Terminology for English Poetry

1. Etymology & Foundational Concepts

Epos (Greek ἔπος) — Literally “word,” “speech,” “story,” “song,” or “poem.” Example: The Homeric epics (Iliadand Odyssey) are the classic epos — long narrative poems recounting heroic deeds and foundational myths.
Epic — Long narrative poem of elevated style celebrating heroic action, gods, battles, or national origins.Example: John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) — a secondary epic in blank verse about the fall of man.
Lyric — Short, personal, musical poetry expressing emotion or thought (originally sung to the lyre). Example: Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
Verse — A single line of poetry, a stanza, or poetry in general. Example: “To be, or not to be” (a single line of verse from Shakespeare).

2. Basic Structural Elements: Lines, Stanzas & Grouping

Line — The basic unit of poetry. Example: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (one line from a sonnet).
Stanza — A grouped block of lines. Example: A four-line stanza (quatrain) from a ballad.
Couplet — Two-line stanza (often rhyming). Example: “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.” (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)
Tercet (triplet) — Three-line stanza. Example: “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,” (Shelley)
Quatrain — Four-line stanza (most common in English). Example: “Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (William Blake)
Quintain (quintet) — Five-line stanza. Example: The five-line stanzas of a limerick.
Sestet — Six-line stanza. Example: The final six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
Septet — Seven-line stanza. Example: Used in some rhyme royal poems (e.g., Chaucer).
Octave (octet) — Eight-line stanza. Example: The first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
Canto — Major division in a long poem. Example: Dante’s Inferno is divided into 34 cantos.
Terza rima — Interlocking tercets with rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc… Example (Dante’s Inferno, opening): “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” (Note how “life” rhymes with “dark” in the next tercet’s middle line.)

3. Meter, Rhythm & Prosody

Iamb (iambic foot) — Unstressed–stressed (˘ /). Example: “to BE or NOT to BE” (iambic).
Trochee — Stressed–unstressed (/ ˘). Example: “TYger TYger BURning BRIGHT” (trochaic).
Anapest — Unstressed–unstressed–stressed (˘ ˘ /). Example: “’Twas the NIGHT before CHRISTmas” (anapestic).
Dactyl — Stressed–unstressed–unstressed (/ ˘ ˘). Example: Classical epic meter (dactylic hexameter).
Iambic pentameter — Five iambic feet per line (10 syllables). Example: Most of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets.
Caesura — Strong pause inside a line. Example: “To be, || or not to be” (pause after “be”).
Enjambment — Sense runs over the line break. Example: “I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills,” (Wordsworth — no pause at end of first line).

4. Rhyme Schemes & Sound Devices

Alliteration — Repetition of initial consonant sounds. Example: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”
Assonance — Repetition of vowel sounds. Example: “fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese.”
Consonance — Repetition of consonant sounds anywhere. Example: “The ship has sailed on the deep blue sea.”
Onomatopoeia — Words that imitate sounds. Example: “The buzz of the bee” or “crash, bang, wallop.”
Anaphora — Repetition at the start of lines. Example: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds…” (Churchill, used poetically).
Refrain — Repeated line or stanza. Example: “Nevermore” in Poe’s “The Raven.”

5. Poetic Forms & Genres (with Examples)

Sonnet — 14 lines, usually iambic pentameter.
- Shakespearean (English) sonnet — Rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. Example: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) — ends with the famous couplet about poetry granting immortality.
- Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet — Octave abbaabba + sestet cdecde. Example: Many sonnets by Petrarch or Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese.
- Spenserian sonnet — Rhyme scheme abab bcbc cdcd ee. Example: Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti sequence.
Terza rima (see section 2) — Interlocking tercets. Example: Percy Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” uses a modified terza rima.
Abecedarius (abecedarian) — Lines begin with successive alphabet letters (A–Z). Example (modern short version): A pples are crisp in the autumn air, B reezes whisper secrets everywhere, C louds drift slowly across the sky…
Trenza (Braided poem) — Multiple narrative or thematic strands interwoven like a braid. Example: Contemporary poets often braid personal history with myth, or multiple voices in one poem (e.g., works exploring identity, migration, or memory where threads of different stories twist together).
Epic / Epos (see section 1) — Long heroic narrative. Example: Homer’s Iliad (primary epic) or Milton’s Paradise Lost (secondary epic).
Haiku — 3 lines, traditionally 5-7-5 syllables, nature-focused. Example (Bashō): “An old silent pond… A frog jumps into the pond— Splash! Silence again.”
Villanelle — 19 lines with two repeating refrains. Example: Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” — the lines “Do not go gentle…” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” repeat throughout.
Sestina — 6 sestets + tercet with rotating end-words. Example: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina” (the six end-words: house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, tears).
Pantoum — Quatrains with repeating lines that weave forward and back. Example: Modern pantoums often create a hypnotic, echoing effect.
Ghazal — Independent couplets linked by rhyme + refrain. Example: Many ghazals by the Persian poet Hafez or contemporary American ghazals.
Ode — Formal poem of praise. Example: Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” or “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
Elegy — Poem of mourning. Example: Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”
Ballad — Narrative poem/song, often in quatrains. Example: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge or traditional folk ballads.
Acrostic — First letters spell a word or message. Example: Many children’s poems where the first letters spell a name.
Concrete / Visual poetry — Words form a shape. Example: George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” (the poem is shaped like wings on the page).
Free verse — No fixed meter or rhyme. Example: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass or most contemporary poetry.
Blank verse — Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Example: Shakespeare’s plays and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

6. Poetic Devices & Figurative Language (with Examples)

Metaphor — Direct comparison. Example: “All the world’s a stage” (Shakespeare).
Simile — Comparison with “like” or “as.” Example: “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (Wordsworth).
Personification — Human qualities to non-humans. Example: “The wind whispered through the trees.”
Hyperbole — Exaggeration. Example: “I’ve told you a million times.”
Oxymoron — Contradictory terms. Example: “Bittersweet,” “jumbo shrimp,” or “deafening silence.”
Apostrophe — Direct address to absent person or thing. Example: “O Death, where is thy sting?” (from the Bible, used in poetry).
Allusion — Reference to external work or myth. Example: T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is packed with allusions to mythology, literature, and religion.
Allegory — Extended symbolic story. Example: George Orwell’s Animal Farm (political allegory).
Symbolism — Object represents something larger. Example: The raven in Poe’s poem symbolizes unending grief.
Volta — The “turn” in thought (especially in sonnets). Example: In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, the volta comes in the final couplet with “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare…”

7. Styles, Movements & Broader Categories

Movements: Romanticism (Wordsworth, Keats), Modernism (Eliot, Pound), Beat (Ginsberg), Confessional (Plath, Sexton), etc.

Lyric poetry — Personal and emotional. Example: Most of Sylvia Plath’s or Pablo Neruda’s shorter poems.

Narrative poetry — Tells a story. Example: Epics, ballads, and verse novels.

Dramatic poetry — Monologues or dialogues. Example: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.”

Pastoral — Idealized rural life. Example: Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”

Ekphrastic — Responds to visual art. Example: John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”

Erasure / Blackout poetry — Created by redacting text. Example: Tom Phillips’ A Humument or contemporary erasure projects.

Movements: Romanticism (Wordsworth, Keats), Modernism (Eliot, Pound), Beat (Ginsberg), Confessional (Plath, Sexton), etc.

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