Poetic+Devices

You are responsible for knowing and understanding the following terms. When you do your poetry analyses for your anthology I will expect you to incorporate these terms in your work. We will have a quiz on these terms during the course of this unit. I have bolded those terms which are crucial.
 * Poetic Devices **

A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. The most famous example in English is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in which the name of the central character, Pilgrim, epitomizes the book's allegorical nature. Kay Boyle's story "Astronomer's Wife" and Christina Rossetti's poem "Up-Hill" both contain allegorical elements.
 * Allegory **

The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example from Gerard Manley Hopkins, "In the Valley of the Elwy": // Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood. //
 * Alliteration **

Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE. An anapestic meter rises to the accented beat as in Byron's lines from "The Destruction of Sennacherib": // And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, // // When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. //
 * Anapest **

The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the following lines: // How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, // // Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself. //
 * Assonance **

Aubade A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover. John Donne's "The Sun Rising" exemplifies this poetic genre.

A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. The Anonymous medieval ballad, "Barbara Allan," exemplifies the genre.
 * Ballad **

A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's sonnets, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" include many lines of blank verse. Here are the opening blank verse lines of "Birches": // When I see birches bend to left and right // // Across the lines of straighter darker trees, // // I like to think some boy's been swinging them. //
 * Blank verse **

A strong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardy's "The Man He Killed" contains caesuras in the middle two lines: // He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, // // Off-hand-like--just as I-- // // Was out of work-had sold his traps-- // // No other reason why. //
 * Caesura **

Closed form A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" provides one of many examples. A single stanza illustrates some of the features of closed form: // Whose woods these are I think I know. // // His house is in the village though. // // He will not see me stopping here // // To watch his woods fill up with snow. //

The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: // Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright // // Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, // // Rage, rage against the dying of the light. //
 * Connotation **

Convention A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play.

A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. Shakespeare's sonnets end in rhymed couplets, as in // For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings // // That then I scorn to change my state with kings. //
 * Couplet **

A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry. The following playful lines illustrate double dactyls, two dactyls per line: // Higgledy, piggledy, // // Emily Dickinson // // Gibbering, jabbering. //
 * Dactyl **

The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following lines from Peter Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words: // To be specific, between the peony and rose // // Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes; // // Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves-- // // ... // // and always serve bread with your wine. // // But, son, // // always serve wine. //
 * Denotation **

Diction The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can also refer to a poet's diction as represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction.

Elegy A lyric poem that laments the dead. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W.H. Auden's "In Memory of William Butler Yeats" and his "Funeral Blues."

The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. Alexander uses elision in "Sound and Sense": " // Flies o'er th' unbending corn...." //
 * Elision **

A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line. In the opening lines of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," for example, the first line is end-stopped and the second enjambed: // That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, // // Looking as if she were alive. I call // // That piece a wonder, now.... //
 * Enjambment **

Epic A long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values. Examples from western literature include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Milton's Paradise Lost.

A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope's "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog" exemplifies the genre: // I am his Highness' dog at Kew; // // Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? //
 * Epigram **

Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. The nonsense line, "Higgledy, piggledy," is dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two syllables following falling off from that accent in each word. Trochaic meter is represented by this line: // Hip-hop, be-bop, treetop--freedom. //
 * Falling meter **

Figurative language A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.

A metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. Iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, pyrhh, and spondee are the most common feet found in English. Indeed, pyrrh and spondee are themselves fairly rare.
 * Foot **

Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is one of many examples.
 * Free verse **

A figure of speech involving exaggeration for a particular effect. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star."
 * Hyperbole **

An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in: // Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? //
 * Iamb **

A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation entirely and include only images. Among the most famous examples is Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro": // The apparition of these faces in the crowd; // // Petals on a wet, black bough. //
 * Image **

The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. Imagery of light and darkness pervade James Joyce's stories "Araby," "The Boarding House," and "The Dead." So, too, does religious imagery.
 * Imagery **

Literal language A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote.

Lyric poem A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. The anonymous "Western Wind" epitomizes the genre: Western wind, when will thou blow, The small rain down can rain? Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again!

A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose," From Burns's "A Red, Red Rose." Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" is built entirely of metaphors. Metaphor is one of the most important of literary uses of language. Shakespeare employs a wide range of metaphor in his sonnets and his plays, often in such density and profusion that readers are kept busy analyzing and interpreting and unraveling them. Compare Simile.
 * Metaphor **

The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems.
 * Meter **

A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." Narrative poem A poem that tells a story. A ballad and an epic are types of narrative poem.
 * Metonymy **

An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a Petrarchan sonnet.
 * Octave **

Ode A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject, such as Horace's "Eheu fugaces," but sometimes a more lighthearted work, such as Neruda's "Ode to My Socks."

The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. The following line from Pope's "Sound and Sense" onomatopoetically imitates in sound what it describes: // When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, // // The line too labors, and the words move slow. //
 * Onomatopoeia **

Most often, however, onomatopoeia refers to words and groups of words, such as Tennyson's description of the "murmur of innumerable bees," which attempts to capture the sound of a swarm of bees buzzing.

Open form A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. E.E. Cummings's "[Buffalo Bill's]" is one example. See also Free verse.

The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification.
 * Personification **

A four-line stanza in a poem, or the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet or half an octave. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet.
 * Quatrain **

The matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. The following stanza of "Richard Cory" employs alternate rhyme, with the third line rhyming with the first and the fourth with the second: // Whenever Richard Cory went down town, // // We people on the pavement looked at him; // // He was a gentleman from sole to crown // // Clean favored and imperially slim. //
 * Rhyme **

The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined: // I said to my baby, // // Baby take it slow.... // // Lulu said to Leonard // // I want a diamond ring //
 * Rhythm **

Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to a stressed syllable. Iambs and anapests are rising feet.
 * Rising meter **

A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian/Petrarchan sonnet. Examples: Petrarch's "If it is not love, then what is it that I feel," and Frost's "Design."
 * Sestet **

Sestina A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line.

A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: " // My love is like a red, red rose. // "
 * Simile **

A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is arranged as three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba cde cde or abba abba cd cd cd.
 * Sonnet **

A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another. Its roughly the equivalent a paragraph in prose.
 * Stanza **

Symbol An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. The glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, the rocking horse in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the road in Frost's "The Road Not Taken"--all are symbols in this sense.

A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand."
 * Synecdoche **

Syntax The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted: Whose woods these are I think I know.

A three-line stanza, as the stanzas in Frost's "Acquainted With the Night" and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." The three-line stanzas or sections that together constitute the sestet of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet.
 * Tercet **

Theme The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. See discussion of Dickinson's "Crumbling is not an instant's Act."

An accented syllable followed by an unaccented one, as in FOOT-ball.
 * Trochee **