Poetry terms

The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close proximity. Example: pensive poets, nattering nabobs of negativism.

Unacknowledged reference and quotations that authors assume their readers will recognize.

Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of a line throughout a work or the section of a work.

Speaker in a poem addresses a person not present or an animal, inanimate object, or concept as though it is a person. Example: Wordsworth--"Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England has need of thee"

The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close proximity. Example: deep green sea.

A narrative poem composed of quatrains (iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter) rhyming x-a-x-a. Ballads may use refrains. Examples: "Jackaroe," "The Long Black Veil"

unrhymed iambic pentameter. Example: Shakespeare's plays

Chiasmus is a "crossing" or reversal of two elements; antimetabole, a form of chiasmus, is the reversal of the same words in a grammatical structure. Example: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask wyat you can do for your country. Example: You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

two successive rhyming lines. Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet

A type of poem, derived from the theater, in which a speaker addresses an internal listener or the reader. In some dramatic monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways.