STRUCTURE

Form: Ballad, Concrete, Elegy, Epic, Free Verse, Haiku, Lyric, Ode, Sonnet, Villanelle, Slam

Stanza pattern: Couplets, Triplets, Quatrains, etc.

Rhyme schemes: ABAB; ABA, ABA; AA; etc.

Rhythm: The flow of the poem. Does the poem have a regular beat?

Iambic: unstressed; stressed

Trochaic: stressed; unstressed

Anapestic: stressed; unstressed; unstressed

Line length: monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, quatrameter, pentameter

Enjambment: When the idea or grammar does not stop naturally at the end of the line.

Catalectic: To stop short.

Caesura: A special kind of pause, usually in the middle of a line.

FIGURES OF SPEECH

Connotation: An idea associated with a word or phrase.

Denotation: The explicit meaning of a word.

Hyperbole: Exaggeration used for effect.

Imagery: What do you see in the poem?

Irony: One thing is said, but the opposite meaning is intended.

Metaphor: A comparison without like or as.

Metonymy: A person or thing is not named directly, but by some associated thing.

Motifs: Ideas or elements that recur throughout the poem.

Oxymoron: Words with opposite meanings.

Paradox: A statement which seems contradictory.

Personification: Human qualities attributed to non-human things.

Pun: Words with a double meaning.

Repetition: A word or phrase used more than once for emphasis.

Simile: A comparison using like or as.

Synecdoche: A part represents the whole.

Symbolism: Something that stands for something else.

SOUND DEVICES

Alliteration: Repetition of initial sounds.

Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds.

Consonance: Repetition of consonant sounds.

Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate sounds.

INTERPRETING MEANING

Plain sense: Using just the words and punctuation.

Feeling: awe, tenderness, anger, amusement.

Tone: Attitude toward the reader.

Intention: What is the poet trying to say?

Subject: love, death, family, nature, etc.

Theme: better to have loved and lost… etc.

Moral: Is some kind of lesson being taught?

 

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