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Anaphora

Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry, anaphora is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect.

Ars Poetica

A term meaning “the art of poetry,” an ars poetica poem expresses that poet's aims for poetry and/or that poet's theories about poetry.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme.

Aubade

A love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn.

Common Measure

A quatrain that rhymes ABAB and alternates four-stress and three-stress iambic lines. It is the meter of the hymn and the ballad.

Concrete or Pattern Poetry

Verse that emphasizes nonlinguistic elements in its meaning, such as a typeface that creates a visual image of the topic

Elegy

In traditional English poetry, it is often a melancholy poem that laments its subject's death but ends in consolation.

Epithalamion

An occasional verse form, usually in celebration of a wedding.

Free Verse

Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition.

Imagery

These poems are largely concerned with the use of strong and evocative images to create a highly visual, imaginative reading experience.

Metaphor

A comparison that is made without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”

Pantoum

A Malaysian verse form adapted by French poets and occasionally imitated in English. It comprises a series of quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the next. The second and fourth lines of the final stanza repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza.

Sestina

A complex French verse form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoi. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas; the closing envoi contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines.

Sonnet

A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines.

Terza Rima

An Italian stanzaic form consisting of tercets with interwoven rhymes. A concluding couplet rhymes with the penultimate line of the last tercet.