1. rhyme - two or more words which match in the same last sound. Ex.: bat, cat

2. rhythm - the beat or cadence of poetry. Ex.: But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

3. alliteration - two words in the same line with the same starting sound. Ex.: the price of the previous one

4. assonance - two words in the same line having similar vowel sounds. Ex.: The owl flew out of the room

5. metaphor - a directly stated comparison. Ex.: Our defensive line was a rock wall last night.

metaphor (met' uh fer or met' uh for) 1. A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare). 2. One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol: "The high-rise garbage repository is a metaphor for both accomplishment and failure." (Richard Sever). [from Greek, transference, metaphor, from metapherein, to transfer : meta- beyond, beside, after (see below) + pherein, to carry; see bher- below.]

• meta- from Greek: beyond, between, with, beside, after. [Pokorny 2. 702]
• bher-.from Greek pherein, to carry. Important derivatives are: bear, burden, birth, bring, fertile, differ, offer, prefer, suffer, transfer, furtive, metaphor, barrow, circumference, confer, conifer, defer, infer, proffer, refer, vociferous, ferret, ferry, euphoria, periphery, pheromone, tocopherol, paraphernalia. [Pokorny 1. 128.]

6. onomatopoeia - the attempt to spell out a sound. Ex.: She heard the cat meow.

7. lyric poetry - that which reveals an emotional moment in life. Example below, from Walt Whitman

…a noiseless patient spider [sends]
filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, o my soul.

8. narrative poetry - that which tells a story with characters, a plot, etc. Ex.: "Casey at the Bat"

9. imagery - pictures drawn in the reader's mind by the words of the poet. Example below comes from "Preludes" by T.S. Eliot

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street…

10. personification- giving human characteristics to inanimate objects. Ex.: the teeth of a comb

11. "traditional" verse - a definite pattern of both rhythm and rhyme. Ex.: "Mary had a little Lamb"

12. simile - a comparison using like or as. Ex.: She was clever as a fox.

13. limerick - a light humorous, nonsensical, or bawdy Irish drinking song of five anapestic lines usually with the rhyme scheme aabba. Example below:

There once was a verse form named limerick.
No one can account for the name of it.
Some think from a game
Or from poets it came.
They came from a small town named Limerick.
(Adapted from the American Heritage Dictionary)

14. haiku - lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally invoking an aspect of nature or the seasons. [Japanese: hai, amusement (from Chinese pá, farce) + ku, sentence (from Chinese jù).] Example below:

Dead chrysanthemum…
yet - isn't there still something
remaining in it?

15. refrain - a few lines repeated almost exactly at certain intervals.
Example below from "Mariana" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, 'The night is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, 'The day is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

16. free verse - no predictable rhythm or rhyme. Ex.: "! blac" by eecummings

17. blank verse - has no rhyme but has rhythm, usually iambic pentameter. Ex.: many of the lines in most of Shakespeare's plays were written this way

18. repetition - using a key word several times throughout a poem. Ex.: the use of "Nevermore." throughout "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

19. stanza - a paragraph in poetry, surrounded above and below by skipped lines. Ex.: There are 4 stanzas shown in the excerpt from "Mariana" shown above.

20. parallelism - the consecutive use of similar phrases or grammatical structures. Especially consider Synonymous Parallelism, in which the same idea is expressed a second or third time. See example below from Proverbs 1:2-9. Note the theme of the passage is the value of wisdom, and the parallelism repeats the theme. Hebrew poets are famous for this technique.

To know wisdom and instruction, To discern the sayings of understanding,
To receive instruction in wise behavior, Righteousness, justice and equity;
To give prudence to the naive, To the youth knowledge and discretion,
A wise man will hear and increase in learning, And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
To understand a proverb and a figure, The words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Hear, my son, your father's instruction And do not forsake your mother's teaching;
Indeed, they are a graceful wreath to your head And ornaments about your neck.