When getting to know your poem, it’s helpful to examine the nuts and bolts of the work you’re studying. The following definitions will help you better understand the choices that the poet made and see how those choices give shape to the poem.
Alliteration
The repetition of the same initial letter, sound, or group of sounds in a series of words, as in the Gerard Manley Hopkins line “[king-]dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon...”
- How One Winter Came in the Lake Region by Wilfred Campbell
- The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Ralegh
Allusion
A brief reference to a person, character, place, literary work, or historical event, such as when Allen Ginsberg imagines he sees the poet Walt Whitman in a grocery store or when P.K. Page writes a poem that incorporates language and images from a poem by Wallace Stevens.
- A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
- On Shakespeare. 1630 by John Milton
- The Blue Guitar by P.K. Page
Assonance
A vowel rhyme created through the relatively close juxtaposition of the same or similar vowel sounds, but with different end consonants in a line or passage, as in the sequence “So twice five miles” in “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
- From Chapter I by Christian Bök
- Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ballad
A song that tells a story, often using simple, folksy language. The art of writing ballads began in medieval France, though the English ballad follows its own form: quatrains that alternate between four-stress (“So we’ll * go no * more a * ro-ving”) and three-stress lines (“So late * in-to * the night”).
Blank verse
Iambic pentameter that doesn’t follow a fixed rhyme scheme.
- Blank Sonnet by George Elliott Clarke
- The Princess: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- The Snow-Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Common measure
Four-line stanzas (quatrains) that rhyme ABAB, alternating between between four-stress and three-stress iambic lines. See ballad, a form written in common measure.
- Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun by Emily Brontë
- To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
- You charmed me not with that fair face by John Dryden
Consonance
The repetition of a consonant sound, such as the repetition of the “t” sound in “tucked string tells” or the “c” sound in “cloudless climes.”
- She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron
- As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- Kubla Kahn by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Couplet
Two consecutive lines of a poem, usually of the same length, that rhyme.
- “Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe
- To an Athlete Dying Young by A.E. Housman
- The Author to Her Book by Anne Bradstreet
Elegy
A poem of mourning for a person or event.
- A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General by Jonathan Swift
- The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- To an Athlete Dying Young by A.E. Housman
Free verse
A poem that does not follow a consistent meter or rhyme scheme in its structure.
Imagery
The use of vivid visual images.
- A Breakfast for Barbarians by Gwendolyn McEwen
- Lagoons, Hanlan’s Point by Raymond Souster
- War by Lee Maracle
Metaphor
An implied comparison where one thing is described in terms of another without using the words like or as (see simile). Emily Dickinson doesn’t write that “hope” is like a thing with feathers, she writes that “hope” is the thing with feathers. Sometimes the story of a poem is a metaphor for a larger idea, as in “The Road Not Taken,” where Robert Frost describes a forked road as a metaphor for the moment one chooses between two different ways of life.
- Homage to the Mineral of the Onion (I) by Erin Mouré
- “Hope” is the thing with feathers— by Emily Dickinson
- The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Ode
A poem that formally addresses a person, place, thing, or idea; odes often praise or celebrate their subjects.
- Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope
- Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes by Thomas Gray
- To Autumn by John Keats
Pastoral
Poetry that idealizes rural life as tranquil, uncomplicated, and virtuous.
- I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
- The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
- The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Ralegh
Persona poem
A poem that, though written in first person, is not in the voice of the poet but rather speaks from the point of view of a dramatic character.
- Mrs. Kessler by Edgar Lee Masters
- My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
- Richard Cory by Edward Arlington Robinson
Personification
A figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to an animal, object, or abstract idea.
- A Virginal by Ezra Pound
- Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud by John Donne
- Love (III) by George Herbert
Prose poem
A poem that appears to follow the same form as prose — with sentences that flow into paragraphs rather than being broken into verse lines — but that uses poetic devices, such as metaphor, imagery, or symbolism.
Quatrain
A four-line stanza.
- Lord of My Heart’s Elation by Bliss Carman
- The Tyger by William Blake
- Wild Nights—Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson
Refrain
A phrase or line that repeats regularly in a poem, often at the end of stanzas.
- A Hymn to God the Father by John Donne
- Insomnia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- What horror to awake at night by Lorine Niedecker
Rhyme
A patterned repetition of vowel and consonant sounds.
- A Fixed Idea by Amy Lowell
- From The Titanic: The Iceberg by E.J. Pratt
- My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
Rhythm
The organization of sound patterns.
- Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice by Alice Notley
- The Dark Stag by Isabella Valancy Crawford
- The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear
Sensory language
The use of words and details that appeal to a reader’s physical senses (sight, touch, taste, hearing, smell).
- A Glass Tube Ecstasy by Jerome Rothenberg
- The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
- The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Simile
The use of like or as to compare one thing to another, as Michael Ondaatje writes “Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed / through a glass tube.”
Sonnet
One of the most enduring forms in English poetry, a sonnet — from sonetto, which means “little song” in Italian — is a 14-line poem. Traditionally a sonnet employs a variable rhyme scheme, though many contemporary examples of the sonnet do not rhyme.
- Blank Sonnet by George Elliott Clarke
- I think I should have loved you presently by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? by William Shakespeare
Stanza
A group of two or more lines that make up a single unit of a larger poem, traditionally in a set structure (of couplets, tercets, quatrains, etc.), though contemporary poems often contain stanzas of varying lengths without a formal pattern. A poem moves from stanza to stanza in much the same way that a prose composition moves from paragraph to paragraph.
Tercet
A three-line stanza or a three-line poem. There are many contemporary examples of poems written entirely in tercets.