Poetry Flashcards
What is a simile?
A direct comparison b/w two unlike objects, using like or as
What is a metaphor?
Implied comparison b/w two unlike things
What is personification?
A comparison in which human qualities are given to inanimate or abstract things
What is alliteration?
The repetition of identical sounds at the beginning of a series of words
Ex: sessions of sweet silent thought
What is an oxymoron?
The placing side by side of words, which have opposite meanings
What is onomatopoeia?
The use of words whose sounds seem to resemble the sounds they describe
Ex: bang, buzz, splash
What is a synecdoche?
A figure of speech where a part signifies the whole
Ex: nice threads
What is imitative rhythm?
When the rhythm of a word or line imitates the movement the poet is describing or feeling being expressed
Ex: rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard
What is a caesura?
A pause or break in the metrical progress of a line of verse
“To err is human, to forgive, divine”
What is metonymy?
The substitution of the name of one thing for that of another, which it naturally suggests
Ex: refer to the king or queen and the “Crown”
What is rhythm?
The pattern caused by the movement of accented and unaccented syllables (also referred to as meter)
What are some common line groupings?
Couplet: 2 lines of poetry tied together by rhyme or thought development
Tercet: 3 lines
Quatrain: 4 lines
Sestet: 6 lines
Octave: 8 lines
What is a rhyme scheme?
The pattern that emerges if you chart the rhyme of the words at the end of each line
(abab, aabb, abcb)
What are the characteristics of a ballad?
Simple language
Tells a story
Traditionally has stanzas with four lines, an abcb iambic quatrain, iambic tetrameter and iambic trimester (eight syllables first and third line, six syllables second and fourth line)
Repetitive (repeated section)
Dialogue
Third person objective narration
What is an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet?
Basic meter of iambic pentameter
Two sections - one 8 lines called the octave with rhymes abbaabba
Second 6 lines called the sestet and can rhyme multiple ways as its flexible (ex cdcdcd)
volta at line nine (the turn in the story where a second idea is introduced)
