Poetry+Terms

= __**Poetry Terms**__ =

//**Below are terms you should know before we start the poetry unit. Keep this sheet for further reference.**//

**Imagery** - Words that relate to the sensory experience. This often refers to the visual sense, but it can include all of the senses: “The sky was a deep blue dotted with smokey clouds.”

**Simile** - A figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared: “She is like a flower.”

**Metaphor** - Metaphors are comparisons that show how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in one important way: “The moon is cheese.”

Unlike similes that use the words “as” or “like” to make a comparison, metaphors state that something is something else.

**Personification** - A figure of speech in which a thing, an animal, or an abstract term (truth, nature) is made human: “The door cried.”

**Rhyme-** A   word agreeing with another in sound: “rock, sock.”

**Alliteration-** Occurs in the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of successive words: “Round and round the rugged rocks....”

**Assonance-** Occurs in the repetition of the same vowel sound: “   And stepping softly with her air of blooded ruin about the   //glade//   in a   //frail//   agony of   //grace//   she   //trailed//   her rags through dust and ashes, circling the dead fire, the charred billets and chalk bones, the little calcined ribcage.”

**Rhythm-** In a poem, this is the recurrence of stresses and pauses in it.

**Meter-** When stresses recur at fixed intervals on a line: “A CANter a CANter a CANter a CANter.”

**Stanza-** A stanza consists of a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme.

**Theme-** The universal truth or idea in the poem.

**Tone-** The attitude a writer takes towards a subject or character: serious, humorous, sarcastic, ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, solemn, etc.  Return to Middle School Poetry