Poetry Vocab

An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if they were present

• Allusion

• Allegory

• Apostrophe

• Anapest

Answer explanation

In his Holy Sonnet “Death, be not proud,” John Donne denies death’s power by directly admonishing it. Emily Dickinson addresses her absent object of passion in “Wild nights!—Wild nights!”

A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable

• Anapest

• Iamb

• Trochee

• Dactyl

Answer explanation

The words “underfoot” and “overcome” are anapestic. Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” is written in anapestic meter.

The repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect

• Allusion

• Allegory

• Anapest

• Anaphora

Answer explanation

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which uses anaphora not only in its oft-quoted “I have a dream” refrain but throughout, as in this passage when he repeats the phrase “go back to.”              

In Joanna Klink's poem “Some Feel Rain,” the phrase "some feel" is repeated, which creates a rhythm and a sense of an accumulating emotions and meanings.  

                 

See Paul Muldoon’s “As,” William Blake’s “The Tyger,” or much of Walt Whitman’s poetry, including “I Sing the Body Electric.” See also Rebecca Hazelton's explanatory essay, “Adventures in Anaphora.”

Verse whose meter is determined by the number and alternation of its stressed and unstressed syllables, organized into feet

• Accentual-syllabic verse

• Syllabic verse

• Accentual verse

Answer explanation

From line to line, the number of stresses (accents) may vary, but the total number of syllables within each line is fixed. The majority of English poems from the Renaissance to the 19th century are written according to this metrical system.

Harsh or discordant sounds, often the result of repetition and combination of consonants within a group of words

• Trochee

• Euphony

• Cacophony

• Apostrophe

Answer explanation

The opposite of euphony. Writers frequently use cacophony to express energy or mimic mood. See also dissonance.

Unrhyming iambic pentameter

• Blank verse

• Free verse

• Prose

• Poetry

Answer explanation

Also called heroic verse. This 10-syllable line is the predominant rhythm of traditional English dramatic and epic poetry, as it is considered the closest to English speech patterns. Poems such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, and Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning,” are written predominantly in blank verse.

Browse more blank verse poems.

The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme

• Euphony

• Alliteration

• Assonance

• Consonance

Answer explanation

See Amy Lowell’s “In a Garden” (“With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur”) or “The Taxi” (“And shout into the ridges of the wind”).

Browse poems with assonance.

Elements of a poem that invoke any of the five senses to create a set of mental images. Specifically, using vivid or figurative language to represent ideas, objects, or actions

• Elegy

• Description

• Imagery

Answer explanation

Poems that use rich imagery include T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” and Mary Oliver’s “At Black River.”

A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable

• Iamb

• Dactyl

• Trochee

• Spondee

Answer explanation

The words “unite” and “provide” are both iambic. It is the most common meter of poetry in English (including all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare), as it is closest to the rhythms of English speech. In Robert Frost’s “After Apple Picking” the iamb is the vehicle for the “natural,” colloquial speech pattern.

A metrical line of six feet, most often dactylic, and found in Classical Latin or Greek poetry, including Homer’s Iliad

• Trimeter

• Dimeter

• Hexameter

• Pentameter

Answer explanation

In English, an iambic hexameter line is also known as an alexandrine. Only a few poets have written in dactylic hexameter, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the long poem Evangeline.