Poetry Glossary - Understand Poetry Terms

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.

Our comprehensive Poetry Glossary, designed for students, teachers, and poetry enthusiasts alike. Whether you're delving into poetic forms, exploring rhyme schemes, or understanding the nuances of metrical feet, our glossary is an essential resource to enhance your study of poetry.

Our glossary covers a wide range of poetry terms, from alliteration, the repetition of initial consonant sounds, to the structure of free verse, which flows without a fixed metrical pattern. Learn about how stressed and unstressed syllables form the foundation of metrical feet, or explore how a rhyme scheme organizes the pattern of sounds at the end of lines in a poem.

Use the search function to quickly find terms like group of lines in a stanza or the repetition of sounds in a poem or section. Whether you're looking to understand how a series of words creates rhythmic patterns or how the number of syllables affects the flow of a line of poetry, our glossary has the definitions and examples you need.