A2 Unseen Poetry: Poetic terminology

What is assonance?

• The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close proximity.

• The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close proximity.

•  The partial or total identity of consonants in words whose main vowels differ.

• The repetition of identical concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines

What is rhyme?

• The repetition of identical concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines

• the partial or total identity of consonants in words whose main vowels differ

• The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close proximity

• The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close proximity.

What is an elegy?

• A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter.

• A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style.

• Poetry concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present

• A lyric poem that laments the dead.

What is syntactical inversion?

• The reversal of the normal order of the words and phrases in a sentence

• A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means

• A short, pithy statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct.

• Features of a poem that are associated with the poem’s performance aloud

What is a Shakespearean sonnet?

• A fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, composed of three quatrains and a couplet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.

• A sonnet (14 lines of rhyming iambic pentameter) that divides into an octave (8) and sestet (6).

What is eye-rhyme?

• Words that seem to rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently

• A near rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels

• Rhyming words of three or more syllables in which any syllable but the last is accented

What is Litotes?

• A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true.

• Understatement for effect, often for generating irony.

• Overstatement or exaggeration for effect

• The level of formality that a speaker uses

What is caesura?

• Speaker in a poem addresses a person not present or an animal, inanimate object, or concept as though it is a person

• A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones

• A strong pause within a line of verse - the type of punctuation used indicates the length and strength of the pause.

• A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem

What is free verse?

• A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

• Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme.

What is elision?

• A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next

• The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry.

• A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables.

• A line ending in a full pause, usually indicated with a period or semicolon