poetic forms

1 All About Poetry Poetic Forms ballad a narrative poem that is, or originally was, meant to be sung. Characterized by repetition and often by a repeated refrain (recurrent phrase or series of phrases), ballads were originally a folk creation, transmitted orally from person to person and age to age. blank verse the verse form most like everyday human speech; blank verse consists of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. Many of Shakespeare’s plays are in blank verse. concrete poetry poetry shaped to look like an object. Robert Herrick’s "Pillar of Fame," for example, is arranged to look like a pillar. Also called shaped verse. dramatic monologue: a poem in which a single speaker who is not the poet utters the entire poem at a critical moment. The speaker has a listener within the poem, but we too are his/her listener, and we learn about the speaker's character from what the speaker says. elegy usually a formal lament on the death of a particular person. epic a poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines, usually in founding a nation or developing a culture, and uses elevated language and a grand, high style. epigram originally any poem carved in stone (on tombstones, buildings, gates, and so forth), but in modern usage a very short, usually witty verse with a quick turn at the end. free verse poetry characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and non-rhyming lines. haiku an unrhymed poetic form, Japanese in origin, that contains seventeen syllables arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. limerick a light or humorous verse form of mainly anapestic (feet with two short syllables followed by a long) verses of which the first, second, and fifth lines are of three feet; the third and fourth lines are of two feet; and the rhyme scheme is aabba. lyric originally, a poem meant to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre; now, any short poem in which the speaker expresses intense personal emotion rather than describing a narrative or dramatic situation. occasional poem a poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private. ode a lyric poem characterized by a serious topic and formal tone but no prescribed formal pattern. See Keats’s odes and Shelley’s "Ode to the West Wind. Poetic Forms and Devices.doc Mr. Weber Spring 2006 2 pastoral a poem (also called an eclogue, a bucolic, or an idyll) that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a timeless, painless (and sheep-less) life in a world full of beauty, music, and love. protest poem a poetic attack, usually quite direct, on allegedly unjust institutions or social injustices. sonnet a fixed verse form consisting of fourteen lines usually in iambic pentameter Petrarchan sonnet also called Italian sonnet; a sonnet form that divides the poem into one section of eight lines (octave) and a second section of six lines (sestet), usually following the abbaabba cdecde rhyme scheme or, more loosely, an abbacddc pattern. Shakespearean sonnet also called an English sonnet; a sonnet form that divides the poem into three units of four lines each and a final unit of two lines (4+4+4+2 structure). Its classic rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg, but there are variations. Meter meter: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry foot: the unit of a meter. A foot is composed generally of two or three syllables containing one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed syllable. Typical Feet Names and Examples Legend: u = unstressed syllable iambic ( u / ) anapestic ( u u /) spondaic (/ /) trochaic ( / u ) dactylic ( / u u ) destroy intervene hum drum topsy merrily / = stressed syllable line length: the number of feet in a line of poetry Three — trimeter Four — tetrameter Five — pentameter Six — hexameter E.g. Ring around the rosy = Trochaic trimeter Poetic Forms and Devices.doc Mr. Weber Spring 2006 3 Poetic Devices and Terms alliteration: the repetition of initial consonant sounds. eg.: The way we were. allusion: reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art apostrophe: direct address to an absent person or personified quality, object or idea eg: Wordsworth’s sonnet that begins: ‘Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour’. assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds eg.: Green as a dream and deep as breath. caesura: natural pause or break in the middle of a line of poetry eg.: To be or not to be // that is the question conceit: an unusual and surprising comparison between two very different things; a complicated metaphor eg.: John Donne’s comparison of two lovers to a pair of compasses consonance: repetition of consonant sounds in stressed syllable containing dissimilar vowel sounds eg.: brick and clock connotation: what is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly describes. eg.: ‘springtime’ often makes people think about youth, rebirth, and romance controlling metaphors are metaphors that dominate or organize an entire poem. See metaphors. end-stopped line: a line of poetry that concludes with a grammatical break such as a comma, colon, semicolon or period. Compare with enjambment below. enjambment: running over from one line of poetry to the next without stop. eg: My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky. figurative language/ figure of speech: writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally; language used imaginatively hyperbole: deliberate exaggeration or overstatement eg.: This book weighs a tonne. imagery: the descriptive language used in poetry to re-create sensory experiences metaphor: direct comparison not using ‘like’ or ‘as’ between two objects with the intent of giving clearer meaning to one of them. eg.: No man is an island. mood: (atmosphere) is the feeling created in the reader by a poem or literary work motif: recurring literary convention or an element repeated within a literary work onomatopoeia: the use of words which imitate sound. eg: Babble. Gulp. Crash. oxymoron: figure of speech that fuses two contradictory or opposing ideas. eg.: Jumbo shrimp Poetic Forms and Devices.doc Mr. Weber Spring 2006 4 personification: a figure of speech which endows animals, ideas, or inanimate objects with human traits or abilities. eg.: The pine trees bend to listen to the wind. (Pine trees are given the human trait of listening.) point-of-view: the author's point-of-view concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or "teller", of the story or poem. • 1st person: the speaker is a character in the story or poem and tells it from his/her perspective (uses "I") • 3rd person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters and limits information about what one character sees and feels. • 3rd person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to "know" and describe what all characters are thinking. repetition: the repeating of words, phrases, lines, or stanzas. rhyme: the similarity of ending sounds existing between two words. rhyme scheme: the sequence in which the rhyme occurs. The first end sound is represented as the letter "a", the second is "b", etc. run-on line: see enjambment. sibilance: the repetition of s, sh, ch or z sounds in neighbouring words. eg.: … the serpent hisses where the sweet bird sings. speaker: the imaginary voice assumed by the writer of the poem—the character who tells the poem. stanza: a group of lines in a poem seen as a unit. Includes: couplet (2 lines), tercet (3 lines), quatrain (4 lines), cinquain (5 lines), sestet (six lines),heptastich (seven lines), and octave (8 lines) symbol: anything that stands for or represents something else eg. ‘light’ can often stand for knowledge or wisdom simile: a comparison between two objects using a specific word or comparison such as "like", "as", or "than". eg.: My love is like a red, red rose. theme: central idea, concern, purpose tone: writer’s attitude toward the readers and toward the subject Poetic Forms and Devices.doc Mr. Weber Spring 2006