Literary Terms:Poetry

Notes from Mr. Steven Van Zoost

Poetry Meter (Iambic Pentameter)Rhythm Rhyme Stanza (octave,quatrain,couplet,sestet)Heroic Couplet Blank Verse Free Verse Epic Lyric

Ode Elegy Ballad Sonnet (English / Italian)

Dramatic monologue Narrative poetryPoetic license

Meter - regularized rhythm of accents that occur at apparently equal intervals in time. The number of feet (two syllables) in a line describes the meter.

Iambic pentameter – a five foot line where every second syllable is stressed.

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Rhythm - any wave like recurrence of motion or sound.

Rhyme scheme – any fixed pattern of rhymes characterizing a whole poem or its stanzas.

Stanza – a group of lines whose metrical pattern is repeated throughout a poem.

octave – 8 linessestet – 6 linesquatrain – 4 lines

Heroic Couplet – two successive lines written in iambic pentameter with an end rhyme

Blank Verse – unrhymed iambic pentameter

Free Verse – poetry written without any fixed metrical pattern

Lyric – a brief subjective poem written with imagination, melody, and emotion, and creating a single, unified impression (eg. A sonnet, ode, elegy, or ballad)

Ode – a long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure.

Elegy – a sustained formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations on death or another solemn theme

Ballad – a fairly short narrative poem written in a song-like stanza form

Sonnet Italian Sonnet - a fourteen lined poem

with an octave and a sestet written in iambic pentameter with a rhyming scheme of:abba abba cde cde

English Sonnet – a fourteen lined poem with three quatrains and a heroic couplet written in iambic pentameter with a rhyming scheme of: abab cdcd efef gg (note that the English sonnet concludes with an heroic couplet)