Poetry Vocabulary
1) Blank Verse – unrhymed lines of consistent length and meter (often in iambic pentameter)
2) Free Verse – a poem with no pattern of rhyme or line length
3) Rhymed Verse – a poem with a constant meter and end rhyme
4) Sonnet – Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter incorporating a rhyme pattern (often a couplet is at the end, such as in the Prologue of R&J)
5) Iambic Pentameter – A poetic line, typically in a sonnet, consisting of five groups of two beats
6) Metaphor - A direct comparison between two things. (“My mind is a sieve; I forget things all the time.”)
7) Simile – An indirect comparison of one thing to another using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ (“His wailing sounded like a cat forcibly being bathed.”)
8) Onomatopoeia - Using words that imitate sounds. (“I shuffled along the hall while a cat mewed in the distance.”)
9) Personification - Giving human qualities to inanimate objects. (“The sun reluctantly rose from its nighttime slumber.”)
10) Alliteration - The repetition of consonants, particularly at the beginning of words. For example, the letter s is alliterated in the following line: “He summoned the sweetness of silence.”
11) Assonance – Similar vowel sounds nearby each other. (“A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”)
12) Consonance – repetition of consonants in a line of poetry not necessarily at the beginnings of words
Poetry Vocabulary Activity
1) The old tree bent forward bowing toward the ground as if in respect. What term describes a tree that bows like a human?
2) That boy is a monster in class. Saying “the boy is” is what type of comparison?
3) That letter can’t reflect my talent. Using the letter ‘t’ repeatedly throughout the words can be called what?
4) Boys bound bravely beyond the beach. The repeated ‘b’ at the start of the words is called what?
5) I all alone beweep my outcast state. This is a line in a certain number of syllables and beat called what?
6) Boom the pounding drum! Because the verb ‘boom’ sounds like a drum, it is a use of what?
7) Shakespeare wrote many poems of 14 lines in iambic pentameter called what?
8) This the life I love to live
Is the one I love to give
These two lines in the same beat that rhyme are called what?
9) Now is the time I know so well
The time that rings for listening
These two unrhymed lines in the same beat are called what?
10) Lines of unmetered and unrhymed verse are called what?
11) Write two lines of rhymed verse.
12) Write a line of personification about an object in the room.
13) Write a line of dialogue using an onomatopoeia.
14) Write a line (or two!) of iambic pentameter about this class.