What is Poetry?
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary it is: writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.
Poetic Terms
Verse: a line of metrical writing
Trecet: unit or group of 3 lines of verse
Quatrain: unit or group of 4 lines of verse
Sestet: unit or group of 6 lines of verse
Octave: unit or group of 8 lines of verse
Stanza: division of a poem consisting of a series of lines arranged together in a usual recurring pattern of rhyme and meter
Couplet: 2 successive lines of verse forming a unit marked usually by rhythmic correspondence, rhyme, or the inclusion of self-contained utterance
Alliteration: repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in 2 or more neighboring words or syllables; also called a head rhyme and initial rhyme
Assonance: when same vowel sound is repeated over and over again
Onomatopoeia: usage of words that create audio sounds
Scansion: mapping a poem's form into its feet and syllable pattern
Refrain: repeat of line, phrase, or word
Foot: unit used in poetry composed of syllables in some pattern of unaccented and accented syllables
Iamb (Iambic Foot): a foot consisting of 2 syllables where the accent lies on the 2nd syllable
Trochee (Trochaic Foot): a foot in which 1 accented syllable is followed by 1 unaccented foot
Anapest (Anapestic Foot): 3 syllable foot made of 2 unstressed syllables followed by 1 stressed syllable
Dactyl (Dactylic Foot): 3 syllable foot which is accented on the 1st syllable
Spondee (Spondaic Foot): 2 syllable foot that's comprised of 2 accented syllables; usually done in poetry by using 1 syllable words in a row
Meter: 1) systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse
A) rhythm that continuously repeats a single basic pattern
B) rhythm characterized by regular recurrence of systematic
arrangement of basic patterns in larger figure (such as a ballad)
2) measure or unit of metrical verse usually used in combination
3) fixed metrical pattern-verse form
Dimeter: a line of poetry containing 2 metrical feet
Trimeter: a line of poetry containing 3 metrical feet
Tetrameter: a line of poetry containing 4 metrical feet
Pentameter: line of poetry containing 5 metrical feet
Hexameter: a line of poetry containing 6 metrical feet
Heptameter: a line of poetry containing 7 metrical feet
Octameter: a line of poetry containing 8 metrical feet
Syllabic Meter: form of meter in which only syllables are counted, such as haiku and such
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Poetic Forms
Fixed Verse Forms