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 H
Haiku
A Japanese form of three lines in a pattern of five, seven and five syllables, capturing a single vivid moment, usually in nature, with a quiet turn of awareness.
Half Rhyme
An inexact rhyme in which the sounds correspond only partially, as in soul and all. Also called slant rhyme, it lets a poem chime without ringing.
Heroic Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter, the polished engine of eighteenth century English verse in the hands of Dryden and Pope.
Hexameter
A line of six metrical feet. In classical Greek and Latin it was the meter of epic; in English it appears as the alexandrine.
Hymn
A song or poem of praise, usually religious, written in simple, singable stanzas. Its steady quatrains echo in much later poetry, including Emily Dickinson's.
Hyperbole
Deliberate, expressive exaggeration, as when a poet claims to have wept oceans. Nobody is deceived, and that is the point.
All letters
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