Poetry Terms

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Poetry Terms
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Alliteration

• The repetition of the same, or very similar,
  consonant sounds in words that are close together
  in a poem, or other type of writing
• The slimy snake slithered.
• Peter Piper picks

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Figure of Speech

• A word or phrase that describes one thing in
  terms of another and is not meant to be
  understood as literally true
• Simile
• Metaphor
• personification

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Imagery

• Language that appeals to the senses

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Onomatopoeia

• The use of a word whose sound imitates or
  suggests its meaning
• Buzz
• Rustle
• Boom
• Bang
• crash

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Personification

• A special kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman
  thing is talked about as if it were human
• The tree whispered in the wind.

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Poetry

• A kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses
  figures of speech and imagery designed to appeal
  to our emotions and imaginations

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Pun

• A play on the multiple meanings of a word or on
  two words that sound alike but have different
  meanings
• What makes a tree noisy?
• Its bark

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Refrain

• A repeated sound, word, phrase, line, or group of
  lines

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Rhyme

• The repetition of accented vowel sounds and all
  sounds following them, in words that are close
  together in a poem
• Mountain, fountain
• Two types of rhyme end and internal

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Rhyme Scheme

• The pattern of end rhymes in a poem
• Darkness settles on roofs and walls, A
• But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls
  A
• The little waves, with their soft, white
  hands, B
• Efface the footprints in the sands, B
• And the tide rises, the tide falls. A

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Stanza

• A group of consecutive lines in a poem that form
  a single unit