Poet's Glossary
Every craft has its vocabulary, and poetry's is one of the most beautiful. This glossary explains the forms, meters, rhymes and devices poets reach for, in plain and warm language. Whether you are decoding a sonnet or naming a technique you already use by instinct, start with a letter below.
Terms starting with A
Accent
The natural emphasis a voice places on a syllable when a word is spoken aloud. Patterns of accent are the raw material of meter, and learning to hear them is the first step toward writing rhythmic verse.
Acrostic
A poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word or name when read from top to bottom. Poets often use the form to hide a dedication inside the poem itself.
Alexandrine
A line of twelve syllables, usually written in iambic hexameter. It is the classic line of French poetry and appears in English verse as a deliberately long, sweeping closing line.
Allegory
A poem or story whose characters and events stand for something beyond themselves, so the whole work carries a second, symbolic meaning. A journey in an allegory is rarely just a journey.
Alliteration
The repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of nearby words, as in whispering winter winds. Used well, it binds a line together and makes it memorable on the tongue.
Allusion
A brief, indirect reference inside a poem to another work, person, myth or event. The poet trusts the reader to catch the echo and carry its meaning into the new poem.
Anapest
A metrical foot of three syllables where two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed one, as in the word understand. Anapestic lines gallop, which is why they suit songs and comic verse.
Anaphora
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines or sentences. It builds rhythm and force, the way a drumbeat builds a march.
Antithesis
The placement of opposite ideas side by side in balanced phrases, letting contrast do the work of argument. Light against dark, hope against ruin, in a single breath.
Apostrophe
A figure of speech in which the poet speaks directly to someone absent, dead, or incapable of answering, such as the moon, a lost lover, or death itself.
Assonance
The repetition of vowel sounds in nearby words, as in the long o of lonely stone. It creates internal music without the obviousness of full rhyme.
Aubade
A dawn poem, traditionally spoken by lovers who must part at sunrise. Modern aubades keep the early morning setting and its mixture of tenderness and regret.
All letters
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