Poetry Terms

The basic unit of a poem, this is several lines of poetry grouped together, with white space above and below.

• Concrete

• Quatrain

• Stanza

• Sonnet

The rhythmic structure of the poem--the way it sounds when read aloud.

• Tempo

• Meter

• Soliloquy

• Chorus

Two lines of poetry that stand alone or apart from the rest of the poem. Often these two lines will rhyme and have the same meter, but not always.

• Couplet

• Twins

• Dynamic duo

• Besties

When an object or animal is given human qualities.

• Humanify

• Highlighting

• Peopling

• Personification

A poem that has several words that start with the same consonant and are placed close together. For example: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers."

• Obliteration

• Alliteration

• Cremation

• Devastation

A word that sounds like what it represents. Words like "meow," "oink," "pop," or "click."

• Soundsplosion

• Plinkytalk

• Onomatopoeia

• Imagery

A poem that has 14 lines, and each line must have exactly 10 syllables and be written in iambic pentameter. In a typical Shakespearean one of these, the last couplet (two lines) of the poem rhymes.

• Pantoum

• Bonnet

• Sonnet

• Villanelle

A free-form poem, which has no particular structure or rhythm. It does not have regular rhymes, and the lines may be different lengths and have different patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

• Elegy

• Free Verse

• Freebie

• Sonnet