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 U
Understatement
Saying deliberately less than the truth so the reader supplies the force, the opposite of hyperbole. In poems about grief it can devastate quietly.
Univocalic
A poem written using only one vowel throughout, a constraint from experimental writing that turns spelling itself into the form.
All letters
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