And a few examples

 French for “striding over”  A poetic expression that spans more than one line. Lines exhibiting enjambment do not end with grammatical breaks, and their sense is not complete without the following line. Sometimes these lines are referred to as “run-on” lines.

“It is a beautious evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquility.”

“I am inside someone who hates me. I look out from his eyes. Smell what fouled tunes come in to his breath. Love his wretched women.”

 A pause in a line of poetry. Sometimes it occurs with punctuation, but occasionally it occurs where a slight pause is inevitable. The caesura is indicated not by the meter of the poem, but by natural speaking rhythm. The caesure is indicated with ||

From Willliam Butler Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1893)

“I will arise and go now,|| for always night and day I hear lake water lapping||with low sounds by the shore…”

From Shakespeare:

“To err is human, || to forgive, divine.”

From Andrew Marvell “To His Coy Mistress”

“Had we but world enough, ||and time This coyness, lady, ||were no crime.

We would sit down, ||and think which way To walk, ||and pass our long love’s day.”

 A figure of speech in which directly and often emotionally a person who is dead or otherwise not physically present, an imaginary person or entity, something inhuman, supernatural, or a place or concept  The speaker addresses the object of the apostrophe as though it is present and capable of understanding.

From “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by Lord Byron: “I said to Love, ‘It is not now as in old days When men adored thee and thy ways All else above; Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One Who spread a heaven beneath the sun.’ I said to Love.”

From Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Douglass, An American Slave

(yes, apostrophe appears in prose as well) (Douglass is addressing ships sailing through Chesapeake Bay) “You are loosed from your moorings and are free; I am fast in my chains and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!

The omission of part of a word (typically a letter) and the replacement of it with an apostrophe.

Often employed to make verse more rhythmic, or to conform to a metrical pattern Like “Ne’er” for “never” or “o’er” for “over”

“Sol thro’ white curtains shot a tim’rous ray, And op’d those eyes that must eclipse the day…” (don’t you feel smart for recognizing

this?)

From “Beauty” by Abraham Cowley (1656) “Thou flatt’rer which compli’st every sight!

Thou Babel which confound’st the eye With unintelligible variety!” (two versions of “apostrophe” here)

A rhetorical device in which certain words, sounds, concepts, or syntactic structures are reversed or repeated in reverse order. The term comes from the Greek letter X or “chi” implying that the two parts of a chiastic whole mirror each other like the letter.

Shakespeare (from Macbeth) “Fair is foul and foul is fair” From The Dead by James Joyce “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling.” From Coleridge: “Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike.” From John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Either a short poem with a brief, pointedly humorous , quotable ending, or simply a terse, witty statement terse: short and to the point

Money cannot buy The fuel of love: But it is excellent kindling. W.H.Auden If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and his impersonators would be dead.—Johnny Carson Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.—Oscar Wilde To err is human, but it feels divine.—Mae West

(Elegiac)

Reflective poems that lament the loss of someone or something (often through death) Until the end of the 17 th century, the term could also be used for love poems.

Elegiac is the adjective version used to describe these types of poems or this tone.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

A stanza appearing at the close of certain kinds of poems. Usually French ballad (or ballade) – usually a quatrain in bcbc rhyme scheme.

Often the envoy is addressed to a prince, a patron, or another person of importance.

At the end of a sestina, the envoy is three lines.

Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds' crying? — Or does love still shudder and steel still slay, Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying?

Edward Arlington Robinson

Youth, take heed to the prayer of these! Many there be by the dusty way,— Many that cry to the rocks and seas "Give us—ah! give us—but Yesterday!“

Austin Dobson

Ballad: a poem that recounts a story – usually a dramatic episode, and is composed to sound good as a song – the traditional ballad addressed noble subjects but was written in simple language Ballade: a more formal french form consisting of three long stanzas (usually eight lines) and a concluding envoy

All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon.

…Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A tightly structured French verse form, consisting of six sestets (six-line stanzas) and an envoy. The sestina originated in medieval France. The six terminal words of the first stanza are repeated in a complicated formula in subsequent stanzas: 1-2-3-4-5-6, 6-1-5-2-4-3, 3-6-4-1-2-5, 5-3-2-6-1-4, 4-5-1-3-6-2, 2-4-6-5-3-1 Envoy’s terminal words: 5-3-1 PlUS: the other three terminal words must appear in the middle of the envoy in a 2-4-6 pattern.

Italian word for “turn.” In a sonnet, the volta is the turn of thought or argument In a Shakespearean sonnet, it usually happens in the concluding couplet

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight, Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had Past reason hated as a swallowed bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit and in possession so, Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

The repetition of a final consonant sound following different vowel sounds in words that are near to each other (made/wood)

Let the boy try along this bayonet blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Wilfred Owen

Alliteration usually refers to initial consonant sounds or those at the beginning of stressed syllables – it is more obvious.

For example:

“The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring,… -Kate Chopin

“The birds fire-fangled feathers dangle down” -Wallace Stevens

5 different variations (called “feet”)

1. spondee: two stressed syllables (daylight, carpool, sea breeze) 2. trochee: one stressed, one unstressed (party, trochee, little) 3. iamb: one unstressed, one stressed (afloat, respect)

this is the most common metrical foot in English poetry

4. dactyl: one accented followed by two unaccented (portable, marginal, ecstasy) 5. anapest: two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable (contradict, interfere, are you mad?)

Spondee: Do not go gentle into that good night Old age should burn and rave at close of day Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas, 1952

Trochee:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary Edgar Allen Poe

iamb: You have seen this before.

But soft what light through yonder window breaks, It is the east, and Juliet is the sun

Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet

A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears

William Wordsworth “A slumber did my spirit seal”

Dactyl: Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell…

Alfred, Lord Tennyson “Charge of the Light Brigade”

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green Towering over your head Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes And she’s gone

“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” The Beatles

Monometer: 1 foot Dimeter: 2 feet Trimeter: 3 feet Tetrameter: 4 feet Pentameter: 5 feet Hexameter: 6 feet heptameter: 7 feet Octameter: 8 feet

Monometer (rare in English): “ Thus I Pass by And die.

As one, Unknown, And gone.” Robert Herrick 1648 Dimeter (also rare) “Dear Lizbie Browne Where are you now?

In sun, in rain? – Or is your brow Past joy, past pain…”

Thomas Hardy 1901

Trimeter: “ Oh to be in England Now that April’s there…”

Robert Browning 1873 (what type of foot is this?)

Tretameter “Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night In any rough place where it caught”

Robert Frost

Pentameter: you know this one already We stress the words we want the world to hear Hexameter: “This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks…” Longfellow Heptameter: “I went into a public ‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer, The publican ‘e up and’ sez, ‘We server no redcoats here.”

Rudyard Kipling

Octameter: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…”

Edgar Allen Poe

Shakespearean: Three quatrains and a couplet (14 lines) Iambic pentameter Rhyme scheme: abab,cdcd,efef,gg Petrarchan: (or Italian) An octave and a sestet (14 lines also) Iambic pentameter Octave (8 lines) rhyme scheme: abbaabba Sestet (6 lines) rhyme scheme: cdecde or sometimes cdcdcd. Often the octave poses a question, the sestet answers.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses ssee I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go, - My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

“In Zanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.” William Taylor Coleridge “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; The holy time is quiet as a Nun, Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity.”

William Wordsworth

Ye who love a nation's legends, Love the ballads of a people, That like voices from afar off Call to us to pause and listen, Speak in tones so plain and childlike, Scarcely can the ear distinguish Whether they are sung or spoken;

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 Trochee trips from long to short. From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable. Iambics march from short to long;  With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS “HALF RHYME”

a form of rhyme in which words contain similar sounds but do not rhyme perfectly (also called near rhyme, oblique rhyme, approximate rhyme, and imperfect rhyme) Examples: rhyme/writhe, horse/hearse, summer/humble, feel/still Emily Dickinson used it frequently

In winter in my Room I came upon a Worm Pink lank and warm.

Emily Dickinson 1860

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, By his dead smile I knew we stood in hell….

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried, but my hands were loathe and cold.

Wilfred Owen 1920 “Strange Meeting”

lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter (Shakespeare uses it a lot)

…but poets should Exert a double vision; should have eyes To see near things as comprehensively As if afar they took their point of sight, And distant things as intimately deep As if they touched them. Let us strive for this.

I do distrust the poet who discerns No character or glory in his times…

From an extremely long poem, like a novel – 11,000 lines!

Titled “Aurora Leigh”

From French “vers libre” Poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular line lengths.

Free verse has been around a long time, but Walt Whitman was the first to make it a recognized “new” form.

Writers of free verse often rely on parallelism, and repetition and ordinary cadences of speech.

in the quiver on Paris’s back the head of the arrow for Achilles’ heel smiled in its sleep and Helen stepped from the palace to gather as she would do every day in that season from the grove the yellow ray flowers tall as herself whose roots are said to dispel pain

Rhyme that occurs within a line of verse.

Example:

From “We Are Seven” by William Wordsworth “Their graves are green, they may be seen,” The little maid replied, “Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door, And they are side by side.”

Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary… While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping…

The rule-governed arrangement, ordering, grouping, and placement – of words within a sentence.

1.

2.

3.

4.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” by Robert Frost “Whose woods these are I think I know.” by Robert Frost I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.” by W.B. Yeats And dwells such Rage in softest Bosoms then?

And lodge such daring Souls in Little Men?

by You Know Who