Potentially Confusing Poetical Terms

Just like every other craft, poetry has its own set of terms. To those not well-versed in the technicalities of poetry—and even to those who are—these can be confusing.

Below is an explanation of some of the most frequently-used terms in the discussion of poetry. This is far from an exhaustive list, but I hope you find it helpful, and I may add to it as time goes on.

ABAB rhyme scheme: A rhyme scheme in which every other line rhymes, A and B representing respective pairs of rhyming words.

Example: Pease porridge hot (A)

Pease porridge cold (B)

Pease porridge in the pot (A)

Nine days old. (B)

--nursery rhyme

Alliteration: Alliteration is having the same sound multiple times in close proximity—usually at the beginning of words, occasionally at the beginning of syllables.

Example: From forth the fatal lines of those two foes. 

--William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Couplets: A stanza of two lines.

Example: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

–William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Dactylic meter: A type of syllabic meter in which the pattern is stressed, unstressed, unstressed.

Example: This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks...

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Iambic meter: A type of syllabic meter in which the pattern is unstressed, stressed.

Example: He liked to play his bagpipes up and down, and that is how he brought us out of town. 

--Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

Quintets: A stanza of four lines.

Example: Sunset and evening star,

  And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

  When I put out to sea…

–Lord Alfred Tennyson, Crossing the Bar

Rhyme: A poetic device in which words have the same ending sounds.

Example: Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are.

--nursery rhyme

Slant rhyme (also known as half rhyme, near rhyme, oblique rhyme, or imperfect rhyme): A pair of words that almost rhyme.

Example: Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me bloud and not restore.

--George Herbert, The Collar

Stanza: A paragraph in poetry.

Example: Childe Harold was he hight:—but whence his name

And lineage long, it suits me not to say;

Suffice it, that perchance they were of fame,

And had been glorious in another day:

But one sad losel soils a name for aye,

However mighty in the olden time;

Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay,

Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lines of rhyme,

Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.

–George Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Syllabic Meter: Rhythm based on a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Example: Mary had a little lamb…

-Nursery Rhyme

Trochaic meter: A type of syllabic meter in which the pattern is stressed, unstressed.

Example: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...

--Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven 

Photo credit to Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash