—The effect created when words with the same initial consonants are used in close proximity, such as "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood."
—any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language.
—an address to a dead or absent person or an object as if he, she or it were present, such as “Death, be not proud.”
—the effect created when words with the same vowel sound are used in close proximity, but where the consonants in these words are different, such as "I rose and told him of my woe."
—a strong pause within a line of verse that creates a break in the flow of sound, such as ‘To be, or not to be: that is the question.’
—an overused, trite expression that lacks any originality, such as “We rose at the break of day” or “She’s as busy as a bee.”
—the associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning.
—the effect created when words share the same stressed consonant sounds but where the vowels differ. Single consonance occurs when two words share one set of consonants, such as 'brick' and 'clock,' which share a 'ck'. Double consonance occurs when two words share all the same consonants, such as 'black' and 'block'.
—the dictionary meaning of a word.
—the words a poet chooses to use in a poem.
—the deliberate use of inharmonious syllables, words, or phrases in order to create a harsh-toned effect, such as “enduring foul shots” or “await the final whistle.”
—a poem spoken in the voice of an imaginary character (not the poet) in the manner of a speech from a play.
—a serious, reflective, lyric poem that laments the dead.
—a line of verse which ends with a grammatical break, such as the end of a phrase or sentence, or a comma, colon, semi-colon or period. See also enjambment.
—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....
—a poem written in the form of a letter.
—poetic exaggeration for dramatic effect, such as 'Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships?'
—the use of words or phrases to convey something experienced through any of the five senses or any combination of senses.
—a work that conveys the inner thoughts of the speaker without portraying a listener or audience within the text of the poem.
—where a word in the middle of a line of poetry rhymes with the word at the end of the line, such as “It wasn’t fame for which he came.”
—a poem characterized by brevity, compression of detail and imagery, expression of feeling, and a musicality of language or attention to sound.
—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."
—a poem that tells a story.
—the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe, such as buzz and crack. 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.
—a poem in which the writer assumes the identity or voice of a person, animal, abstract idea, or object.
—a figure of speech whereby animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate objects are endowed with human traits or abilities, such as "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze."
—a piece of writing which features the charged language normally associated with poetry but which does not feature stanzas or line breaks.
—the repeating of words, phrases, lines, or stanzas within a poem.
—the repetition of a final consonant sound preceded by the same vowel, such as 'bat' and 'cat'; also, the repetition of final vowel sounds, such as “honey ”and “money.”
—a figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like or as. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose."
—the repetition of a final consonant sound when the preceding vowel sound differs, such as “black” and
“rock.” Also called inexact rhyme, near rhyme, half-rhyme, and off rhyme.
—the voice that speaks in a poem, which is not necessarily the poet’s own.
—the way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques.
—the grammatical order of words in a sentence, line of verse or dialogue; it is also 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."
—the implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work.
—a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the deliberate representation of something as much less in magnitude or importance than it actually is; the opposite of exaggeration. |
