Explore our comprehensive glossary of poetry terms. Whether you're a student, teacher, or poetry enthusiast, our glossary will help you understand key concepts, definitions, and examples that are essential in the study of poetry.
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| Term | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Allegory | A narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. It tells a story that has characters, a setting, as well as other types of symbols that have both literal and figurative meanings. | George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is an allegory of Soviet totalitarianism. |
| Alliteration | The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. | Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. |
| Allusion | An indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea of historical, cultural, literary, or political significance. | "He was a real Romeo with the ladies." |
| Anaphora | The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses. | "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets..." |
| Antithesis | A rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect. | "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." |
| Apostrophe | A figure of speech in which the poet addresses an absent person, an abstract idea, or a thing. | "O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" |
| Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words. | "Hear the mellow wedding bells." |
| Ballad | A poem or song narrating a story in short stanzas, often with a repeated refrain. | Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a famous ballad. |
| Bathos | An abrupt transition from a serious or elevated subject to a trivial one, often for comedic effect. | "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." |
| Blank Verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter. | "The dreams are clues that tell us take chances." |