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 C
Cadence
The rise and fall of the voice through a line or sentence, the melodic shape of the words. Free verse leans on cadence where formal verse leans on meter.
Caesura
A deliberate pause inside a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation. It lets the line breathe and can snap a thought in two for emphasis.
Canto
A major division of a long poem, the poetic equivalent of a chapter. Dante's Divine Comedy is built of one hundred cantos.
Chapbook
A small, slim collection of poems, usually fewer than forty pages. For many poets a chapbook is the first home their work finds between covers.
Cinquain
A five line stanza or poem. The American cinquain, invented by Adelaide Crapsey, counts two, four, six, eight and two syllables across its five lines.
Cliché
An expression so worn by use that it no longer creates a picture in the reader's mind. Judges notice clichés instantly, which is why fresh imagery scores higher.
Conceit
An extended, surprising comparison that the poem develops at length, such as John Donne comparing two lovers to the twin legs of a drawing compass.
Concrete Poetry
Poetry in which the visual arrangement of words on the page forms a shape that is part of the meaning, such as a poem about wings printed in the shape of wings.
Connotation
Everything a word suggests beyond its dictionary meaning. Home and house point to the same building, but only one of them is warm.
Consonance
The repetition of consonant sounds inside or at the end of nearby words, as in the ck of black rock. A quieter cousin of alliteration.
Couplet
Two consecutive lines of verse, usually rhymed and of equal length. Shakespeare closes his sonnets with a couplet that lands like a verdict.
All letters
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