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 |
|---|---|---|
| Cacophony | A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds. | "With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call." |
| Caesura | A break between words within a metrical foot. | The poet used a caesura to add a dramatic pause. |
| Caesura | A pause in a line of verse, often near the middle. | "To err is human; || to forgive, divine." |
| Carpe Diem | A theme in poetry that encourages readers to seize the day and make the most of the present moment. | Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" is a classic carpe diem poem. |
| Chiasmus | A rhetorical device in which two or more clauses are balanced against each other by the reversal of their structures. | "Never let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You." |
| Clerihew | A whimsical, four-line biographical poem with an AABB rhyme scheme. | "Sir Humphry Davy Abominated gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium." |
| Conceit | An extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. | John Donne's poem "The Flea" uses a conceit to compare a flea bite to the act of love. |
| Consonance | The recurrence of similar sounds, especially consonants, in close proximity. | The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew. |
| Consonance | The repetition of consonant sounds, typically at the end of words. | "The lumpy, bumpy road." |
| Couplet | Two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit. | The time is out of joint, O cursed spite / That ever I was born to set it right! |