Poetry Lexicon (Basic)
English 112

 Alliteration:  Initial sound repetition in words; can be either vowel or consonant.

 Ex.:  ED's #214--4th quatrain: Seraphs swing their snowy Hats--

     And Saints--to windows run--

     To see the little Tippler

     Leaning against the--Sun--

 Anaphora:  Repetition of beginning words in subsequent lines or sentences of a          work to bring emphasis.

 Ex.  "To A Locomotive In Winter"--Whitman:  Repetition of "Thee" and "Thy"

 Antinomy:  Understanding through a knowledge of opposites--paradox. 

 Ex.  Understanding joy by knowing sorrow.

        Knowing the form/meaning of perfection because there is imperfection.

        Failure being encouragement in "What are Years?"--Marianne Moore:

".....And whence

is courage: the unanswered question,

the resolute doubt--

dumbly calling, deafly listening--that

in misfortune, even death,

        encourages others

        and in its defeat, stirs

                                    the soul to be strong? ..."

 Antithesis:  Direct opposite;  Idea/theme that stands in opposition or contrast.

 Ex.  T. Hardy--the juxtaposition of "Best" to "First" and "Better" to "Worst" in "In             Tenebris"--II (l.13, 14)

 Apostrophe:  Poem of address to a person or object that cannot respond--i.e. a             deceased individual, mass of people, animal, or thing.

 Ex.  "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"--Whitman (persons, place, and things)

 Approximate Rhyme:  The variance of a rhyme in which the sounds are not exact--    also known as slant rhyme or half rhyme.  This terms also applies to assonance             and consonance.

Ex. "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter"--John Crowe Ransom

 end words of l.1 and l.3:  "body"  and "study"; of l.5 and l.7: "window" and             "shadow"  (pattern continues through each stanza except # 3 where end rhymes             are exact.) 

Archetypes (Archetypal):  Overarching structures and patterns on which all                literature depends.  (Basic organizing principle that leads to recognition and             meaning.)

Ex.  ED's #1670--"In Winter in my Room"  Winter: Death Season, Worm                                      (Snake): Snake in the Garden

       Whitman--"I Saw In Louisiana A Live Oak Growing"--Tree as Tree of Life

 Ars Poetica:  "Art of Poetry"--  Poetic verse about writing poetic verse. 

     Ex.  ED's #1129--"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--"

       Robert Frost--"The Oven Bird"

 Assonance: Repetition of vowel sound within words of verse in which the vowel sound             is identical, but the consonant following is not necessarily the same.

     Ex.   "Neutral Tones"--Thomas Hardy:   (lst stanza)

                                                We stood by a pond that winter day,

("pond" with "God"                And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

           and "sod"--"winter"                And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;

 with "chidden")                      --They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

 Aubade:  A poem (or piece of music) written about dawn or to be "sung" as a                serenade in the morning.

     Ex.  Edith Sitwell--"Aubade"; (John Donne:  "The Sun Rising")

 Ballad: A poem usually of short, rhymed quatrains with a narrative focus and a theme             of tragedy in love or death.  This form originates from folk poetry that was most             often set to music.

     Ex.  ED's #49--"I never lost as much but twice"

Ballad Stanza:  Most common poetic form that uses four lines with a rhyme scheme of             a b c b and an alternating meter of Iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter.

Ex.  ED's #249--"Wild Nights--Wild Nights!" or #328--"A Bird came down the                     Walk--"; W. B. Yeats--"September 1913"

 Blank Verse:  Preeminent form in English verse.  Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter.

     Ex.  Robert Frost--"Mending Wall" and "Birches"

 Catalogue:  A list poem--technique of listing.

     Ex.  Whitman--"Respondez!"

 Cesura (Caesura):  A pause within a line of verse (poetry).

     Ex.  Frost--"Tree at my window, window tree," (l.1--"Tree at my Window")

 Conceit:  An extended metaphor--an unexpected, elaborated image of comparison.

     Ex.  Stevens--"A High-Toned Old Christian Woman," in which the structures             housing religious worship--pagan or christian--image the principles that govern             that worship.  Examples in the poem:  Moral law made into the "nave" of the             church--and primal impulse into the "peristyle" of a masque; also, the                      "conscience" (christian) or "bawdiness" (pagan) being the waving "palms" that             are part of ritual worship.  

Consonance:  Repetition of a consonant sound within words of verse--while             consonants are the same, the vowel sound differs.

Ex.  W.B. Yeats--"Byzantium":  (2nd stanza--l.11-16)

For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth

May unwind the winding path;

A mouth that has no moisture and no breath

Breathless mouths may summon;

I hail the superhuman;

I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

 Ekphrasis:  A literary work about another work of art.

     Ex. W. H. Auden--"Musée des Beaux Arts"  

Elegy:  A poem expressing the sorrow of the speaker on the death of another                   individual--verse that laments the loss.

Ex.  W. H. Auden--"In Memory of W. B. Yeats"; John Crowe Ransom--"Bells for             John Whiteside's Daughter."

Enjambment:  The carrying-over, to the following line, of the sense of a line of verse   --line lacks punctuation and results in tension that increases interest in the             meaning of the line.  Enjambment undermines the sing-song quality of rhymed             meter and also pulls the reader along.

Ex.  Robert Frost--"Directive":  (l.53-58) 

                        (We know the valley streams that when aroused

Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)

I have kept hidden in the instep arch

Of an old cedar at the waterside

A broken drinking goblet like the Grail

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,

 Etymology:  A study of the history of words.  To find a word's etymology means to             trace it to its origin and possibly its first use to discover its meanings over time.

 Felix Culpa:  "Fortunate Fall"--the sentiment that Eden's fall was a fortunate event--     rather than the total evil presumed in it--because without it, the world would not       know the opposites not present in that first perfect state or the depths love             possible through sacrifice/suffering.

     Ex.  Edwin Muir--"One Foot in Eden"

 Free verse:  Unrhymed verse that depends on cadence within the lines rather than             metered rhythm.       

     Ex.  Whitman--"I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing"

 Heroic Couplet (Verse):  Dominant form of 18th c. comprised of iambic pentameter             and rhyming couplets--used by Yeats in "Adam's Curse" for satire/invective of             Romantic aims.

Iambic meter:  One unstressed, one stressed syllable.  Meter of choice especially  in             sonnets, blank verse , and ballads.

Ex.  C. McKay--"The White City"; R. Frost--"Mending Wall"; E. Dickinson--             #465--[I heard a Fly buzz--when I died]

 Idealogues:  (O. Wilde) "People who think in slogans and talk in bullets."

 Incremental Repetition:  Repetition of words or similar sounds between lines of poetry in which each new line adds additional words.  Also known as Syntactical            Repetition.

     Ex.Whitman--"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":  l.1,2:

Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!

Clouds of the west--sun there half an hour high--I see you also face to                                    face.

 In Memorium stanza: Formal, rhyming verse of 4 quatrains that memorializes its             subject.

 Ex.  Thomas Hardy--"Drummer Hodge"; Robert Frost--"Tree At My Window"  

 Kinesthesia:  The mimetic quality of verse or word that suggests motion.

Ex.  Thomas Hardy--"The Voice"

         (l.1)--"call to me, call to me"

(l.11)--"wan wistlessness"

(l.13)--"faltering forward"

(l.15)--"Wind oozing thin through the thorn..."    

 Lyrical (-ism):  Musical quality of verse or poetic expression.

 Ex.  Langston Hughes--"Sylvester's Dying Bed"; W. C. Williams--"The Dance"

 Modern:  A historical (and not poetical) term denoting a specific era that begins either 1) with the French Revolution, or 2) with World War I.

 Modernist:  An aesthetic attitude denoting, in the literary world, individuals that 1)    reject the narrative as the primary mode, 2) rely on image rather than a               narrative context, and 3) challenge traditional meanings.

Ex.  Whitman, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H.D.

Neologisms:  New words.  "neo"=new; "logisms"=logos=word

Ex.  "unleaving" (Hopkins--"Spring and Fall")

        "fathers-forth" (Hopkins--"Pied Beauty")

 Observation poem:  Verse that gives the poet's observance of a specific moment,             place, person, or thing.

     Ex.  Thomas Hardy--"The Darkling Thrush"

 Onomatopoeia:  Use of words that imitate the sound of what they are written to             indicate.

     Ex.  "Buzz";  In "Cavalry Crossing A Ford"--Whitman:  "--hark to the musical                                                                                                                       clank."

 Oppositions:  Opposite ideas/themes presented in a poem that produce tension and enable the reader to get at the heart of the poem (meaning and understanding) by comparison.  "Dance of the Dialectic"--oppositions promote movement             between ideas, themes, etc. that incite discovery.

Ottava Rima:  Verse form of one stanza comprised of eight lines of iambic                        pentameter, with a rhyme pattern of a b a b a b c c.  (Italian form)

Ex.  "The Choice" and "Sailing to Byzantium"--W. B. Yeats

Oxymoron:  The paring of opposite (contradictory) words to create a direct meaning.

Ex.  Yeats--"murderous innocence" (l.16) in "A Prayer for My Daughter"; "terrible             beauty" (l.16 +) in "Easter 1916"; Hopkins--"Pied Beauty"

Philistinism: An attitude of little interest in (or failure to recognize value of)                      culture/arts--prevalent in individuals focused on commonplace, material life.

Photograph Poem:  Verse that describes a piece of the world as if in a photo.

Ex.  Whitman--"Calvary Crossing a Ford"

Positivism (-ist):  A philosophical system of belief that insists on scientific verification             or falsification of every idea.  Only the facts and observable world, please! 

Primitivism:  Belief in the simple, unsophisticated, or primitive attributes of society or             art--an attitude that seeks the simplified or obsolete methods and lifestyles, and             reveres these as primary--tends to diminish the significance of cultural icons.

     Ex.  R. Jeffers--"Hurt Hawks", "Rock and Hawk"

 Sestina:  A complicated verse form of six sestets that are normally unrhymed but             affected by a repetition of end words within the lines.  This repetition traditionally             follows a strict  pattern.

 Sonnet:  A poem of fourteen lines (iambic pentameter), divided as an octave and             sestet, having a specified rhyme scheme and usually devoted to a specific             theme/idea.  Some variations include:

Petrarchan:  Thought to be perfected by Petrarch.  Rhymed in                              octave as a b b a a b b a; in sestet as c d c d c d, or c d e c d e, or even  c d e d c e.  Ex.:  Gerald Manly Hopkins--"God's Grandeur" and "The Windhover"

Shakespearean (English):  Provides a break between the octave and sestet of the sonnet--comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet:  a b a b, c d c d, e f e f, g g.  Ex.:  W. B. Yeats--"Leda and the Swan" (with a Yeatserian twist in the sestet of both rhyme and staggered line) and "Meru"

Spenserian:  No physical break between octave and sestet, but ends with a             rhyme couplet such that the rhyme scheme is a b a b c b c c d c d  ee .

Ex.:  Robert Frost--"Putting in the Seed" (with slight variation in rhyme scheme             and no indention for last couplet.)

Curtal:  Form variation created by Gerald Manly Hopkins in which the sonnet             begins with a sestet rhymed a b c a b c and ends with a quatrain and one tail             line of d b c d c or d c b c d c.  Ex.:  Hopkins-"Pied Beauty"

 Staggered Verse:  The purposeful indention of verse in a poem to create emphasis--            set a portion of the verse apart.

     Ex.:  Ezra Pound--"The Return" 

 Syllabic Verse:  Verse in which a set number of syllables is maintained throughout             each line.

     Ex. Marianne Moore--"The Fish"--repeated pattern of line-syllables in each             stanza: 1, 3, 9, 6, 8.