The Regents ELA Exam: Structure and Language in Poetry (Terms To Know)

- allegory A narrative, in prose or verse, in which abstract ideas, principles, human values, or states of mind are personified. The purpose of the allegory is to illustrate the significance of the ideas by dramatizing them. Parable and fable are particular kinds of allegory, in which a moral is illustrated in the form of a story.

- alliteration The repetition of initial consonant sounds in words and syllables is one of the first patterns of sound a child creates; for example, “ma-ma; pa-pa.” The stories of Dr. Seuss are told in alliteration and assonance. Poets use alliteration for its rich musical effect: “Fish, flesh, and fowl commend all summer long/Whatever is begotten, born, and dies” (Yeats); for humor: “Where at, with blade, with bloody, blameful blade/He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast” (Shakespeare); and to echo the sense of the lines: “The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve” (Shakespeare).

- allusion A reference to a historical event, to Biblical, mythological, or literary characters and incidents with which the reader is assumed to be familiar. Allusion may, with few words, enrich or extend the meaning of a phrase, idea, or image. Allusion may also be used for ironic effect. In his poem “Out, out . . .” Robert Frost expects the reader to recall from Macbeth’s final soliloquy the line, “Out, out brief candle!” Such expressions as “a Herculean task” or “Achilles heel,” are also forms of allusion.

- ambiguity Denotes uncertainty of meaning. In literature and especially in poetry, we speak of intentional ambiguity, the use of language and images to suggest more than one meaning at the same time.

- assonance The repetition of vowel sounds among words that begin or end with different consonants.

- ballads Narrative poems, sometimes sung, that tell dramatic stories of individual episodes and characters.

- blank verse Unrhymed iambic pentameter, usually in “paragraphs” of verse instead of stanzas. Shakespeare’s plays are composed primarily in blank verse.

For example, from Macbeth (Act I, Scene 5):

Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t . . .

- connotation The feelings, attitudes, images, and associations of a word or expression. Connotations are usually said to be “positive” or “negative.”

- couplet Two lines of verse with similar meter and end ryhme. Couplets generally have self-contained ideas as well, so they may function as stanzas within a poem. In the English(Shakespearean) sonnet, the couplet serves as a conclusion. You will also discover that many scenes in Shakespeare’s plays end with rhymed couplets: “Away, and mock the time with fairest show/False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” (Macbeth Act I, Scene 7)

- denotation That which a word actually names, identifies, or “points to.” Denotation is sometimes referred to as “the dictionary definition” of a word.

- dramatic monologue A poem in which a fictional character, at a critical or dramatic point in life, addresses a particular “audience,” which is identifiable but silent. In the course of the monologue, we learn a great deal, often ironically, about the character who is speaking and the circumstances that have led to the speech. Robert Browning is the best-known 19th-century poet to compose dramatic monologues; “My Last Duchess” is a famous example. In the 20th century, such poets as Kenneth Fearing, E. A. Robinson, T. S. Eliot (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”), Robert Frost, and Amy Lowell composed well-known dramatic monologues.

- elegy A meditative poem mourning the death of an individual.

- epic A long narrative poem often centering on a heroic figure who represents the fate of a great nation or people. The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer, The Aeneid of Vergil, and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf are well-known epics. Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Divine Comedy are examples of epic narratives in which subjects of great human significance are dramatized. Omeros, by Derek Walcott, is a contemporary example of an epic poem.

- figurative language The intentional and imaginative use of words and comparisons that are not literal but that create original, vivid, and often unexpected images and associations. Figurative language is also called metaphorical language. (See metaphor and simile.)

- free verse A poem written in free verse develops images and ideas in patterns of lines without specific metrical arrangements or formal rhyme. Free verse is distinguished from prose, however, because it retains such poetic elements as assonance, alliteration, and figurative language. The poetry of Walt Whitman and e. e. cummings offers striking examples. The poem “View with a Grain of Sand” on page 11 is also an example of free verse.

- hyperbole An exaggerated expression (also called overstatement) for a particular effect, which may be humorous, satirical, or intensely emotional. Hyperbole is the expression of folktales and legends and, of course, of lovers: Romeo says to Juliet, “there lies more peril in thine eye/Than twenty of their swords.” Hyperbole is often the expression of any overwhelming feeling. After he murders King Duncan, Macbeth looks with horror at his bloody hands: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand . . . ?” In her sleepwalking scene, Lady Macbeth despairs that “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” And everyone of us has felt, “I have mountains of work to do!”

- iambic pentameter The basic meter of English speech: “I think I know exactly what you need/and yet at times I know that I do not.” Formally, it identifies verse of ten syllables to the line, with the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth accented. There is, however, variation in the stresses within lines to reflect natural speech—and to avoid a “sing-song” or nursery rhyme effect. It is the meter in which most of the dialogue in Shakespeare’s plays is composed (see blank verse).

- image Images and imagery are the heart of poetry. Although the term suggests only something that is visualized, an image is the re-creation through language of any experience perceived directly through the senses.

- internal rhyme A pattern in which a word or words within a line rhyme with the word that ends it. Poets may also employ internal rhyme at irregular intervals over many lines.

- irony In general, a tone or figure of speech in which there is a discrepancy—a striking difference or contradiction—between what is expressed and what is meant or expected. Irony may be used to achieve a powerful effect indirectly. In satire, for example, it may be used to ridicule or criticize.

- metaphor A form of analogy. Metaphorical expression is the heart of poetry. Through metaphor, a poet discovers and expresses a similarity between dissimilar things. The poet uses metaphor to imaginatively find common qualities between things we would not normally or literally compare. As a figure of speech, metaphor is said to be implicit or indirect, in contrast to simile where the comparison is expressed directly. In his final soliloquy, which begins “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow . . .” Macbeth creates a series of metaphors to express the meaninglessness of his own life: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player . . . it is a tale told by an idiot . . .” When we say, “the trip was a nightmare . . . .,” or that “the meeting turned into a circus . . .,” we are speaking in metaphor.

- meter and rhythm Rhythm refers to the pattern of movement in a poem. As music has rhythm, so does poetry. Meter refers to specific patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. (See imabic pentameter.)

- ode A meditation or celebration of a specific subject. Traditional odes addressed “elevated” ideas and were composed in elaborate stanza forms. Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to Autumn” are particularly fine examples. Modern odes may address subjects either serious or personal. One well-known contemporary ode is Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to My Socks.”

- onomatopoeia The use of words whose sound reflects their sense. “Buzz,” “hiss,” and “moan” are common examples.

- oxymoron Closely related to paradox, oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory or sharply contrasting terms are paired for emphasis or ironic effect. Students’ favorite examples include “jumbo shrimp” and “army intelligence.” Poets have written of the “wise fool,” a “joyful sadness,” or an “eloquent silence.”

- paradox An expression, concept, or situation whose literal statement is contradictory, yet which makes a truthful and meaningful observation. Consider the widely used expression, “less is more,” for example. Shakespeare’s play Macbeth opens with a series of paradoxes to establish the moral atmosphere in which “foul is fair.” John Donne’s famous poem “Death Be Not Proud” ends with the paradox “Death thou shalt die.”

- personification A form of metaphor or simile in which nonhuman things—objects, plants and animals, forces of nature, abstract ideas—are given human qualities. Examples include “Pale flakes . . . come feeling for our faces . . .” (Owen); “Time . . . the thief of youth,” (Milton); and “Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Blow! Rage!” (Shakespeare).

- prose poem This form appears on the page in the sentences and paragraphs of prose yet its effect is achieved through rhythm, images, and patterns of sound associated with poetry. The poetry of Karl Shapiro offers many excellent examples.

- quatrain A stanza of four lines. The quatrain is the most commonly used stanza form in English poetry. Quatrains may be rhymed, abab, aabb, abba, for example, or they may be unrhymed.

- rhyme In general, any repetition of identical or similar sounds among words that are close enough together to form an audible pattern. Rhyme is most evident when it occurs at the ends of lines of metrical verse.

- rhyme scheme A regular pattern of end rhyme in a poem. The rhyme scheme in Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, is abab/cdcd/efef/gg.

- satire A form or style that uses elements of irony, ridicule, exaggeration, understatement, sarcasm, humor, or absurdity to criticize human behavior or a society. All satire is ironic in that meaning or theme is conveyed in the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, between what is and what should be, between what appears and what truly is. Although satire is often entertaining, its purpose is serious and meant to provoke thought or judgment. The verse of Alexander Pope is often extended satire, and many poems by e. e. cummings are satiric.

- simile An expression that is a direct comparison of two things. It uses such words as like, as, as if, seems, appears. For example, “A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses” (Theodore Roethke); “Mind in its purest play is like some bat” (Richard Wilbur); “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (William Wordsworth).

- soliloquy A form of monologue found most often in drama. It differs from a dramatic monologue in that the speaker is alone, revealing thoughts and feelings to or for oneself that are intentionally unheard by other characters. In Shakespeare’s plays, for example, the principal characters’ reflections on how to act or questions of conscience are revealed in their soliloquies. Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be . . .” is probably the most famous of dramatic soliloquies.

- sonnet A poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter that may be composed of different patterns of stanzas and rhyme schemes. The most common forms are the English, or Shakespearean sonnet, which consists of three quatrains and a closing couplet, and the Italian sonnet, which consists of an octave of eight lines and a sestet of six lines.

- speaker The narrative voice in a poem. Also, the character who speaks in a dramatic monologue.

- stanza The grouping of lines within a poem. A stanza reflects the basic organization and development of ideas, much as paragraphs do in an essay. Many stanza patterns may have a fixed number of lines and a regular pattern of rhyme. Poets, however, often create stanzas of varying length and form within a single poem. A stanza that ends with a period, completing an idea or image, is considered “closed,” whereas a stanza that ends with a comma or with no punctuation is called “open,” indicating that there should be very little pause in the movement from one stanza to another.

- symbol Most generally, anything that stands for or suggests something else. Language itself is symbolic: sounds and abstract written forms may stand for virtually any human thought or experience. Symbols are real objects and concrete images that lead us to think about what is suggested. Symbols organize a wide variety of ideas into single acts of understanding. They embody not single “meanings” but suggest whole areas of meaning.

- understatement Expression in which something is presented as less important or significant than it really is. Understatement is often used for humorous, satiric, or ironic effect. Much of the satire in Huckleberry Finn stems from Huck’s naive and understated observations. One particular form of understatement, actually a double negative, includes such expressions as “I was not uninterested,” which really means “I was interested”; or “He was not without imagination,” which really means “He had some imagination.”