Meter

The rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. The predominant meter in English
poetry is accentual-syllabic. See also accentual meter, syllabic meter, and quantitative meter. Falling
meter refers to trochees and dactyls (i.e., a stressed syllable followed by one or two unstressed
syllables). Iambs and anapests (i.e., one or two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one) are
called rising meter. See also foot.

Rime

A rime is the part of a syllable which consists of its vowel and any consonant sounds that come after it.
Here are some examples of syllables divided into onsets and rimes: Word.

Rhythm

An audible pattern in verse established by the intervals between stressed syllables. “Rhythm creates a
pattern of yearning and expectation, of recurrence and difference,” observes Edward Hirsch in his essay
on rhythm, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” See also meter.

Imagery

Elements of a poem that invoke any of the five senses to create a set of mental images. Specifically,
using vivid or figurative language to represent ideas, objects, or actions. Poems that use rich imagery
include T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,”
and Mary Oliver’s “At Black River.”

Imagism

An early 20th-century poetic movement that relied on the resonance of concrete images drawn in
precise, colloquial language rather than traditional poetic diction and meter. T.E. Hulme, H.D., and
William Carlos Williams were practitioners of the imagist principles as laid out by Ezra Pound in the
March 1913 issue of Poetry (see “A Retrospect” and “A Few Don'ts”). Amy Lowell built a strain of
imagism that used some of Pound's principles and rejected others in her Preface to the 1916 anthology,
Some Imagist Poets. Browse more imagist poets.

Senses

Senses poems share what we can see, hear, smell, touch and taste using lots of adjectives to create a
descriptive poem. Explaination. You need a subject matter to write about. Pick two things to write about
that are opposites so a variety of words can be used to describe them.

Figurative Language

The use of any language that goes beyond the literal meaning of words in order to create new meaning.
The most common figures of speech are simile, metaphor, and alliteration. ... Metaphor: a figure of
speech that compares two unlike things, without the use of like or as.

Language poetry

Taking its name from the magazine edited by Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews
(L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E), Language poetry is an avant garde poetry movement that emerged in the late
1960’s and early 1970’s as a response to mainstream American poetry. It developed from diverse
communities of poets in San Francisco and New York who published in journals such as This, Hills,
Tottels, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and Tuumba Press. Rather than emphasizing traditional poetic techniques,
Language poetry tends to draw the reader’s attention to the uses of language in a poem that contribute
to the creation of meaning. The writing associated with language poetry, including that by Michael
Palmer, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Susan Howe, Rae Armantrout, and many others, is often associated
with deconstruction, poststructuralism, and the Objectivist tradition. Browse more Language poetry.
Poetic language

the language most often (but not exclusively) used in poetry. The key is that poetry is much more
compressed than fiction (short stories or novels for instance). Since the language is denser in a poem,
the word order is so much more significant.

Alliteration

The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line.
Alliteration need not reuse all initial consonants; “pizza” and “place” alliterate. Example: “With swift,
slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim” from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty.” Browse poems with
alliteration.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme. See Amy
Lowell’s “In a Garden” (“With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur”) or “The Taxi” (“And shout into the
ridges of the wind”). Browse poems with assonance.

Onomatopoeia

A figure of speech in which the sound of a word imitates its sense (for example, “choo-choo,” “hiss,” or
“buzz”). In “Piano,” D.H. Lawrence describes the “boom of the tingling strings” as his mother played the
piano, mimicking the volume and resonance of the sound (“boom”) as well as the fine, high-pitched
vibration of the strings that produced it (“tingling strings”).