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 L
Lament
A poem of grief, loss or complaint, one of the oldest kinds of poetry in every language. It gives sorrow a shape so it can be carried.
Limerick
A five line comic form rhyming AABBA with a bouncing anapestic rhythm. The last line delivers the punch.
Line
The basic unit of a poem, the stretch of words the poet chooses to place before a break. Where prose thinks in sentences, poetry thinks in lines.
Line Break
The point at which a line of poetry ends and the eye returns. Placement of the break controls pace, emphasis and surprise, and is one of the poet's sharpest tools.
Litotes
Understatement through negation, affirming something by denying its opposite, as in not bad for a first poem. It lets modesty carry confidence.
Lyric Poetry
Short, musical, first person poetry that expresses feeling and thought rather than telling a long story. Most poems entered in contests today are lyric poems.
All letters
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