Alliteration
The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line. Alliteration need not reuse all initial consonants; “pizza” and “place” alliterate.
Allusion
A brief, indirect reference to a person, place, event, or literary work.
Anaphora
Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry, anaphora is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect.
Aphorism
A pithy, instructive statement or truism, like a maxim or adage.
Ars Poetica
A poem that reflects on the art of poetry itself, discussing its purpose, methods, and nature.
Assonance
The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme.
Aubade
A love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn.
Ballad
A popular narrative song passed down orally. In the English tradition, it usually follows a form of rhymed quatrains. Folk (or traditional) ballads are anonymous and recount tragic, comic, or heroic stories.
Blank Verse
Unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called heroic verse.
Common Measure
A quatrain that rhymes ABAB and alternates four-stress and three-stress iambic lines. It is the meter of the hymn and the ballad.
Concrete or Pattern Poetry
A type of poetry where the visual arrangement of text and space forms a meaningful shape or image.
Confessional
Vividly self-revelatory verse associated with a number of American poets writing in the 1950s and 1960s.
Consonance
A resemblance in sound between two words, or an initial rhyme.
Couplet
A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length.
Dramatic Monologue
A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader.
Ekphrasis
“Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.
Elegy
A mournful, reflective poem lamenting the loss of someone or something.
Epic
Epigram
A pithy, often witty, poem.
Epigraph
A quotation placed beneath the title at the beginning of a poem or section of a poem.
Epistle
A letter in verse, usually addressed to a person close to the writer.
Epithalamion
An occasional verse form, usually in celebration of a wedding.
Free Verse
Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition.
Ghazal
(Pronounciation: “guzzle”) Originally an Arabic verse form dealing with loss and romantic love, medieval Persian poets embraced the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme.
Haiku
A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time.
Imagery
Using vivid or figurative language to represent ideas, objects, or actions.
Limerick
Metaphor
A comparison that is made without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”
Meters
Mixed
Poems with multiple different stanza forms.
Nursery Rhymes
Ode
A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. Its stanza forms vary.
Ottava Rima
Pantoum
A Malaysian verse form in quatrains with an intricate repeating pattern.
Pastoral
A poem that retreats from the trappings of modernity to the imagined virtues and romance of nature and rural life.
Persona
A dramatic character, distinguished from the poet, who is the speaker of a poem.
Prose Poem
A prose composition that, while not broken into verse lines, demonstrates other traits such as symbols, metaphors, and other figures of speech common to poetry.
Quatrain
A four-line stanza, often with various rhyme schemes.
Refrain
A phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem, especially at the end of a stanza.
Rhymed Stanza
The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line.
Sestina
A complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoi. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoi contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines.
Simile
A comparison made with "as," "like," or "than."
Sonnet
A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England in the 16th century. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines. There are many types of sonnets.
Stanza Forms
Syllabic
Poetry whose meter is determined by the total number of syllables per line, rather than the number of stresses.
Techniques
Tercet
A poetic unit of three lines, rhymed or unrhymed.
Terza Rima
An Italian stanzaic form consisting of tercets with interwoven rhymes. A concluding couplet rhymes with the penultimate line of the last tercet.
Types/Modes
Verse Forms
Villanelle
A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.