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Poetry Terms
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Alliteration | The repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together. EX: The sneaky, slippery snake. |
Allusion | A reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics,sports,science, or some other branch of culture |
Context Clues | Using words surrounding unknown words to determine their meaning. |
Couplet | Two consecutive lines of poetry that work together. |
Drawing conclusions | Use written cues to figure out something that is not directly stated. |
Free Verse | Poetry that does not conform to a regular meter or rhyme scheme. |
Haiku | Presents a vivid picture and the poet's impression sometimes with suggestions of spiritual insight. The traditional haiku is three lines long. The first time is five syllables, the second line is seven syllables, and the third line is five syllables. |
Hyperbole | A figure of speech that uses incredible exaggeration, or overstatement, for effect. EX: I could eat a thousand hamburgers right now. |
Imagery | The use of language to evoke a picture or a concrete sensation of a person, a thing, or an experience. |
Inferring | Giving a logical guess based on the facts or evidence presented using prior knowledge to help "read between the lines" |
Irony | In general, it is the difference between the way something appears and what is actually true. |
Meaning | What is the poem about? |
Metaphor | A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of like or as. EX: Education s a life raft in the ocean of America |
Mood | The feeling created in the reader by the poem or story. |
Onomatopeia | The use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning EX: Boom! Smash! Pow! Pssst, Ssshh! |
Pattern | A combination of the organization of lines, rhyme schemes, stanzas, rhythm, and meter. (There are an innumerable variety of patterns in poetry. |
Personification | A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts or attitudes, EX: My computer stared at me, deciding if i wanted to cooperate. |
Rereading | GIves the reader more than one chance to make sense of challenging text. |
Rhyme/Rhyme Scheme | The repetition of vowel sounds in accented syllables and all succeeding syllables. The Pattern of rhymes in poem is called a rhyme scheme. |
Rhythm | A rise and fall of the voice produced by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language. |
Setting | The time and place of the action. |
Simile | A figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, using the words like or as. EX: My shoes were like falcons, enabling me to fly across the basketball court. |
Sonnet | A fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in rhymed iambic pentameter |
Speaker | The imaginary voice assumed by the writer of a poem. |
Stanza | A group of lines in a poem considered as a unit. Stanzas often function like paragraphs in prose. Each stanza states and develops a single main idea. |
Summarizing | Guide the r.eader to organize and restate info, usually in written form |
Symbols | A person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself. EX: The eagle is a bird, but it is also the symbol for AMerican freedom, liberty, and justice |
Theme | The central message or insight into life reealed through the poem. |
Tone | The attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the charracters in it, or the audience. |