BASIC BASIC POETRY GLOSSARY
A short narrative poem with stanzas of two or four lines and usually a refrain. The story of a ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter but most frequently deals with folk-lore or popular legends. Most ballads are suitable for singing and, while sometimes varied in practice, are generally written in ballad meter, i.e., alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with the last words of the second and fourth lines rhyming.
CINQUAIN (sing-KANE)
A five-line stanza of syllabic verse, the successive lines containing two, four, six, eight and two syllables. The cinquain was based on the Japanese haiku.
CONCRETE POETRY
Poetry which forms a structurally original visual shape, preferably abstract, through the use of reduced language, fragmented letters, symbols and other typographical variations to create an extreme graphic impact on the reader's attention. The essence of concrete poetry lies in its appearance on the page rather than in the written text; it is intended to be perceived as a visual whole and often cannot be effective when read aloud.
CONNOTATION
The suggestion of a meaning by a word beyond what it explicitly denotes or describes. The word, home, for example, means the place where one lives, but by connotation, also suggests security, family, love and comfort.
CONSONANCE
A pleasing combination of sounds; sounds in agreement with tone. Also, the repetition of the same end consonants of words such as boat and night within or at the end of a line, or the words, cool and soul, as used by Emily Dickinson in the third stanza of He Fumbles at your Spirit.
DRAMATIC POEM
A composition in verse portraying a story of life or character, usually involving conflict and emotions, in a plot evolving through action and dialogue.
FOOT
A unit of rhythm or meter, the division in verse of a group of syllables, one of which is long or accented. For example, the line, "The boy | stood on | the burn | ing deck," has four iambic metrical feet.
FREE VERSE
A fluid form which conforms to no set rules of traditional versification. The free in free verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of meter and rhyme, but writers of free verse employ familiar poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, imagery, figures of speech.
HAIKU (HIGH-koo)
A Japanese form of poetry, also known as hokku. It consists of three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables. Haiku are very brief descriptions of nature that convey some implicit insight or essence of a moment.
LIMERICK
A light or humorous verse form of five verses, frequently ribald.
PASTORAL POETRY
Poetry idealizing the lives of shepherds and country folk, although the term is often used loosely to include any poems with a rural aspect.
PASTOURELLE
A form of pastoral poetry associated chiefly with French writers of the 12th and 13th centuries. Typically, the narrator, identified as a knight, recounts his love affair with a shepherdess.
PUN
A word play suggesting, with humorous intent, the different meanings of one word or the use of two or more words similar in sound but different in meaning, as in Mark A. Neville's:
Eve was nigh Adam
Adam was naive.
SCANSION
The analysis of line rhythms performed by scanning the lines to determine their metrical categorization, e.g., iambic trimeter, etc., as a way of describing the rhythmical quality of a poem. Scansion will also show the variations in the meter and the deviations from it, if there are any.
SONNET
A fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of five-foot iambic verse. In the English or Shakespearean sonnet, the lines are grouped in three quatrains (with six alternating rhymes) followed by a detached rhymed couplet which is usually epigrammatic. The original sonnet form is Italian.
STANZA, STANZAIC
A division of a poem made by arranging the lines into units separated by a space, usually of a corresponding number of lines and a recurrent pattern of meter and rhyme. A poem with such divisions is described as having a stanzaic form, but not all verse is divided in stanzas.
STANZA FORMS
The names given to describe the number of lines in a stanza, such as: couplet (2), tercet (3), quatrain (4), quintet (5), sestet (6), septet (7) and octave (8).
VERSE
A line of writing arranged in a metrical pattern, i.e., a line of poetry. Also, a piece of poetry or a particular form of poetry such as free verse, blank verse, etc., or the art or work of a poet.