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 |
|---|---|---|
| Paean | A song or lyric poem expressing triumph or thanksgiving. | In Greek literature, a paean was often dedicated to Apollo. |
| Palindrome | A word, phrase, or poem that reads the same backward as forward. | "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama." |
| Pantoum | A Malaysian verse form adapted into English, consisting of quatrains where the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the next. | John Ashbery's "Pantoum" is an example. |
| Paradox | A statement that contradicts itself but might be true. | This statement is false. |
| Paronomasia | A play on words; a pun. | "You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass." |
| Pastoral | A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealized way. | "The passionate shepherd to his love" by Christopher Marlowe. |
| Pathetic Fallacy | The attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature. | The clouds were crying in his absence. |
| Personification | The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form. | The wind whispered through the trees. |
| Personification | The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman. | The wind whispered through the trees. |
| Petrarchan Sonnet | A sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, such as cdecde or cdcdcd. | John Milton's "When I Consider How My Light is Spent" is an example of a Petrarchan sonnet. |