should not "call attention" to themselves by strained usage.

(See also Euphony, Modulation, Resonance)
(Compare Assonance, Consonance, Rhyme, Sigmatism)

ALLITERATIVE VERSE

Poetry in which alliteration is a formal structural element in place of rhyme; it was prevalent in a number of old literatures prior to the 14th century, including Anglo-Saxon. In alliterative verse, the first half-line is united with the second half by alliterating stressed syllables; in the first half-line generally two (but sometimes three) syllables alliterate, while in the second half usually only one. Sometimes one alliterating sound is carried through successive lines:

In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne,
I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were,
In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes,
Wente wide in this world wondres to here.

--The Vision of Piers Plowman, by William Langland, 1330?-1400?

Sidelight: To facilitate maintaining the alliterative pattern, poets made frequent use of a specialized vocabulary, consisting of many synonymous words seldom encountered outside of alliterative verse.

Sidelight: By the 14th century, rhyme and meter displaced alliteration as a formal element, although alliterative verse continued to be written into the 16th century and alliteration retains an important function as one of a poet's sound devices.

ALLUSION

An implied or indirect reference to something assumed to be known, such as an historical event or personage, a well-known quotation from literature, or a famous work of art, such as Keats' allusion to Titian's painting of Bacchus in "Ode to a Nightingale."

Sidelight: An allusion can be used by the poet as a means of imagery, since, like a symbol, it can suggest ideas by connotation; its effectiveness, of course, depends upon the reader's acquaintance with the reference alluded to.

ALTAR POEM

See Pattern Poetry

ALTERNATE RHYME

See Cross Rhyme

AMBIGUITY

Applied to words and expressions, the state of being doubtful or indistinct in meaning or capable of being understood in more than one way.
(See also Denotation, Paronomasia, Pun)
(Compare Connotation)

AMPHIBRACH (AM-fuh-brak)

A metrical foot consisting of a long or accented syllable between two short or unaccented syllables, as con-DI-tion or in-FECT-ed.

AMPHIGOURI

A verse composition which, while apparently coherent, contains no sense or meaning, as in Nephelidia, a poem written by A. C. Swinburne as a parody of his own alliterative-predominant style, which begins:

From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,

(See also Macaronic Verse, Nonsense Poetry)

AMPHIMACER (am-FIM-uh-suhr)

See Cretic

ANACHRONISM (uh-NAK-ruh-nizm)

The placement of an event, person, or thing out of its proper chronological relationship, sometimes unintentional, but often deliberate as an exercise of poetic license.
(Compare Hysteron Proteron, In Medias Res)

ANACLASIS

The substitution of different measures to break up the rhythm.

ANACREONTIC (uh-nah-kree-AHN-tik)

A poem in the style of the Greek poet, Anacreon, convivial in tone or theme, relating to the praise of love and wine, as in Abraham Cowley's Anacreontiques.

Sidelight: Francis Scott Key's 1814 poem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was set to the tune of a popular song of the day, "To Anacreon in Heaven," composed by John Stafford Smith. It was later to become the U.S. national anthem.

ANACRUSIS (an-a-KROO-sis)

One or more unaccented syllables at the beginning of a line of verse that are regarded as preliminary to and not part of the metrical pattern.
(See also Procephalic)
(Compare Feminine Ending, Hypercatalectic)
(Contrast Acephaly)

ANADIPLOSIS (an-uh-duh-PLOH-sus)

Also called epanadiplosis, the repetition of a prominent (usually the final) word of a phrase, clause, line, or stanza at the beginning of the next, often with extended or altered meaning, as in: "His hands were folded -- folded in prayer," or Keat's repetition of the word,"forlorn," linking the seventh and eighth stanzas of "Ode to a Nightingale."
(Compare Anaphora, Chain Rhyme, Echo, Epistrophe, Epizeuxis, Incremental Repetition, Parallelism, Polysyndeton, Refrain, Stornello Verses)

ANAGOGE or ANAGOGY (AN-uh-go-jee)

The spiritual or mystical interpretation of a word or passage beyond the literal, allegorical or moral sense.

ANALECTS or ANALECTA

Miscellaneous extracts collected from the works of authors.

ANALOGY

An agreement or similarity in some particulars between things otherwise different; sleep and death, for example, are analogous in that they both share a lack of animation and a recumbent posture.

Sidelight: Prevalent in literature, the use of an analogy carries the inference that if things agree in some respects, it's likely that they will agree in others.

(Compare Simile)

ANAPEST, ANAPESTIC

A metrical foot with two short or unaccented syllables followed by a long or accented syllable, as in inter-VENE or for a WHILE. William Cowper's "Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk" is a poem in which anapestic feet are predominately used, as in the opening line,
I am MON | -arch of ALL | I sur-VEY,

Sidelight: In English poetry, with the exception of limericks, anapestic verse is seldom used for whole poems, but can often be highly effective as a variation.

(See also Meter, Rhythm)

ANAPHORA (uh-NAF-or-uh)

Also called epanaphora, the repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases for rhetorical or poetic effect, as in Lincoln's "We cannot dedicate- we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow this ground" or from Fitzgerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám:

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!
(See also Epistrophe, Symploce)
(Compare Anadiplosis, Echo, Epizeuxis, Incremental Repetition, Parallelism, Polysyndeton, Refrain, Stornello Verses)

ANASTROPHE (uh-NAS-truh-fee)

A type of hyperbaton involving the inversion of the natural or usual syntactical order of a pair of words for rhetorical or poetic effect, as "hillocks green" for "green hillocks" or "high triumphs hold" for "hold high triumphs" in Milton's "L'Allegro" or from the same poem,

Meadows trim, with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;

(Compare Antistrophe, Chiasmus, Hypallage)

ANISOMETRIC

See under Stanza

ANTANACLASIS ( an-tuh-NAK-luh-sis)

A figure of speech in which the same word is repeated in a different sense within a clause or line, as "While we live, let us live."

Sidelight: Since the play on senses can be used to create homonymic puns, antanaclasis is related to paronomasia.

(See also Epanalepsis, Epizeuxis, Ploce, Polyptoton)

ANTHIMERIA (AN-thih-MEER-ee-uh)

See under Polyptoton

ANTHOLOGY

A collection of selected literary, artistic, or musical works or parts of works.
(See also Canon, Companion Poem, Cycle, Lyric Sequence, Sonnet Sequence.)

ANTIBACCHIUS (AN-ti-ba-KEE-us)

A metrical foot consisting of two long syllables followed by a short syllable.

ANTICLIMAX

The intentional use of elevated language to describe the trivial or commonplace, or a sudden transition from a significant thought to a trivial one in order to achieve a humorous or satiric effect, as in Pope's The Rape of the Lock:

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take -- and sometimes tea.

An anticlimax also occurs in a series in which the ideas or events ascend toward a climactic conclusion but terminate instead in a thought of lesser importance. Bathos is an anticlimax which is unintentional.

ANTIMETABOLE (an-tye-muh-TAB-uh-lee)

See Chiasmus

ANTIPHRASIS (an-TIF-ruh-sus)

The ironic or humorous use of words in a sense not in accord with their literal meaning, as in "a giant of three feet four inches."
(Compare Burlesque, Hudibrastic Verse, Parody, Satire)

ANTISPAST (AN-ti-spast)

A metrical foot consisting of two long syllables between two short syllables.

ANTISTROPHE (an-TIS-troh-fee)

The second division in the triadic structure of Pindaric verse, corresponding metrically to the strophe; also, the stanza following or alternating with and responding to the strophe in ancient lyric poetry; also, in rhetoric, the reversal of terms mutually dependent on each other, as from "the captain of the crew" to "the crew of the captain."
(See also Epode)
(Compare Anastrophe)

ANTITHESIS

A figure of speech in which a thought is balanced with a contrasting thought in parallel arrangements of words and phrases, such as "He promised wealth and provided poverty," or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . , " or from Pope's An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot:

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Also, an antithesis is the second of two contrasting or opposing constituents, following the thesis.

ANTONOMASIA (an-tuh-no-MAY-zhuh)

The use of a name, epithet or title in place of a proper name, as Bard for Shakespeare.
(Compare Cataphora, Metonymy)

ANTONYM

One of two or more words that have opposite meanings.
(Compare Homonym, Paronym, Synonym)

APHAERESIS or APHERESIS (uh-FEHR-uh-sus)

A type of elision in which a letter or syllable is omitted at the beginning of a word, as 'twas for it was.
(Compare Apocope, Syncope, Synaeresis, Synaloepha)
(See also Aphesis)

APHESIS (AFF-uh-sus)

A form of aphaeresis in which the syllable omitted is short and unaccented, as in round for around.

APHORISM

A brief statement containing an important truth or fundamental principle.
(Compare Allegory, Apologue, Didactic Poetry, Epigram, Fable, Gnome, Proverb)

APOCOPE (uh-PAH-kuh-pee)

A type of elision in which a letter or syllable is omitted at the end of a word, as in morn for morning.
(Compare Aphaeresis, Syncope, Synaeresis, Synaloepha)

APOLOGUE

An allegorical narrative, usually intended to convey a moral or a useful truth.
(Compare Allegory, Aphorism, Didactic Poetry, Epigram, Fable, Gnome, Proverb)

APOSIOPESIS (ap-uh-sy-uh-PEE-sis)

Stopping short of a complete thought for effect, thus calling attention to it, usually by a sudden breaking off, as in "He acted like--but I pretended not to notice," leaving the unsaid portion to the reader's imagination.
(See Ellipsis)

APOSTROPHE (uh-PAHS-truh-fee)

A figure of speech in which an address is made to an absent person or a personified thing rhetorically, as in William Cowper's "Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk,"

O solitude! Where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?

An apostrophe is also a punctuation mark used to indicate the omission of letter(s) in an elision.

Sidelight: When the poet addresses a muse or a god for inspiration, it is called an invocation.

(Compare Prosopopeia)

APPROXIMATE RHYME

See Near Rhyme

ARCADIA

A region or scene characterized by idyllic quiet and simplicity, often chosen as a setting for pastoral poetry, from Arcadia, a picturesque region in ancient Greece.
(See also Bucolic, Eclogue, Idyll, Madrigal)

ARCHAISM (AHR-kee-izm)

A word or expression no longer in general use, for example, thou mayst is an archaism meaning, "you may."

Sidelight: Archaisms are often deliberately used for effect, as in Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

ARGUMENT

The subject matter or central theme of a work of literature or a summary of the work, often used as a prologue to a drama, epic, or narrative, as in Jonson's Volpone.

ARSIS

The accented or longer part of a poetic foot; the point where an ictus is put.

Sidelight: In classical prosody the arsis was the unaccented or shorter part of a foot, but a misunderstanding which occurred in the definitions of poetic feet caused the meaning to become reversed.

(Contrast Thesis)

ASSONANCE

The relatively close juxtaposition of the same or similar vowel sounds, but with different end consonants in a line or passage, thus a vowel rhyme, as in the words, date and fade.

Sidelight: The effective use of internal assonantal sounds is displayed throughout Byron's "She Walks in Beauty."

(See also Euphony, Near Rhyme, Resonance, Sound Devices)
(Compare Alliteration, Consonance, Modulation, Rhyme)

ASYNDETON (uh-SIN-duh-tahn)

The omission of conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words and phrases, as in "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."
(Contrast Polysyndeton)

AUBADE (OH-bahd)

A song or poem with a motif of greeting the dawn, often involving the parting of lovers, or a call for a beloved to arise, as in Shakespeare's "Song" from Cymbeline.

Sidelight: The dawn song is also known as an alba (Provençal), aube (old French), and tagalied (German).

(Compare Serenade)

AUBE

See Aubade

AVANT-GARDE

The innovating artists or writers who promote the use of new or experimental concepts or techniques.
(See Imagism, Impressionism, Objectivism, Realism, Symbolism)

A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.

---Thomas Carlyle


Look, then, into thine heart, and write!

---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

BACCHIUS ( ba-KEE-us)

In ancient poetry, a metrical foot consisting of a short syllable followed by two long syllables.

BALLAD

A short narrative poem with stanzas of two or four lines and usually a refrain. The story of a ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter but most frequently deals with folk-lore or popular legends. They are written in straight-forward verse, seldom with detail, but always with graphic simplicity and force. Most ballads are suitable for singing and, while sometimes varied in practice, are generally written in ballad meter, i.e., alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with the last words of the second and fourth lines rhyming.

Sidelight: Many old-time ballads were written and performed by minstrels attached to noblemen's courts. Folk ballads are of unknown origin and are usually lacking in artistic finish. Meant to be sung, but often studied as poetry, the texts are independent of the melodies, which are often used for a number of different ballads. Because they are handed down by oral tradition, folk ballads are subject to variations and continual change. Literary ballads combining the natures of epic and lyric poetry, as Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci," or Scott's "Jock o' Hazeldean," are written by known authors, often in the style and form of the folk ballad.

(See also Broadside Ballad, Lay, Tragedy)
(Compare Chanson de Geste, Common Measure, Epopee, Epos, Heroic Quatrain)

BALLADE (ba-LAHD)

Frequently represented in French poetry, a fixed form consisting of three seven or eight-line stanzas using no more than three recurrent rhymes with an identical refrain after each stanza and a closing envoi repeating the rhymes of the last four lines of the stanza. A variation containing six stanzas is called a double ballade.

Sidelight: The ballade was prominent in French literature from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century and was favored by many poets, including Francois Villon, for example, in his "Des Dames du Temps Jadis." In the nineteenth century it was popular with poets like Verlaine and Baudelaire. In English literature, Chaucer wrote ballades and some late-nineteenth century English poets also used the form.

(Compare Chant Royal)

BALLAD METER

See Ballad

BARD

An ancient composer, singer or declaimer of epic verse, celebrating the deeds of gods and heroes.

Sidelight: Today the term is popularly applied to poets of significant repute as a title of honor, with William Shakespeare being known as "The Bard of Avon" and Robert Burns as "The Bard of Ayrshire."

(See also Metrist, Poet, Sonneteer, Versifier, Wordsmith)
(Compare Minstrel, Troubadour)

BAROQUE (buh-ROHK)

An elaborate, extravagantly complex, sometimes grotesque, style of artistic expression prevalent in the late sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries. The baroque influence on poetry was expressed by Euphuism in England, Marinism in Italy, and Gongorism in Spain.

BATHOS

An unintentional shift from the sublime to the ridiculous which can result from the use of overly elevated language to describe trivial subject matter, or from an exaggerated attempt at pathos which misfires to the point of being ludicrous. Bathos can be viewed as an unintentional anticlimax.

BLANK VERSE

Poetry written without rhymes, but which retains a set metrical pattern, usually iambic pentameter (or five iambic feet per line) in English verse. Since it is a very flexible form, the writer not being hampered in the expression of thought or syntactic structure by the need to rhyme, it is used extensively in narrative and dramatic poetry. In lyric poetry, blank verse is adaptable to lengthy descriptive and meditative poems. An example of blank verse is found in the well-known lines from Act IV, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

The qua | lity | of mer | cy is | not strain'd,
It drop | peth as | the gen | tle rain | from heaven
Upon | the place | beneath; | it is | twice blessed:
It bles | seth him | that gives | and him | that takes;

Sidelight: Blank verse and free verse are often misunderstood or confused. A good way to remember the difference is to think of the word blank as meaning that the ends of the lines where rhymes would normally appear are "blank," i.e., devoid of rhyme; the free in free verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of traditional versification.

(See also Verse Paragraph)

BOUTS-RIMES (boo-REEM)

An 18th century parlor game in which a list of rhyming words was drawn up and handed to the players, who had to make a poem from the list keeping the rhymes in their original order.
(See also Crambo)

BRETON LAY

See Lay

BROADSIDE BALLAD

A ballad written in doggerel, printed on a single sheet of paper and sold for a penny or two on English street corners in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The name of the tune to which they were to be sung was indicated on the sheet. The subject matter of broadside ballads covered a wide range of current, historical or simply curious events and also extended to moral exhortations and religious propaganda.

Sidelight: The rogue, Autolycus, in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, is a peddler whose wares include broadside ballads.

BROKEN RHYME

Also called split rhyme, a rhyme produced by dividing a word at the line break to make a rhyme with the end word of another line. In Hopkins' "The Windhover," for example, he divided kingdom at the end of the first line to rhyme with the word wing ending the fourth line.

BUCOLIC

Derived from the Greek word for herdsman, an ancient term for a poem dealing with a pastoral subject.
(See also Arcadia, Eclogue, Idyll, Madrigal)

BURDEN

The central topic or principle idea, often repeated in a refrain.
(See also Motif, Theme)

BURLESQUE

A work which is intended to ridicule by the use of grotesque exaggeration or by the treatment of a trifling subject with the gravity due a matter of great importance.
(See also Hudibrastic Verse, Lampoon, Mock Epic, Parody, Pasquinade, Satire)
(Compare Antiphrasis, Irony)

'T is the heart's current lends the cup its glow,
Whate'er the fountain whence the draught may flow.

---Oliver Wendell Holmes


Great thoughts come from the heart.

---Marquis of Vauvenargues

CACOPHONY (cack-AH-fuh-nee or cack-AW-fuh-nee)

Discordant sounds in the jarring juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables, sometimes inadvertent, but often deliberately used in poetry for effect, as in the lines from Whitman's "The Dalliance of Eagles,"

      The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
      Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
      In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,

Sidelight: Sound devices are important to poetic effects; to create sounds appropriate to the content, the poet may sometimes prefer to achieve a cacophonous effect instead of the more commonly sought-for euphony. The use of words with the consonants b, k and p, for example, produce harsher sounds than the soft f and v or the liquid l, m and n.

(See also Dissonance)
(Contrast Euphony)

CADENCE

The progressive rhythmical pattern in lines of verse; also, the natural tone or modulation of the voice determined by the alternation of accented or unaccented syllables.

Sidelight: Cadence differs from meter in that it is not necessarily regular, but rather a more flexible concept of rhythm such as is characteristic of free verse and prose poetry.

(See also Accent, Ictus, Sprung Rhythm, Stress)
(Compare Caesura)

CAESURA (siz-YUR-uh)

A rhythmic break or pause in the flow of sound which is commonly introduced in about the middle of a line of verse, but may be varied for different effects. Usually placed between syllables rhythmically connected in order to aid the recital as well as to convey the meaning more clearly, it is a pause dictated by the sense of the content or by natural speech patterns, rather than by metrics. It may coincide with conventional punctuation marks, but not necessarily. A caesura within a line is indicated in scanning by the symbol (||), as in the first line of Emily Dickinson's, "I'm Nobody! Who Are You?"

I'm no | body! || Who are | you?

Sidelight: As a grammatical, rhythmic, and dramatic device, as well as an effective means of avoiding monotony, the caesura is a powerful weapon in the skilled poet's arsenal.

Sidelight: Since caesura and pause are often used interchangeably, it is better to use metrical pause for the type of "rest" which compensates for the omission of a syllable.

Sidelight: A caesura occurring at the end of a line is not marked in the scanning process.

Sidelight: The classical caesura was a break caused by the ending of a word within a foot.

(See Diaeresis)
(See also Alexandrine, Hemistich)
(Compare Accent, Cadence, Rhythm)

CANON

In a literary sense, the authoritative works of a particular writer; also, an accepted list of works perceived to represent a cultural, ideological, historical, or biblical grouping.

Sidelight: Other literary groupings or collections include sonnet sequences, lyric sequences, cycles, companion poems, and anthologies.

CANTO

A major division of a long or extended poem. A canto of a poem corresponds to a chapter of a novel.
(Compare Stanza)

CANZONE (kan-ZO-nee)

A medieval Italian or Provençal lyric poem of varying stanzaic form, usually with a concluding short stanza or envoi.

Sidelight: Milton's pastoral elegy, Lycidas, is an example in English poetry of a canzone-like structure.

(Compare Ghazal, Melic Verse, Ode, Romance, Society Verse)

CARMINA FIGURATA (KAHR-muh-nuh fig-yuh-RAY-tuh) or CARMEN FIGURATUM

See Pattern Poetry

CARPE DIEM (KAHR-peh DEE-em)

Latin for "seize the day," a common motif in lyric verse throughout the history of poetry, with the emphasis on making the most of current pleasures because life is short and time is flying, as in Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins" or Edward Fitzgerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

CATACHRESIS (kata-KREE-sis)

Misuse or abuse of words; the use of the wrong word for the context, as atone for repent, ingenuous for ingenious, or a forced trope in which a word is used too far removed from its true meaning, as "loud aroma" or "velvet beautiful to the touch."
(See also Enallage, Malapropism, Mixed Metaphor, Oxymoron, Paradox, Solecism, Synesthesia)

CATALECTIC, CATALEXIS

Metrically incomplete; the dropping of one or two unaccented syllables from the end of a line, thus ending with an incomplete foot.

Sidelight: In versification, poets sometimes use catalexis in lines of trochaic and dactylic verse to achieve a final accented syllable for a rhyme, as did William Blake in "Tyger! Tyger!"

(Compare Acatalectic, Acephaly, Hypercatalectic)

CATALOG VERSE

A poem comprised of a list of persons, places, things, or abstract ideas which share a common denominator. An ancient form, it was originally a type of didactic poetry.

CATAPHORA

The use of a grammatical substitute (like a pronoun) which has the same reference as the next word or phrase, as in, "Before him John saw a sea of smiling faces."
(Compare Antonomasia, Metonymy)

CAUDATE RHYME

See Tail Rhyme

CENTO

Poetry made up of lines borrowed from a combination of established authors, usually resulting in a change in meaning and a humorous effect.
(Compare Parody, Pastiche)

CHAIN RHYME

Also called interlocking rhyme, a rhyme scheme in which a rhyme in a line of one stanza is used as a link to a rhyme in the next stanza, as in the aba bcb cdc, etc. of terza rima or the aaab cccb of "La Tour Eiffel."

Sidelight: Another type of chain rhyme, which is usually referred as rime enchainée, links consecutive lines, with the last word of one line rhyming with the first word of the following line.

(Compare Anadiplosis, Envelope Rhyme)

CHAIN VERSE

Similar to chain rhyme, but links words, phrases, or lines (instead of rhyme) by repeating them in succeeding stanzas, as in the pantoum, but there are many variations.
(Compare Envelope, Rondeau)

CHANSON DE GESTE (shan-SAWN duh ZHEST))

Literally, a song of heroic deeds, it refers to a class of Old French epic poems of the Middle Ages, such as the Chanson de Roland, believed to have been written by the Norman poet, Turold.
(See Jongleur, Trouvere)
(See also Epic, Epopee, Epos, Heroic Quatrain)
(Compare Ballad, Narrative, Tragedy)

CHANT ROYAL

An elaborate form of ballade in old French poetry, consisting of five stanzas of eleven lines, an envoi of eight lines, and five rhymes. The rhyme scheme is usually ababccddede.

CHAPBOOK

A small book or pamphlet containing ballads, poems, popular tales or tracts, etc.

CHAUCERIAN STANZA

See Rhyme Royal

CHIASMUS (kye-AZ-mus)

An inverted parallelism; the reversal of the order of corresponding words or phrases (with or without exact repetition) in successive clauses which are usually parallel in syntax, as in Pope's "A fop their passion, but their prize a sot," or Goldsmith's "to stop too fearful, and too faint to go."

Sidelight: While the term, chiasmus, is usually used in reference to syntax and word order, it also includes the repetition in reverse of any element of a poem, including sound patterns.

Sidelight: An antimetabole (an-tye-muh-TAB-uh-lee) is a type of chiasmus in which the words reversed involve a repetition of the same words, as in "do not live to eat, but eat to live," or Shakespeare's "Remember March, the ides of March remember." The distinction is not generally observed, however.

(See also Anastrophe, Hypallage)
(Compare Envelope, Palindrome)

CHOREE (koh-REE)

A rare form of trochee, also written as choreus.

CHORIAMB

In ancient poetry, a metrical foot consisting of four syllables, the first two forming a trochee and the second two an iambus, as in BOT-tom- | less PIT or RO-ses | are RED.

CHORIC ODE

See Pindaric Verse

CINQUAIN (sing-KANE)

A five-line stanza of syllabic verse, the successive lines containing two, four, six, eight and two syllables. The cinquain, based on the Japanese haiku, was an innovation of the American poet, Adelaide Crapsey.
(See also Quintet)

CLASSICISM

The adherence to traditional standards that are universally valid and enduring.
(Compare Idealism, Imagism, Impressionism, Metaphysical, Objectivism, Realism, Romanticism, Symbolism)

CLERIHEW (KLEHR-ih-hyew)

A comic light verse, two couplets in length, rhyming aabb, usually dealing with a person mentioned in the initial rhyme. It was named for its originator, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, an English writer, who wrote the following example at age sixteen:

Sir Humphrey Davy
Detested gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

CLIMAX

Rhetorically, a series of words, phrases, or sentences arranged in a continuously ascending order of intensity. If the ascending order is not maintained, an anticlimax or bathos results.

Sidelight: The term is usually applied to the point of supreme interest in a series of thoughts or events, often the turning point of a play or narrative.

CLOSED COUPLET

A couplet in which the sense and syntax is self-contained within its two lines, as opposed to an open couplet.
(See also Distich, Heroic Couplet)

CLOSE RHYME

A rhyme of two contiguous or close words, such as in the idiomatic expressions, "true blue" or "fair and square."

Sidelight: Close rhymes are a distinguishing characteristic of echo verse.

(Compare Ricochet Words)

CLOSET DRAMA

A literary work written in the form of a drama, but intended by the author only for reading, not for performance in the theater.

CLOSURE

The effect of finality, balance, and completeness which leaves the reader with a sense of fulfilled expectations. Though the term is sometimes employed to describe the effects of individual repetitive elements, such as rhyme, metrical patterns, parallelism, refrains, and stanzas, its most significant application is in reference to the concluding portion of the entire poem.

COMMON MEASURE

A meter consisting chiefly of seven iambic feet arranged in rhymed pairs, thus a line with four accents followed by a line with three accents, usually in a four-line stanza. It is also called common meter.

Sidelight: A meter of four-line stanzas of tetrameter verse is called a long meter (L.M.). A meter of four-line stanzas in which the first, second and fourth are trimeter and the third tetrameter is called a short meter (S.M.). Eight-line stanzas of which the first four are tetrameter and the last four trimeter is called hallelujah meter (H.M.).

Sidelight: While essentially the same as ballad meter, common measure is more regularly iambic.

COMPANION POEM

A poem that is associated with another, which it complements.
(See also Anthology, Canon, Cycle, Lyric Sequence, Sonnet Sequence.)

CONCEIT

An elaborate metaphor, often strained or far-fetched, in which the subject is compared with a simpler analogue usually chosen from nature or a familiar context. An excellent example of a conceit is Sir Thomas Wyatt's "My Galley," an adaptation of Petrarch's Sonnet 159.
(See also Euphuism, Gongorism, Marinism, Melic Verse, Metaphysical)

CONCRETE POETRY

Poetry which forms a structurally original visual shape, preferably abstract, through the use of reduced language, fragmented letters, symbols and other typographical variations to create an extreme graphic impact on the reader's attention. The essence of concrete poetry lies in its appearance on the page rather than in the written text; it is intended to be perceived as a visual whole and often cannot be effective when read aloud.
(Compare Pattern Poetry, Visual Poetry)

CONNOTATION

The suggestion of a meaning by a word beyond what it explicitly denotes or describes. The word, home, for example, means the place where one lives, but by connotation, also suggests security, family, love and comfort.

Sidelight: Sometimes one of the connotations of a word gains enough widespread acceptance to become a denotation.

(See also Allusion, Symbol)

CONSONANCE

A pleasing combination of sounds; sounds in agreement with tone. Also, the close repetition of the same end consonants of stressed syllables with differing vowel sounds, such as boat and night, or the words drunk and milk in the final line of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

Sidelight: Consonance most often occurs within a line. When used at line ends in place of rhyme, as in the words, cool and soul, in the third stanza of Emily Dickinson's "He Fumbles at your Spirit," it is sometimes referred to as consonantal rhyme to differentiate it from perfect rhyme and other types of near rhyme.

(See also Euphony, Modulation, Resonance, Sound Devices)
(Compare Alliteration, Assonance, Rhyme)

CONTENT

The substance of a poem; the impressions, facts and ideas it contains--the "what-is-being-said."
(Compare Diction, Form, Motif, Persona, Style, Texture, Tone)

CONTINUOUS FORM

See Stanza

CONVENTIONS

In a literary sense, established "codes" of basic principles and procedures for types of works that are recurrent in literature. The prevailing conventions of their time strongly influence writers to select content, forms, style, diction, etc., which is acceptable to the cultural expectations of the public.

Sidelight: A knowledge of conventions, particularly from an historical aspect, aids the reader in the understanding, interpretation, and appreciation of literary works, particularly poems following the classical pastoral and epic conventions.

Sidelight: Conventions can change over time. Their very existence fosters the emergence of originality and serves as a comparative measure and contrast to new concepts.

COUPLET

Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal length and rhythmic correspondence, with end-words that rhyme. The couplet, for practical purposes, is the shortest stanza form, but is frequently joined with other couplets to form a poem with no stanzaic divisions, as in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess."

Sidelight: If the couplet is written in iambic pentameter, it is called an heroic couplet.

(See also Closed Couplet. Open Couplet, Distich, Elegiac)

COURTLY LOVE

A late medeival idealized convention establishing a code for the conduct of amorous affairs of ladies and their lovers. Expressed and spread by the minnesingers and troubadours, it became associated with the literary concept of love until the 19th century.

CRAMBO

A game in which one player gives a word or line of verse to be matched in rhyme by the other players.
(See also Bouts-Rimes)

CRETIC

Used in ancient poetry, a metrical foot consisting of a short syllable between two long syllables, as in THIR-ty-NINE.

Sidelight: Another name for the cretic foot is amphimacer.

CRITICASTER

An inferior or petty critic.

CROSS RHYME

A rhyme scheme of abab, also called alternate rhyme. The term derives from long-line verse such as hexameter in which two lines have caesural words rhymed together and end words rhymed together, as in Swinburne's

Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.

If the two long lines were to be broken into four short lines, cross rhyming would be apparent.
(Compare Envelope Rhyme)

CYCLE

The aggregate of accumulated literature, plays or musical works treating the same theme. In poetry, the term is typically applied to epic or narrative poems about a mythical or heroic event or character, such as the Siege of Troy or the Nibelungs of medieval times.

Sidelight: After the death of Homer, a certain group of epic poets, between 800 and 550 B.C., wrote continuations and additions on the subject of the Trojan War; chief among them were Agias, Arctinos, Eugamon, Lesches and Strasinos. Since their writing was confined to that single subject, they were referred to as cyclic poets.

(See also Anthology, Canon, Companion Poem, Lyric Sequence, Sonnet Sequence.)

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things
ought himself to be a true poem.

---John Milton


For a good poet's made as well as born.

---Ben Jonson

DACTYL, DACTYLIC

A metrical foot of three syllables, the first of which is long or accented and the next two short or unaccented, as in MER-rily or LOV-er boy, or from Byron's "The Bride of Abydos,"

KNOW ye the | LAND where the | CY-press and | MYR-tle

Sidelight: Except for their use in humorous light verse, dactylic lines are now infrequent in English poetry.

(See also Double Dactyl, Meter, Rhythm)

DADAISM

A short-lived WWI European movement in arts and literature based on deliberate irrationality and the negation of traditional artistic values.
(See Poems of Chance)

DECAMETER (dek-AM-uh-tur)

A line of verse consisting of ten metrical feet.

DECASYLLABLE

A metrical line of ten syllables or a poem composed of ten-syllable lines.
(See also Dodecasyllable, Hendecasyllable, Octosyllable)

DENOTATION

The literal dictionary meaning(s) of a word as distinct from an associated idea or connotation.

Sidelight: Many words have more than one denotation, such as the multiple meanings of fair or spring. In ordinary language, we strive for a single precise meaning of words to avoid ambiguity, but poets often take advantage of words with more than one meaning to suggest more than one idea with the same word. A pun also utilizes multiple meanings as a play on words.

DIACOPE (di-ACK-o-pee)

See Epizeuxis

DIAERESIS or DIERESIS (dy-EHR-uh-sus)

The pronunciation of two adjacent vowels as separate sounds rather than as a dipthong, as in coordinate; also, the mark indicating the separate pronunciation, as in naïve.

Sidelight: In classical prosody, the diaeresis was a break or pause in a line of verse occurring when the end of a foot coincides with the end of a word.

(Compare Caesura)

DIBRACH (DYE-brak)

See Pyrrhic

DICTION

The choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language in a literary work; the manner or mode of verbal expression, particularly with regard to clarity and accuracy.

Sidelight: Poetic diction refers to words, phrasing, and figures not usually used in ordinary speech and often utilizes archaisms, neologisms, epithets, kennings, periphrases, connotations, and hyperbaton.

(Compare Content, Form, Motif, Persona, Style, Texture, Tone)

DIDACTIC POETRY

Poetry which is clearly intended for the purpose of instruction -- to impart theoretical, moral, or practical knowledge, or to explain the principles of some art or science, as Virgil's Georgics, or Pope's An Essay on Criticism.

Sidelight: Didactic poetry can assume the manner and attributes of imaginative works by incorporating the knowledge in a variety of forms, such as dramatic poetry, satire, and parody, among others. Allegories, aphorisms, apologues, fables, gnomes, and proverbs are so closely related to didactic poetry that they may be considered specific types of that genre.

(See also Georgic)
(Compare Catalog Verse, Epigram, )

DIIAMB or DIAMB (dye-EYE-am, DYE-am)

In ancient poetry, a metrical foot consisting of four syllables, with the first and third short and the second and fourth long, i.e., two iambs considered as a single foot.

DIMETER (DYE-muh-tur)

A line of verse consisting of two metrical feet, or of two dipodies.
(See Meter)

DIPODY, DIPODIC VERSE (DIP-uh-dee, dih-PAH-dik)

A double foot; a unit of two feet.

Sidelight: Sometimes heavy and light stresses alternate in the accented syllables of verse. When such alternations are frequent enough to establish a discernable pattern, the meter is scanned in units of two feet instead of one and termed dipodic verse.

DIRGE

A poem of grief or lamentation, especially one intended to accompany funeral or memorial rites.
(See also Elegy, Epitaph, Monody)

DISPONDEE (dye-SPAHN-dee)

In ancient poetry, a metrical foot consisting of four long syllables, equivalent to a double spondee.

DISSONANCE

A mingling or union of harsh, inharmonious sounds which are grating to the ear.
(See also Cacophony)
(Contrast Euphony)

DISTICH (DIS-tik)

A strophic unit of two lines; a pair of poetic lines or verses which together comprise a complete sense.

Sidelight: If the end words of a distich rhyme, it is called a couplet.

(See also Closed Couplet, Open Couplet, Heroic Couplet)
(Compare Monostich, Hemistich)

DISYLLABLE

A word of two syllables.
(See also Monosyllable, Polysyllable, Trisyllable)

DISYLLABIC RHYME

A rhyme in which two final syllables of words have the same sound, as in fender and bender or beguile and revile.

Sidelight: In the above examples of disyllabic rhymes, fender and bender are also a feminine rhyme, while beguile and revile are also a masculine rhyme.

(See also Mosaic Rhyme, Triple Rhyme)

DITHYRAMB (DITH-eye-ram)

In classic poetry, a type of melic verse associated with drunken revelry and performed to honor of Dionysus (Bacchus), the Greek god of wine and ecstacy. In modern usage, the term has come to mean a poem of impassioned frenzy and irregular character.

Sidelight: John Dryden's "Alexander's Feast" bears a resemblance to the dithyrambic form.

DITTY

A little poem meant to be sung.
(Compare Versicle)

DIVINE AFFLATUS

See Afflatus

DOCHMIUS (DAHK-mee-us) pl. DOCHMII (DAHK-mee-eye)

In ancient Greek prosody, a metrical foot consisting of five syllables, the first and fourth being short and the second, third and fifth long.

DODECASYLLABLE (DOH-decka-SIL-uh- bul)

A metrical line of twelve syllables.
(See also Decasyllable, Hendecasyllable, Octosyllable.)

DOGGEREL

Originally applied to poetry of loose irregular measure, it now is used to describe crudely written poetry which lacks artistry in form or meaning.
(See Broadside Ballad)
(See also Poetaster, Poeticule, Rhymester, Versifier)

DORIAN ODE

See Pindaric Verse

DOUBLE BALLADE

See Ballade

DOUBLE DACTYL

A word with two dactyls, such as COUNT-er-in-TEL-li-gence or PAR-lia-men-TAR-i-an; also, a modern form of light verse consisting of two quatrains with two dactyls per line. The first line is a hyphenated nonsense word, often "higgledy-piggledy;" the second line is a proper name, and the sixth line is a single double dactyl word. The fourth and eighth lines are truncated, lacking the final two unaccented syllables, and rhyme with each other, as in:

Bobbidy-dobbidy
Doctor D. Livingstone
Scottish explorer of
Note, but of whom

Chiefly we know by the
Anticlimactical
Greeting by Stanley, who
said, "I presume."

                         -- rgs

DOUBLE RHYME

See Disyllabic Rhyme

DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

A literary work which consists of a revealing one-way conversation by a character or persona, usually directed to a second person or to an imaginary audience. It typically involves a critical moment of a specific situation, with the speaker's words unintentionally providing a revelation of his character, as in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess."
(See also Interior Monologue, Soliloquy)

DRAMATIC POEM

A composition in verse portraying a story of life or character, usually involving conflict and emotions, in a plot evolving through action and dialogue.

Sidelight: Dramatic, lyric and narrative, are the main groups of poetry. It is possible, however, for a poem to combine the characteristics of all three,

DYSPHEMISM (DIS-fuh-mizm)

The substitution of a disagreeable, offensive or disparaging expression to replace an agreeable or inoffensive one.
(Contrast Euphemism)

Of all the arts in which the wise excel,
Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

---Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire


Though an angel should write, still 't is devils must print.

---Thomas Moore

ECHO

The repetition of particular sounds, syllables, words or lines in poetry.
(See also Anadiplosis, Anaphora, Epistrophe, Epizeuxis, Incremental Repetition, Parallelism, Polysyndeton, Refrain, Rhyme, Stornello Verses)

ECHO VERSE

A form of poem in which a word or two at the end of a line appears as an echo constituting the entire following line. The echo, either the same word or syllable or a homophone, often changes the meaning in a flippant, cynical or punning response, as in Jonathan Swift's lines from "A Gentle Echo on Woman,"

Shepherd.  What most moves women when we them address?
Echo.                                         A dress.
Shepherd.  Say, what can keep her chaste whom I adore?
Echo.                                         A door.
Shepherd.  If music softens rocks, love tunes my lyre.
Echo.                                         Liar.
Shepherd.  Then teach me, Echo, how shall I come by her?
Echo.                                         Buy her.

(See also Close Rhyme)

ECLOGUE (EHK-lawg or EHK-lahg)

A pastoral poem, usually containing dialogue between shepherds.
(See also Arcadia, Bucolic, Idyll, Madrigal)

EDDA

Either of two collections of mythological, heroic and aphoristic Icelandic poetry from the 12th and 13th centuries.

Sidelight: The first collection contains the mythology of the people; the second, selections from the poetry of the Skalds.

(See also Rune)

EIDILLION or EIDYLLION

See Idyll

EKPHRASIS or ECPHRASIS (EHK-fra-sis)

In modern usage, the vivid literary description of a specific work of art, such as a painting, sculpture, tapestry, church, and the like. Originally, the term more broadly applied to a description in words of any experience, person, or thing,

Sidelight: The general term for the effective quality of sense impressions or mental images and the resulting arousal of emotion is enargia (en-AR-jee-uh).

(See also Imagery, Mimesis)

ELEGIAC (el-uh-JY-uk)

A dactylic hexameter couplet, with the second line having only an unaccented syllable in the third and sixth feet; also, of or relating to the period in Greece when elegies written in such couplets flourished, about the seventh century B.C.; also, relating to an elegy.

ELEGIAC STANZA

See Heroic Quatrain

ELEGY

A poem of lament, usually formal and sustained, over the death of a particular person; also, a meditative poem in plaintive or sorrowful mood, such as, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," by Thomas Gray.

Sidelight: The pastoral elegy became conventional in the Renaissance and continued into the nineteenth century. Traditionally, pastoral elegies included an invocation, a lament in which all nature joined, praise, sympathy, and a closing consolation, as in John Milton's Lycidas.

(See also Dirge, Epitaph, Monody)

ELISION

The omission of a letter or syllable as a means of contraction, generally to achieve a uniform metrical pattern, but sometimes to smooth the pronunciation; most such omissions are marked with an apostrophe. Specific types of elision include aphaeresis, apocope, syncope, synaeresis and synaloepha, most of which can be found in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

Sidelight: The opposite of elision is hiatus, the slight break in articulation caused by the occurrence of contiguous vowels, either within a word as "naive" or in the final and beginning vowels of successive words, as "the umbrella."

ELLIPSIS (ih-LIP-suss, pl. ih-LIP-seez)

The omission of a word or words necessary to complete a grammatical construction, but which is easily understood by the reader, such as "the virtues I esteem" for "the virtues which I esteem." Also, the marks (. . .) or (--) denoting an omission or pause.

Sidelight: Other terms involving omissions in grammatical construction include: asyndeton, which omits conjunctions; zeugma and syllepsis, which use one word to serve for two; and aposiopesis, which omits a word or phrase at the end of a clause or sentence for effect.

EMBLEM POEMS

See under Pattern Poetry

EMPATHY

The feeling or capacity for awareness, understanding and sensitivity one experiences when hearing or reading of some event or activity of another, thus imagining the same sensation as that of those actually experiencing it.

EMPHASIS

A deliberate stress of articulation on a word or phrase so as to give an impression of particular significance to it by the more marked pronunciation. In writing, emphasis is indicated by the use of italics or underlining.
(Compare Accent)
(See also under Spondee)

ENALLAGE (en-AL-uh-jee)

The effective use of a grammatically incorrect part of speech in place of the correct form, e.g., present tense in place of past tense, plural for singular, etc,. as in Punch magazine's, "You pays your money, and you takes your choice."
(See also Catachresis, Malapropism, Mixed Metaphor, Oxymoron, Paradox, Solecism, Synesthesia)
(Compare Hypallage)

ENARGIA

See under Ekphrasis

ENCOMIUM (en-KOH-mee-um)

A speech or composition in high praise of a person, object or event.

Sidelight: Other terms for works involving praise and commendation include the panegyric, a more formal and elaborate type of encomium, and the eulogy, which applies to praise of the character and accomplishments of a person only; the epinicion is a celebration of victory in an ode, both the hymn and the paean embrace praise addressed to gods, while the epithalamium and prothalamium honor a bride and bridegroom.

END RHYME

A rhyme occurring in the terminating word or syllable of one line of poetry with that of another line, as opposed to internal rhyme.
(See also Feminine Rhyme, Masculine Rhyme, Perfect Rhyme)

END-STOPPED

Denoting a line of verse in which a logical or rhetorical pause occurs at the end of the line, usually marked with a period, comma, or semicolon.
(Contrast Enjambment, Open Couplet, Run-On Lines)

ENJAMBMENT

The continuation of the sense and therefore the grammatical construction beyond the end of a line of verse or the end of a couplet.

Sidelight: This run-on device, contrasted with end-stopped, can be very effective in creating a sense of forward motion, fine-tuning the rhythm, and reinforcing the mood, as well as a variation to avoid monotony, but should not be used as a mere mannerism.

(See also Open Couplet)

ENVELOPE

A poetic device in which a line, phrase, or stanza is repeated so as to enclose other material, as in Dryden's

 
      What passion cannot Music raise and quell!
              When Jubal struck the corded shell,
          His listening brethren stood around,
          And, wondering, on their faces fell
          To worship that celestial sound.
      Less than a god they thought there could not dwell
              Within the hollow of that shell
              That spoke so sweetly and so well.
      What passion cannot Music raise and quell!

Sidelight: The rhyme scheme abba in a quatrain is termed an envelope rhyme since the rhymes of the first and last lines enclose the other lines.

(Compare Chain Verse, Rondeau)

ENVOI or ENVOY

A short final stanza of a poem, especially a ballade or sestina, serving as a summary or dedication -- like an author's postscript, as in Villon's "Des Dames du Temps Jadis."

EPANADIPLOSIS ( ehp-an-uh-duh-PLOH-sus)

See Anadiplosis

EPANALEPSIS (ehp-uh-nuh-LEP-sis)

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated after intervening matter, as "Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more," from Milton's Lycidas.
(See also Antanaclasis, Epizeuxis, Ploce, Polyptoton)

EPANAPHORA (ehp-uh-NAF-or-uh)

See Anaphora

EPIC

An extended narrative poem, usually simple in construction, but grand in scope, exalted in style, and heroic in theme, often giving expression to the ideals of a nation or race.

Sidelight: Homer, the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, is sometimes referred to as the "Father of Epic Poetry." Based on the conventions he established, classical epics began with an argument and an invocation to a guiding spirit, then started the narrative in medias res. In modern use, the term, "epic," is generally applied to all lengthy works on matters of great importance.

(See also Chanson de Geste, Cycle, Epopee, Epos, Heroic Quatrain)
(Compare Ballad, Narrative, Tragedy)
(Contrast Mock-Epic)

EPIC SIMILE

See under Simile

EPIGRAM

A pithy, sometimes satiric couplet or quatrain which was popular in classic Latin literature and in European and English literature of the Renaissance and the neo-Classical era. Epigrams comprise a single thought or event and are often aphoristic with a witty or humorous turn of thought. Coleridge wrote the following definition:

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

(See also Monostich, Heroic Couplet)
(Compare Allegory, Apologue, Didactic Poetry, Fable, Gnome, Proverb)

EPIGRAPH

A quotation, or a sentence composed for the purpose, placed at the beginning of a literary work or one of its separate divisions, usually suggestive of the theme.

EPINICION (ehp-uh-NISS-ee-ahn) also EPINICIAN, EPINIKION

A song in celebration of triumph; an ode in praise of a victory in the Greek games or in war.
(See also Encomium, Pindaric Verse)

EPIPHORA (ehp-ih-FOH-ruh)

See Epistrophe

EPISTROPHE (ehp-ISS-truh-fee)

Also called epiphora, the repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases or verses, as in Lincoln's "of the people, by the people, for the people."
(See also Anaphora, Symploce)
(Compare Anadiplosis, Echo , Epizeuxis, Incremental Repetition, Parallelism, Polysyndeton, Refrain, Stornello Verses)

EPITAPH

A brief poem or statement in memory of someone who is deceased, used as -- or suitable for -- a tombstone inscription; a commemorative lamentation.
(See also Dirge, Elegy, Monody)

EPITHALAMIUM (eh-puh-thuh-LAH-mee-im) or EPITHALAMION

A nuptial song or poem in honor of the bride and bridegroom.

Sidelight: Spenser's Epithalamion is widely regarded as a treasure of English literature.

Sidelight: Sir John Suckling's "A Ballad upon a Wedding," is a parody of an epithalamium.

(Compare Prothalamium)
(See also Encomium, Fescennine Verses)

EPITHET

An adjective or adjectival phrase, usually attached to the name of a person or thing, such as "Richard the Lion-Hearted," Milton's "ivy-crowned Bacchus" in "L'Allegro," or Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn."

Sidelight: With epithets, poets can compress the imaginative power of many words into a single compound phrase.

Sidelight: An epithet may be either positive or negative in connotation or allusion and sometimes may be freshly coined, like a nonce word, for a particular circumstance or occasion.

(Compare Antonomasia. Kenning, Periphrasis)

EPITRITE (EP-ih-trite)

A metrical foot consisting of three long syllables and one short syllable, and denominated first, second, third or fourth according to the position of the short syllable.
(Contrast Paeon)

EPIZEUXIS (eh-puh-ZOOK-sis)

A rhetorical device consisting of the immediate repetition of a word or phrase for emphasis, as in Milton's,

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon.

Sidelight: The placement of a word before a repetition in an epizeuxis is called a diacope, as in Shakespeare's,

Words, words, more words, no matter from the heart.

(See also Antanaclasis, Epanalepsis, Ploce, Polyptoton)
(Compare Anadiplosis, Anaphora, Echo, Incremental Repetition, Parallelism, Polysyndeton, Refrain, Stornello Verses)

EPODE (EHP-ode)

A type of lyric poem in which a long verse is followed by a shorter one, or the third and last part of an ode; also, the third part of a triadic Greek poem or Pindaric verse following the strophe and the antistrophe.

EPOPEE (eh-puh-PEE) or EPOPOEIA (eh-puh-PEE-uh)

An epic poem, or the history, action or legend which is the subject of an epic poem.
(See also Chanson de Geste, Epos, Heroic Quatrain)
(Compare Ballad, Narrative, Tragedy)

EPOS (EH-pahs)

An epic poem; also a number of poems of an epic theme but which are not formally united.
(See also Chanson de Geste, Epopee, Heroic Quatrain)
(Compare Ballad, Narrative, Tragedy)

EPYLLION (eh-PILL-yuhn), pl. EPYLLIA

A brief narrative work in classic poetry written in dactylic hexameter. It commonly dealt with mythological themes, often with a romantic interest, and was characterized by vivid description, scholarly allusion , and an elevated tone.

EQUIVOKE or EQUIVOQUE

An ambiguous word or phrase capable more than one interpretation, thus susceptible to use for puns.

ETHOS (EE-thahs)

See Sidelight under Persona

EULOGY

A speech or writing in praise of the character or accomplishments of a person.
(See also Encomium)

EUPHEMISM (YOO-fuh-mizm)

The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression to replace one that might offend or suggest something unpleasant, for example, "he is at rest" is a euphemism for "he is dead."
(Contrast Dysphemism)

EUPHONY (YOO-fuh-nee)

Harmony or beauty of sound which provides a pleasing effect to the ear, usually sought-for in poetry for effect. It is achieved not only by the selection of individual word-sounds, but also by their relationship in the repetition, proximity, and flow of sound patterns.

Sidelight: Vowel sounds are generally more pleasing to the ear than the consonants, so a line with a higher ratio of vowel sounds will produce a more agreeable effect; also, the long vowels in words like moon and fate are more melodious than the short vowels in cat and bed.

(See also Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Modulation, Sound Devices)
(Compare Resonance)
(Contrast Cacophony, Dissonance)

EUPHUISM (YOO-fyuh-wizm)

An ornate Elizabethan style of writing marked by the excessive use of alliteration, antithesis and mythological similes. The term derives from the elaborate and affected style of John Lyly's 16th century romance, Euphues.
(See also Baroque, Conceit, Gongorism, Marinism, Melic Verse )

EXACT RHYME

See Perfect Rhyme

EXTENDED METAPHOR

A metaphor which is drawn-out beyond the usual word or phrase to extend throughout a stanza or an entire poem, usually by using multiple comparisons between the unlike objects or ideas.

Sidelight: Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" demonstrates the effectiveness of this device: metaphorically, he compares a sandbar in the Thames River over which ships cannot pass until high tide, with the natural time for completion of his own life's journey from birth to death.

(See also Conceit)

EYE RHYME

See Sight Rhyme

Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and
poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the
brain be silent for a time, let him read the "Faery Queen."

---James Russell Lowell


Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose, but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.

---Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire

FABLE

A poetic story that illustrates a moral or teaches a lesson, usually in which animals or inanimate objects are represented as characters.
(Compare Allegory, Aphorism, Apologue, Didactic Poetry, Epigram, Gnome, Proverb)

FABLIAU (FAB-lee-oh)

A ribald and often cynical tale in verse, especially popular in the Middle Ages. Boccaccio's Decameron, Balzac's Droll Stories and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales contain examples of fabliaux.
(See Jongleur, Trouvere)

FACETIAE (fuh-SEE-shee-uh)

Witty or humorous writings or remarks.

FATAL FLAW

See Hamartia

FEMININE ENDING

An extra unaccented syllable at the end of an iambic or anapestic line of poetry, often used in blank verse, for example:

To be | or not | to be, | that is | the ques | tion
(Compare Anacrusis)

FEMININE RHYME

A rhyme occurring on an unaccented final syllable, as in dining and shining or motion and ocean. Feminine rhymes are double or disyllabic rhymes and are common in the heroic couplet, as in the opening lines of Goldsmith's "Retaliation: A Poem,"

Of old, when Scarron his companions invited
Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united,

(Contrast Masculine Rhyme)

FESCENNINE VERSES (FEH-suh-neen)

Poetry of a personal nature, lacking moral or sexual restraints, commonly extemporized at rustic weddings in Fescennia, Rome and other ancient Italian cities.
(See also Epithalamium, Prothalamium)

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

The use of words, phrases, symbols, and ideas in such as way as to evoke mental images and sense impressions. Figurative language is often characterized by the use of figures of speech, elaborate expressions, sound devices, and syntactic departures from the usual order of literal language.

FIGURE OF SOUND

See Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Euphony, Resonance, Sound Devices

FIGURE OF SPEECH

A mode of expression in which words are used out of their literal meaning or out of their ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional intensity or to transfer the poet's sense impressions by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning familiar to the reader. Some important figures of speech are: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole and symbol.

Sidelight: Some rhetoricians have classified over 200 separate figures of speech, but many are so similar that differences of interpretation often make their classification an arbitrary judgement. How they are classified, or "labeled", however, is secondary to the importance of construing their effect correctly.

Sidelight: Figures of speech are also a means of concentration; they enable the poet to convey an image with the connotative power of a few words, where a great many would otherwise be required.

(See also Trope)

FIT or FYTTE

An archaic term for the division of a poem, i.e., a stanza or canto.

FIXED FORM

See Form

FOOT

A unit of rhythm or meter, the division in verse of a group of syllables, one of which is long or accented. For example, the line, "The boy | stood on | the burn | ing deck," has four iambic metrical feet. The fundamental components of the foot are the arsis and the thesis. The most common poetic feet used in English verse are the iamb, anapest, trochee, dactyl and spondee, while in classical verse there are 28 different feet.

The other metrical feet are the amphibrach, antibacchius, antispast, bacchius, choriamb, cretic, diiamb, dispondee, dochmius, molossus, proceleusmatic, pyrrhic and tribrach, plus two variations of the ionic, four variations of the epitrite, and four variations of the paeon. The structure of a poetic foot does not necessarily correspond to word divisions, but is determined in context by the feet which surround it.

Sidelight: A line of verse may or may not be written in identical feet; variations within a line are common. Consequently, the classification of verse as iambic, anapestic, trochaic, etc., is determined by the foot which is dominant in the line.

Sidelight: To help his young son remember them, Coleridge wrote the poem, "Metrical Feet."

(See Dipody)
(See also Scan, Scansion)

FORM

The arrangement, manner or method used to convey the content, such as free verse, ballad, haiku, etc. In other words, the "way-it-is-said."

Sidelight: Form provides a "pattern" for the poem, but is usually most effective when it is the least obvious.

Sidelight: The form of a poem which follows a set pattern of rhyme scheme, stanza form and refrain (if there is one), is called a fixed form, examples of which include: ballade, limerick, pantoum, rondeau, sestina, sonnet, triolet and villanelle.

(Compare Diction, Motif, Persona, Style, Texture, Tone)

FOUND POEM

A poem created from prose found in a non-poetic context, such as advertising copy, brochures, newspapers, product labels, etc. The lines are arbitrarily rearranged into a form patterned on the rhythm and appearance of poetry.

FOURTEENER

An iambic line of fourteen syllables, or seven feet, widely used in English poetry in the middle of the 16th Century.
(See Heptameter, Poulter's Measure, Septenarius)

FREE VERSE

A fluid form which conforms to no set rules of traditional versification. The free in free verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of meter and rhyme, but writers of free verse employ familiar poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, imagery, caesura, figures of speech etc., and their rhythmic effects are dependent on the syllabic cadences emerging from the context . The term is often used in its French language form, vers libre. Walt Whitman's "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame" is an example of a poem written in free verse.

Sidelight: Although as ancient as Anglo-Saxon verse, free verse was first employed "officially" by French poets of the Symbolistic movement and became the prevailing poetic form at the climax of Romanticism. In the 20th century it was the chosen medium of the Imagists and was widely adopted by American and English poets.

Sidelight: The one characteristic that distinguishes free verse from rhythmical prose is that free verse has line breaks which divide the content into uneven rhythmical units.

(See also Polyphonic Prose, Polyrhythmic Verse)

As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore,
Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace?

---John Milton


Will change the pebbles of our puddly thought
To orient pearls.

---Divine Weekes and Workes, Du Bartas

GALLIAMBUS

In classic poetry, a lyric meter consisting of four iambic dipodies, the last of which is catalectic, dropping the final accent, or a line of four lesser Ionic feet catalectic, varied by anaclasis.

GENRE (ZHAHN-ruh)

A category of artistic, musical or literary composition characterized by a particular form, style or content. Poetry, for example, is a literary genre.

Sidelight: The term, genre, is frequently used interchangeably with " "type" and "kind."

GEORGIC (JAWR-jik)

A poem dealing with a rural or agricultural topic, but differing from pastoral poetry in that the primary intention of a georgic is didactic. Virgil's Georgics exemplify the form.

Sidelight: The poet, James Thomson, was called the "English Virgil" after his writing of The Seasons, which is similar in content and form to Virgil's Georgics.

GHAZAL (ga-ZAL)

A monorhymed Middle Eastern lyric poem in which the first two lines rhyme with a corresponding rhyme in the second line of each succeeding couplet, thus a rhyme scheme of aa, ba, ca, etc.
(See also Canzone, Ode, Melic Verse, Romance, Society Verse)

GLEEMAN

An old English minstrel. Gleemen sometimes composed their own verse, but often recited poetry written by a scop.

GNOME

An aphorism, a short statement of proverbial truth. Composers of such verse are known as gnomic poets.
(Compare Allegory, Apologue, Didactic Poetry, Epigram, Fable, Proverb)

GOLIARDIC POETRY

Satiric verse which flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries, usually consisting of a stanza of four 13-syllable lines in feminine rhyme, sometimes with a concluding hexameter. The satire was characteristically a defiance of authority, most particularly directed against the Church.

GONGORISM (GAHN-guh-rizm)

Named for the 17th century Spanish poet, Luis de Gongora y Argote, a literary style characterized by stilted obscurity and the use of affected devices of embellishment.
(See also Baroque, Conceit, Euphuism, Marinism, Melic Verse)

GRAMMATICAL RHYME

See under Polyptoton

GRAVE (grayv or grahv)

In poetry, a mark ( ` ) indicating that the e in the English ending ed is to be pronounced for the sake of meter.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid
proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

---On Milton, Thomas B. Macauley


Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.

---Edward Estlin Cummings

HAIKU (HIGH-koo)

A Japanese form of poetry, also known as hokku. It consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables. The elusive flavor of the form, however, lies more in its touch and tone than in its syllabic structure. Deeply imbedded in Japanese culture and strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism, haiku are very brief descriptions of nature that convey some implicit insight or essence of a moment. Traditionally, they contain either a direct or oblique reference to a season:

The buds on the vine
explode in blossoms of pink--
an unseen dog barks.

                              -- rgs

Sidelight: After World War II, haiku attracted an increasing interest among American poets and is now written in many other languages as well, often with experimental changes in the form.

(See also Senryu, Tanka, Cinquain)

HALF RHYME

A near rhyme; also, an apocopated rhyme in which the rhyme occurs only on the first syllable of the rhyming word, as in blue and truly or sum and trumpet.

HAMARTIA (hah-mahr-TEE-uh)

In literature, the tragic hero's error of judgement or inherent defect of character, usually less literally translated as a "fatal flaw." This, combined with essential elements of chance and other external forces, brings about a catastrophe. Often the error or flaw results from nothing more than personal traits like probity, pride, and overconfidence, but can arise from any failure of the protagonist's action or knowledge ranging from a simple unwittingness to a moral deficiency.

Sidelight: The tragic hero is usually of high estate and neither entirely virtuous nor bad. Hamartia, rather than villainy, is the significant factor leading to his suffering. He evokes our pity because, not being an evil person, his misfortune is a greater tragedy than he deserves and is disproportionate to the "flaw." We are also moved to fear, as we recognize the possibilities of similar errors or defects in ourselves.

HEAD RHYME

See Alliteration

HELICON

A part of the Parnassus, a mountain range in Greece, which was the home of the Muses. The name is used as an allusion to poetic inspiration.
(See also Afflatus, Numen, Parnassian)

HEMISTICH (HEM-ih-stik)

The approximate half of a line of poetic verse, usually divided by a caesura. In dramatic poetry it is used whenever characters exchange short bursts of dialogue rapidly, heightening the effect of quarrelsome disagreement; in classical poetry such a series is called hemistichomythia. Other types of poetry may use an occasional hemistich to give the effect of emotionally disturbed thought or action.
(Compare Stich, Monostich, Distich, Stichomythia)

HENDECASYLLABLE (HEN-decka-SIL-uh-bul)

A metrical line of eleven syllables.
(See also Decasyllable, Dodecasyllable, Octosyllable)

HENDIADYS (hen-DYE-a-dis)

The use of a pair of nouns joined by and where one has the effect of a modifier, as nice and warm (nicely warm) or Tennyson's:

waving to him white hands and courtesy (courteous white hands)
(Compare Prolepsis, Syllepsis. Zeugma)

HEPTAMETER (hep-TAM-uh-tur)

A line of verse consisting of seven metrical feet. It is also called a septenarius, especially in Latin prosody.

Sidelight: A heptameter is called a fourteener when it is iambic.

(See Meter)
(See also Poulter's Measure)

HEROIC COUPLET

Two successive lines of rhymed poetry in iambic pentameter, so called for its use in the composition of epic poetry in the 17th and 18th centuries. In neo-classical usage the two lines were required to express a complete thought, thus a closed couplet, with a subordinate pause at the end of the first line. Heroic couplets, which are well-suited to antithesis and parallelism, are also often used for epigrams, such as Pope's:

        You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come.
        Knock as you please--there's nobody at home.

Sidelight: Poems written in heroic couplets, such as Pope's The Rape of the Lock, are especially subject to the danger of metrical monotony, which poets avoid by variations in their placement of caesuras.

(See also Couplet, Distich, Open Couplet)

HEROIC QUATRAIN or HEROIC VERSE

So named because it is the form in which epic poetry of heroic exploits is generally written, its rhyme scheme is abab, composed in ten-syllable iambic verse in English, hexameter in Greek and Latin, ottava rima in Italian.

Sidelight: The English form of the heroic quatrain is also called the elegiac stanza for its frequent use in elegiac verse, as in Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

(See also Chanson de Geste, Epopee, Epos, Quatrain, Rhyme Royal)
(Compare Ballad, Narrative, Tragedy)

HETEROMETRIC

See under Stanza

HETERONYM

See under Homonym

HEXAMETER (hex-AM-uh-tur)

A line of verse consisting of six metrical feet; the term, however, is usually used for dactylic hexameter, consisting of dactyls and spondees, the meter in which the Greek and Latin epics were written.

Sidelight: A hexameter is called an Alexandrine when it is iambic or trochaic.

(See Meter)
(See also Poulter's Measure)

HIATUS (hy-AY-tus)

See under Elision

HIGGLEDY-PIGGLEDY

See Double Dactyl

HOKKU (HAW-koo)

See Haiku

HOMERIC SIMILE

See under Simile

HOMOGRAPH

See under Homonym

HOMONYM

One of two or more words which are identical in pronunciation and spelling, but different in meaning, as the noun bear and the verb bear.

Sidelight: Although often called homonyms in popular usage (indeed, in some dictionaries as well), homophones are words which are identical in pronunciation but different in meaning or derivation or spelling, as rite, write, right, and wright, or rain and reign. Heteronyms are words which are identical in spelling but different in meaning and pronunciation, as sow, to scatter seed, and sow, a female hog. Homographs are words which are identical in spelling but different in meaning and derivation or pronunciation, as pine, to yearn for, and pine, a tree, or the bow of a ship and a bow and arrow.

(Compare Antonym, Paronym, Synonym)
(Contrast Sight Rhyme)

HOMOPHONE

See under Homonym

HORATIAN ODE

An ode relating to or resembling the works or style of the Roman poet, Horace, consisting of a series of uniform stanzas, complex in their metrical system and rhyme scheme. The Greek form is called an Aeolic ode. Horatian odes are characteristically less elaborate and more restrained than Pindaric odes.

Sidelight: John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" is an example of a Horation ode.

(See also Sapphic Verse)

HOVERING ACCENT

In scansion, a stress which is thought of as being equally distributed over two adjacent syllables, a concept proposed to cover an accent not in alignment with the expected metrical ictus, as in Pope's

That in | one speech | two Neg- | atives | affirme

(See also Spondee, Sprung Rhythm)

HUDIBRASTIC VERSE

A mock-heroic humorous poem written in octosyllabic couplets, after Hudibras, a satirical poem by Samuel Butler.
(See also Burlesque, Parody, Pasquinade, Satire)
(Compare Antiphrasis, Irony)

HYMN

A song or ode of praise, usually addressed to gods, but sometimes to abstractions such as Truth, Justice, or Fortune.
(See also Paean, Encomium)

HYPALLAGE (high-PAL-uh-jee)

A type of hyperbaton involving an interchange of elements in a phrase or sentence so that a displaced word is in a grammatical relationship with another that it does not logically qualify, as in:

With rainy marching in the painful field
             ---Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.iii

Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?
             --- Shakespeare, Othello, IV.ii

While the cock . . .
Stoutly struts his dames before;
             --- Milton, "L'Allegro"

(Compare Anastrophe, Chiasmus)

HYPERBATON (hi-PER-buh-tahn)

An inversion of the normal grammatical word order; it may range from a single word moved from its usual place to a pair of words inverted or to even more extremes of syntactic displacement. Specific types of hyperbaton are anastrophe, hypallage, and hysteron proteron.

Sidelight: The poetic use of hyperbaton is the principal difference in diction between poetry and prose. Poets utilize it to meet the needs of meter or rhyme, for emphasis or rhetorical effect, and to temper the flow of narrative.

HYPERBOLE (hi-PER-buh-lee)

A bold, deliberate overstatement, e.g., "I'd give my right arm for a piece of pizza." Not intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a statement.

Sidelight: A type of hyperbole in which the exaggeration magnified so greatly that it refers to an impossibility is called an adynaton.

(Contrast Litotes, Meiosis)

HYPERCATALECTIC

Having an additional syllable after the final complete foot in a line of verse. A verse marked by hypercatalexis is called hypermetrical.
(Compare Anacrusis)
(Contrast Acatalectic, Catalectic)

HYPERMETRICAL

A line which contains a redundant syllable or syllables at variance with the regular metrical pattern.
(See also Hypercatalectic)

HYSTERON PROTERON (HIS-tuh-rahn PRAH-tuh-rahn)

Related to the hyperbaton, a figure of speech in which the natural or logical order of events is reversed, as in "I die! I faint! I fail!" from Shelley's "The Indian Serenade."
(Compare Anachronism, In Medias Res)

Could mortal lip divine
The undeveloped freight
Of a delivered syllable,
'T would crumble with the weight.

---Emily Dickinson


Syllables govern the word.

---John Selden

IAMB (EYE-am) or IAMBUS, IAMBIC

The most common metrical foot in English, German and Russian verse, and many other languages as well; it consists of two syllables, a short or unaccented syllable followed by a long or accented syllable, as in a-VOID or the RUSH, or from the opening line of John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale,"

a DROW | -sy NUMB | -ness PAINS

Sidelight: The name of the iambic foot derives from the Greek iambos, a genre of invective poetry (now termed lampoon) with which it was originally associated.

(See also Meter, Rhythm)

ICTUS

The recurring stress or accent in a rhythmic or metrical series of sounds; also, the mark indicating the syllable on which such stress or accent occurs.
(See Arsis)
(See also Cadence, Modulation, Rhythm, Sprung Rhythm)

IDEALISM

The artistic theory or practice that affirms the preeminent values of ideas and imagination, as compared with the faithful portrayal of nature in realism.
(Compare Classicism, Imagism, Impressionism, Metaphysical, Objectivism, Romanticism, Symbolism)

IDENTICAL RHYME

See under Perfect Rhyme

IDYLL or IDYL

A pastoral poem, usually brief, stressing the picturesque aspects of country life, or a longer narrative poem generally descriptive of pastoral scenes and written in a highly finished style, such as Milton's "L'Allegro."

Sidelight: Idyll is the anglicized version of the Greek Eidillion.

Probably because the adjectival form of the word, idyllic. is conventionally applied to a mood of tranquillity, innocence, and ideal virtues, the term is applied to poetry with wide latitude, as in Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

(See also Arcadia, Bucolic, Eclogue, Madrigal)

IMAGERY, IMAGE

The elements in a literary work used to evoke mental images, not only of the visual sense, but of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly used in reference to figurative language, imagery is a variable term which can apply to any and all components of a poem that evoke sensory experience, whether figurative or literal, and also applies to the concrete things so imaged.

Sidelight: Imaginative diction transfers the poet's impressions of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to the careful reader, as in "The Chambered Nautilus," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, or "The Cloud," by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Sidelight: Related images are often clustered or scattered throughout a work, thus serving to create a particular tone, as images of disease, corruption, and death are recurrent patterns shaping the tonality of Shakespeare's Hamlet. They can also emphasize a theme, as do the images of dissolution, depression, and mortality in John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale."

(See also Ekphrasis, Figure of Speech, Trope)

IMAGISM

A 20th century movement in poetry advocating free verse, new rhythmic effects, colloquial language and the expression of ideas and emotions with clear, well-defined images, rather than through romanticism or symbolism.
(See also Avant-Garde)
(Compare Classicism, Idealism, Impressionism, Metaphysical, Objectivism, Realism)

IMITATION

See Mimesis

IMPERFECT RHYME

See Near Rhyme

IMPRESSIONISM

As applied to poetry, a late 19th century movement embracing imagism and symbolism, which sought to portray the effects (or poet's impressions), rather than the objective characteristics of life and events.
(Compare Classicism, Idealism, Metaphysical, Objectivism, Realism, Romanticism)

IMPROVISATORE (im-prah-vuh-zuh-TOR-ee)

An improviser of verse, usually extemporaneously.
(Compare Minstrel, Meistersingers, Minnesingers, Jongleur, Troubadour, Trouvere)

INCREMENTAL REPETITION

The repetition in each stanza--of a ballad, for example--of part of the preceding stanza, usually with a slight change in wording for effect.
(Compare Anadiplosis, Anaphora, Echo, Epistrophe, Epizeuxis, Parallelism, Polysyndeton, Refrain, Stornello Verses)

INITIAL RHYME

See Alliteration

IN MEDIAS RES (in MEE-dee-uhs RAYZ)

The literary device of beginning a narrative, such as an epic poem, at a crucial point in the middle of a series of events. The intent is to create an immediate interest from which the author can then move backward in time to narrate the story.

Sidelight: In contrast, ab ovo (from the egg) refers to starting at the chronological beginning of a narrative.

(Compare Anachronism, Hysteron Proteron)

INTERIOR MONOLOGUE

A narrative technique in which action and external events are conveyed indirectly through a fictional character's mental soliloquy of thoughts and associations.
(See also Dramatic Monologue, Soliloquy)

INTERLOCKING RHYME

See Chain Rhyme

INTERNAL RHYME

Also called middle rhyme, a rhyme occurring within the line. The rhyme may be with words within the line but not at the line end, or with a word at the line end and a word within the line, as in Shelley's "The Cloud,"

I bring fresh showers, for the thirsting flowers
(See also Leonine Verse)

INVECTIVE

See Lampoon

INVERSION

See Hyperbaton

INVOCATION

See under Apostrophe

IONIC

A metrical foot of four syllables, either two long syllables followed by two short syllables (greater Ionic) or two short syllables followed by two long syllables (lesser Ionic); also, a verse or meter composed of Ionic feet.

IRONY

Verbal irony is a figure of speech in the form of an expression in which the use of words is the opposite of the thought in the speaker's mind, thus conveying a meaning that contradicts the literal definition, as when a doctor might say to his patient, " the bad news is that the operation was successful." Dramatic or situational irony is a literary or theatrical device of having a character utter words which the the reader or audience understands to have a different meaning, but of which the character himself is unaware. Irony of fate is when a situation occurs which is quite the reverse of what one might have expected, as in Shelley's "Ozymandias."

Sidelight: The use of irony can be very effective, providing it is reasonably obvious and not likely to be taken so literally that the reader is left with the opposite of what was meant to convey. It should also be noted that irony, of itself, is not bitter or cruel, but may become so when used as a vehicle for satire or sarcasm.

(See also Antiphrasis)
(Compare Burlesque, Hudibrastic Verse, Litotes, Meiosis, Parody)

ISOMETRIC

See under Stanza

ITALIAN SONNET

See Petrarchan Sonnet

While pensive poets painful vigils keep,
Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.

---Alexander Pope


The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Th' assay so hard, so sharpe the conquering.

---Geoffrey Chaucer

JINGLE

A short poem marked by catchy repetition.
(Compare Nursery Rhyme)

JONGLEUR (zhawn-GLOOR)

A public entertainer in the Middle Ages who recited or sang chansons de geste, fabliaux, and other poems, sometimes of their own composition, but more often those written by the trouveres.

Sidelight: Prior to the 10th century, the term jongleur was applied to actors, acrobats, jugglers, and entertainers in general.

(See also Gleeman, Improvisatore, Minstrel, Meistersingers, Minnesingers, Troubadour)

If I can read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me,
I know that it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,
I know that it is poetry.

---Emily Dickinson


I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and
poetry, that is, prose,--words in their best order, poetry,--the best words in their best order.

---Samuel Taylor Coleridge

KENNING

A compound word or phrase similar to an epithet, but which involves a multi-noun replacement for a single noun, such as wave traveller for boat or whale-path for ocean, used especially in Old English, Old Norse and early Teutonic poetry. A type of periphrasis, some kennings are instances of metonymy or synecdoche.

Sidelight: Beowulf, the oldest known epic poem in English, contains numerous examples of kennings. Milton used the kenning, day-star, for sun, in Lycidas.

(See also Ricochet Words, Tmesis)

KING'S ENGLISH

The standard, pure or correct English speech or usage, also called Queen's English.

Sidelight: The origin of the term is uncertain, but it appeared in Wilson's Arte of Rhetoricke in 1553 and in Act 1, Scene IV of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor in about 1597:

    Mistress Quickly:
        What, John Rugby! I pray thee, go to the casement,
        and see if you can see my master, Master Doctor
        Caius, coming. If he do, i' faith, and find any
        body in the house, here will be an old abusing of
        God's patience and the king's English.

(Contrast Solecism)

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors
of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.

---Percy Bysshe Shelley


How does a poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they?

---Thomas Carlyle

LAI

A medieval narrative or lyric poem which flourished in 12th century France, consisting of couplets of five-syllabled lines separated by single lines of two syllables. The number of lines and stanzas was not fixed and each stanza had only two rhymes, one rhyme for the couplets and the other for the two-syllabled lines. Succeeding stanzas formed their own rhymes.
(See also Lay, Virelay)

LAMENT

See Dirge, Elegy, Epitaph, Monody

LAMPOON

A bitter, abusive satire in prose or verse attacking an individual. Motivated by malice, it is intended solely to reproach and distress.

Sidelight: Before the term lampoon was coined, it was called invective and dates back as far as the origin of poetry itself. It now appears primarily in prose, however, except for its occasional use in epigrams.

(See also Burlesque, Parody, Pasquinade)

LAY

Originally the Anglicized term for the French lai. It became popular in 14th century England as the Breton lay, written in a spirit similar to the French lais. In the 19th century the term, lay, was sometimes used by English poets for short historical ballads or narrative poetry of moderate length.
(See also Tragedy)

LEONINE VERSE

Named for a 12th century poet, Leonius, who first composed such verse, it consists of hexameters or of hexameters and pentameters in which the final syllable rhymes with one preceding the caesura, in the middle of the line.
(See also Internal Rhyme)

LIGHT VERSE

A loose catch-all term describing poetry written with a relaxed attitude and ordinary tone on trivial, mundane, or frivolous themes. It is intended to amuse and entertain and is frequently distinguished by sophistication, wit, word-play, elegance, and technical competence. Among the numerous forms of light verse are clerihews, double dactyls, epigrams, limericks, nonsense poetry, occasional poetry, parodies, society verse, and verse with puns or riddles.

LIMERICK

A light or humorous verse form of five chiefly anapestic verses of which lines one, two and five are of three feet and lines three and four are of two feet, with a rhyme scheme of aabba. The limerick, named for a town in Ireland of that name, was popularized by Edward Lear in his Book of Nonsense published in 1846.

Sidelight: the final line of Lear's limericks usually were a repetition of the first line, but modern limericks generally use the final line for clever witticisms.

Sidelight: As shown by these examples, limericks, while unsuitable for serious verse, lend themselves well to humor and word-play. Their content also frequently tends toward the ribald and off-color.

LINE

A unit in the structure of a poem consisting of one or more metrical feet arranged as a rhythmical entity.

Sidelight: The line is fundamental to the perception of poetry, since it is an important factor in the distinction between prose and verse.

Sidelight: The traditional practice of capitalizing the initial line-letters contributes to the visual perception of the line as a unit; this practice is often not observed in modern free verse.

(See also Stich)

LIST POEM

See Catalog Verse

LITOTES (LIH-tuh-teez, pl. LIH-toh-teez)

A type of meiosis (understatement) in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary, as in "not unhappy" or "a poet of no small stature."
(Compare Irony)
(Contrast Hyperbole)

LYRIC VERSE

One of the main groups of poetry, the others being narrative and dramatic . By far the most frequently used form in modern poetic literature, the term lyric includes all poems in which the speaker's ardent expression of a (usually single) emotional element predominates. Ranging from complex thoughts to the simplicity of playful wit, the power and personality of lyric verse is of far greater importance than the subject treated. Often brief, but sometimes extended in a long elegy or a meditative ode, the melodic imagery of skillfully written lyric poetry evokes in the reader's mind the recall of similar emotional experiences.

Sidelight: Lyric is derived from the Greek word for lyre and originally referred to poetry sung to musical accompaniment.

Sidelight: A lyric sequence is a group of poems, mostly lyric verse, that interact as a structural whole, differing from a long poem by the inclusion of unlike forms and diverse areas of focus.

(See Canzone, Ghazal, Melic Verse, Romance, Society Verse)
(See also Anthology, Canon, Companion Poem, Cycle, Sonnet Sequence.)

There is pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.

---William Cowper


If you wish me to weep, you yourself must feel grief.

---Ars Poetica, Horace

MACARONIC VERSE

Originally, poetry in which words of different languages were mixed together or, more strictly, words in the poet's venacular were given the inflectional endings of another language, usually for humorous or satiric effect. In modern times, however, in recognition of the multilingual relationships of sound and sense between different languages, it is used most often with serious intent, thus transformed from a species of comic or nonsense verse into poetry characterized by scholarly techniques of composition, allusion, and structure.
(See also Amphigouri)

MADRIGAL

A short medieval lyric or pastoral poem expressing a simple delicate thought.

MALAPROPISM (MAL-a-prop-izm)

A mistaken substitution of one word for another that sounds similar, generally with humorous effect, as in "arduous romance" for "ardent romance." The term is named for the character, Mrs. Malaprop, in Richard Sheridan's play, The Rivals, who made frequent misapplications of words, for example:

. . . as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
(See also Catachresis, Enallage, Mixed Metaphor, Oxymoron, Paradox, Solecism, Synesthesia)

MARINISM

Excessive ornateness marked by the use of extravagant metaphors, so named from the 17th century Italian poet, Giambattista Marino, and his school of followers.
(See also Baroque, Conceit, Euphuism, Gongorism, Melic Verse)

MASCULINE RHYME

A rhyme occurring in words of one syllable or in an accented final syllable, such as light and sight or arise and surprise.
(Contrast Feminine Rhyme)

MEASURE

Poetic rhythm or cadence as determined by the syllables in a line of poetry with respect to quantity and accent; also, meter; also, a metrical foot.
(See Accentual Verse, Quantitive Verse, Syllabic Verse)
(See also Common Measure)

MEIOSIS (my-OH-sis)

An understatement; the presentation of a thing with underemphasis in order to achieve a greater effect, such as, "The building of the pyramids took a little bit of effort."

Sidelight: Just as a hyperbole can underscore a truth by overstatement, the meiosis achieves the same effect with understatement.

(See also Litotes)
(Compare Irony)
(Contrast Hyperbole)

MEISTERSINGERS

Members of various German trade guilds formed in the 15th and 16th centuries by merchants and craftsmen for the cultivation of poetry and music, succeeding the Minnesingers.

Sidelight: Applicants had to study poetry and singing while learning their trade and pass examinations through degrees of "scholars," "schoolmen," "singers" and "poets" to eventually become Meistersingers (Mastersingers). The most famous of the Meistersingers was Hans Sachs (1494-1576) to whom about 6,000 poems are attributed.

(See also Improvisatore, Jongleur, Minstrel, Troubadour, Trouvere)

MELIC VERSE

Capable of being sung. The term is derived from an ornate form of Greek lyric poetry of the 7th and 6th centuries B.C.
(Compare Canzone, Ghazal, Ode, Pindaric Verse, Romance, Society Verse)
(See also Conceit, Euphuism, Gongorism, Marinism)

MESOSTICH (MESS-oh-stik)

See under Acrostic Poem

METAPHOR

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one object or idea is applied to another, thereby suggesting a likeness or analogy between them, as:

     The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
                 --- Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

     I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
                 --- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind"

               .   .   . The cherished fields
     Put on their winter robe of purest white.
                 --- James Thomson, The Seasons

Sidelight: While most metaphors are nouns, verbs can be used as well:

       Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
     Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
       Are each paved with the moon and these.
                 --- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Cloud"

Sidelight: The poetic metaphor can be thought of as having two basic components: (1) what is meant, and (2) what is said. The thing meant is called the tenor, while the thing said, which embodies the analogy brought to the subject, is called the vehicle.

Sidelight: Both metaphors and similes are comparisons between things which are unlike, but a simile expresses the comparison directly, while a metaphor is an implied comparison that gains emphatic force by its connotative value.

Sidelight: A word or expression like "the leg of the table," which originally was a metaphor but which has now been assimilated into common usage, has lost its figuative value and is called a dead metaphor.

Sidelight: Frequently, the term metaphor, as opposed to a metaphor, is used to include all figures of speech, so the expression, "metaphorically speaking," refers to speaking figuratively rather than literally.

(See also Allegory, Conceit, Extended Metaphor, Mixed Metaphor, Kenning, Personification, Synesthetic Metaphor)
(Compare Analogy, Metonymy, Symbol, Synecdoche)

METAPHYSICAL

Of or relating to a group of 17th century poets whose verse was distinguished by an intellectual and philosophical style, with extended metaphors or conceits comparing very dissimilar things.
(Compare Classicism, Idealism, Imagism, Impressionism, Objectivism, Realism, Romanticism, Symbolism)

METER or METRE

A measure of rhythmic quantity, the organized succession of groups of syllables at basically regular intervals in a line of poetry, according to definite metrical patterns. In classic Greek and Latin versification, meter depended on the way long and short syllables were arranged to succeed one another, but in English the distinction is between accented and unaccented syllables. The unit of measure is the foot. Metrical lines are named for the type of constituent foot and for the number of feet in the line: monometer (1), dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7) and octameter (8); thus, a line containing five iambic feet, for example, would be called iambic pentameter. Rarely does a metrical line exceed six feet.

Sidelight: In the composition of verse, poets sometimes make deviations from the systematic metrical patterns. This is often desirable because (1) variations will avoid the mechanical "te-dum, te-dum" monotony of a too-regular rhythm and (2) changes in the metrical pattern are an effective way to emphasize or reinforce meaning in the content. These variations are introduced by substituting different feet at places within a line. (Poets can also employ a caesura, use run-on lines and vary the degrees of accent by skillful word selection to modify the rhythmic pattern, a process called modulation. Accents heightened by semantic emphasis also provide diversity.) A proficient writer of poetry, therefore, is not a slave to the dictates of metrics, but neither should the poet stray so far from the meter as to lose the musical value or emotional potential of rhythmical repetition. Of course, in modern free verse, meter has become either irregular or non-existent.

Sidelight: Generally speaking, it is advisable for poets to delay the introduction of metrical variations until the ear of the reader has had time to become accustomed to the basic rhythmic pattern.

Sidelight: In music, the term, rubato, refers to rhythmic variations from the written score applied in the performance.

(See Common Measure, Scan, Scansion)
(See also Accentual Verse, Quantitive Verse, Syllabic Verse)

METONYMY (meh-TAHN-ih-mee)

A figure of speech involving the substitution of one noun for another of which it is an attribute or which is closely associated with it, e.g., "the kettle boils" or "he drank the cup." Metonymy is very similar to synecdoche.

Sidelight: Some metonymic expressions, like paleface for white man or salt for sailor, have become so much a part of everyday language that they can no longer be considered as figurative in a poetic sense.

(Compare Antonomasia, Cataphora)

METRE

See Meter

METRICAL FOOT

See Foot

METRICAL PAUSE

A "rest" or "hold" that has a temporal value, usually to compensate for the omission of an unstressed syllable in a foot.

Sidelight: Neither a metrical pause itself nor its length can be scanned, but scansion will show the omission of the unstressed syllable(s) it replaces.

Sidelight: Edgar Allan Poe described the metrical pause as "a variable foot which is the most important in all verse," but some theorists disagree that a time value is valid in modern metrics.

Sidelight: A pause that is non-metrical and expressed only in the performance is called a caesura.

METRICS

The branch of prosody concerned with meter.

METRIST (MEH-trist, MEE-trist)

A writer of verse.
(See also Bard, Poet, Sonneteer, Versifier, Wordsmith.)

MIDDLE RHYME

See Internal Rhyme

MILTONIC

Pertaining to the poetry or style of the poet, John Milton, one of the most respected figures in English literature.

MIMESIS (mih-MEE-sis)

Literally, imitation or realistic representation -- but its poetic significance is more specific: it refers to the combination of sound in phonetic symbolism and onomatopoeia (sound suggestion) with the connotative, symbolic, and synesthetic effects of the words themselves and their syntactic arrangement to resemble, reinforce, shape, and temper their lexical sense in a manner that mirrors the meaning. In An Essay on Criticism, Pope simplified with the precept,"The sound must seem an echo to the sense." He wrote the following couplet to illustrate:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows.

(See also Ekphrasis, Sound Devices)

MINNESINGERS

Lyric poets of Germany in the 12th to 14th centuries, all men of noble birth who received royal patronage and who wrote mainly of courtly love. They were succeeded by the Meistersingers.

Sidelight: The Minnesingers used the collective term, Minnesang, for their work on themes of courtly love.

(See also Improvisatore, Jongleur, Minstrel, Troubadour, Trouvere)

MINSTREL

In the Middle Ages, the general term for a performer who subsisted by reciting verse and singing, usually accompanied by a harp. Some minstrels were travelling entertainers; others were permanently employed by nobles.
(See also Gleeman, Improvisatore, Jongleur, Meistersingers, Minnesingers, Troubadour, Trouvere)
(Compare Bard, Metrist, Sonneteer, Wordsmith)

MINSTRELSY

The art and occupation of minstrels; also, a collection of minstrel songs or a group of musicians or minstrels.

MIXED METAPHOR

A metaphor whose elements are either incongruent or contradictory by the use of incompatible identifications, such as "the dog pulled in its horns" or "to take arms against a sea of troubles."

Sidelight: The effect of a mixed metaphor can be absurd as well as sublime.

(See also Catachresis, Enallage, Malapropism, Oxymoron, Paradox, Synesthesia)

MOCK-EPIC or MOCK-HEROIC

A satiric literary form that treats a trivial or commonplace subject with the elevated language and heroic style of the classical epic.

Sidelight: An outstanding example in English verse is Pope's The Rape of the Lock, which he wrote to expose the absurdity of a threatened feud between two families over an incident in which a young baron cut a curl from the head of a society belle.

(See also Hudibrastic Verse)
(Compare Parody)

MODULATION

In poetry, the harmonious use of language relative to the variations of stress and pitch.

Sidelight: Modulation is a process by which the stress values of accents can be increased or decreased within a fixed metrical pattern.

(See also Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Euphony)
(Compare Cadence, Ictus, Rhythm, Sprung Rhythm)

MOLOSSUS (moh-LAH-sus)

In Greek and Latin verse, a metrical foot consisting of three long syllables.

MONODY (MAHN-uh-dee)

A poem in which one person laments another's death, as in Tennyson's "Break, Break, Break," or Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways."
(See also Dirge, Elegy, Epitaph)

MONOMETER (muh-NAH-muh-tur)

A line of verse consisting of a single metrical foot or dipody.
(See Meter)

MONORHYME

A poem in which all the lines have the same end rhyme.
(See also Ghazal)

MONOSTICH (MAHN -uh-stik)

A poem or epigram of a single metrical line.
(Compare Distich, Hemistich)

MONOSYLLABLE

A word of one syllable.

Sidelight: Although the idea of a monosyllabic foot in English verse has been proposed, i.e., an accented syllable plus a hypothetical pause, the notion that pauses may constitute parts of feet is contrary to generally accepted metrical theories.

(See also Disyllable, Polysyllable, Trisyllable)

MOOD

See Tone

MORA (MOHR-uh) pl. MORAE

The minimal unit of rhythmic measurement in quantitive verse, equivalent to the time it takes to pronounce an ordinary or average short syllable; two morae are equivalent to a long syllable.

MOSAIC RHYME

A rhyme in which two or more words produce a multiple rhyme, either with two or more other words, as go for / no more, or with one longer word, as cop a plea / monopoly. It is usually used for comic effect.

Sidelight: Byron's Don Juan contains many examples of mosaic rhymes.

(See also Disyllabic Rhyme, Triple Rhyme)

MOTIF (moh-TEEF)

A thematic element recurring frequently in literature, such as the dawn song of an aubade or the carpe diem motif.
(See also Burden, Theme)
(Compare Content, Diction, Form, Persona, Style, Texture, Tone)

MUSE

A source of inspiration, a guiding genius.

Sidelight: In Greek mythology, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne were called the Muses, each of whom was identified with an individual art or science. While there are historic inconsistencies in the records that have been handed down, a common listing is as follows:

Calliope (kuh-LY-uh-pee): Muse of epic poetry
Clio (KLY-oh or KLEE-oh): Muse of history
Erato (EHR-uh-toh): Muse of lyric and love poetry
Euterpe (yoo-TUR-pee): Muse of music, especially wind instruments
Melpomene (mel-PAH-muh-nee): Muse of tragedy
Polymnia (pah-LIM-nee-uh): Muse of sacred poetry
Terpsichore (turp-SIK-uh-ree): Muse of dance and choral song
Thalia (thuh-LY-uh): Muse of comedy
Urania (yooh-RAY-nee-uh): Muse of astronomy

(See also Afflatus, Helicon, Numen, Parnassian, Pierian)

Poetry is a means to a certain kind of knowledge,
and there is a certain kind of knowledge to which it is the only means.

---Archibald MacLeish


. . . sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge.

---The Defence of Poesie, Sir Philip Sidney

NARRATIVE

The narration of an event or story, stressing details of plot, incident and action. Along with dramatic and lyric, is one of the main groups of poetry.

Sidelight: A narrative poem contains more detail than a ballad and is not intended to be sung.

(See also Epyllion, Lay, Tragedy)
(Compare Chanson de Geste, Epic, Epopee, Epos, Heroic Quatrain)

NEAR RHYME

Also called approximate rhyme, slant rhyme, off rhyme, imperfect rhyme or half rhyme, a rhyme in which the sounds are similar, but not exact, as in home and come or close and lose. Most near rhymes are types of consonance.

Sidelight: Due to changes in pronunciation, some near rhymes in modern English were perfect rhymes when they were originally written in old English.