Is Anyone willing to define meanings & terms in poetry?

  • rayre words
    13 years ago

    Is there information on the PnQ site relating to the various terms and phrases often used by members of poetic experience and knowledge?
    If not, can anyone define the meanings of the most commonly encountered terms for me, etc. ??
    Best Wishes & Thank you.

  • Sincuna
    13 years ago

    For a while, I thought you wanted a definition of poetry... ha. You mean a glossary? Here's one I saved c/o poetry.org (I think):

    1. Basic Terms

    denotation: the dictionary meaning of a word

    connotation: the implied or suggested meaning connected with a word

    literal meaning: limited to the simplest, ordinary, most obvious meaning

    figurative meaning: associative or connotative meaning; representational

    meter: measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse

    rhyme: correspondence of terminal sounds of words or of lines of verse

    --

    2. Figurative Language

    apostrophe: a direct address of an inanimate object, abstract qualities, or a person not living or present.

    Example: "Beware, O Asparagus, you've stalked my last meal."

    hyperbole: exaggeration for emphasis (the opposite of understatement)

    Example: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse."

    metaphor: comparison between essentially unlike things without using words OR application of a name or description to something to which it is not literally applicable

    Example: "[Love] is an ever fixed mark, / that looks on tempests and is never shaken."

    metonymy: a closely related term substituted for an object or idea

    Example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown."

    oxymoron: a combination of two words that appear to contradict each other

    Example: bittersweet

    paradox: a situation or phrase that appears to be contradictory but which contains a truth worth considering

    Example: "In order to preserve peace, we must prepare for war."

    personification: the endowment of inanimate
    objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities

    Example: "Time let me play / and be golden in the mercy of his means"

    pun: play on words OR a humorous use of a single
    word or sound with two or more implied meanings; quibble

    Example: "They're called lessons . . . because they lessen from day to day."

    simile: comparison between two essentially unlike things using words such as "like," as," or "as though"

    Example: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"

    synecdoche: a part substituted for the whole

    Example: "Friends, Romans, countrymen: lend me your ears"

    --

    3. Poetic Devices

    irony: a contradiction of expectation between what is said and what is meant (verbal irony) or what is expected in a particular circumstance or behavior (situational), or when a character speaks in ignorance of a situation known to the audience or other characters (situational)

    Example: "Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea"

    imagery: word or sequence of words representing a sensory experience (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory)

    Example: "bells knelling classes to a close" (auditory)

    synesthesia: an attempt to fuse different senses by describing one in terms of another

    Example: the sound of her voice was sweet

    symbol: an object or action that stands for something beyond itself

    Example: white = innocence, purity, hope

    alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds, particularly at the beginning of words

    Example: ". . . like a wanderer white"

    assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds

    Example: "I rose and told him of my woe"

    elision: the omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry

    "Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame"

    onomatopoeia: the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe

    Example: "crack" or "whir"

    allusion: a reference to the person, event, or work outside the poem or literary piece

    Example: "Shining, it was Adam and maiden"

  • abracadabra
    13 years ago

    Truth: the poet's pulsing objective