Glossary Term of the Day

Acmeism

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

An early 20th-century Russian school of poetry that rejected the vagueness and emotionality of Symbolism in favor of Imagist clarity and texture. Its proponents included Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova.

Romance

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

French in origin, a genre of long narrative poetry about medieval courtly culture and secret love. It triumphed in English with tales of chivalry such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” and Troilus and Criseyde.

Heroic couplet

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

See couplet.

Elision

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

The omission of unstressed syllables (e.g., “ere” for “ever,” “tother” for “the other”), usually to fit a metrical scheme. “What dire offence from am’rous causes springs,” goes the first line of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, in which “amorous” is elided to “am’rous” to establish the

Scansion

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

The analysis of the metrical patterns of a poem by organizing its lines into feet of stressed and unstressed syllables and showing the major pauses, if any. Scansion also involves the classification of a poem’s stanza , structure, and rhyme scheme.

Villanelle

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. See “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by. . .

Motif

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A central or recurring image or action in a literary work that is shared by other works and may serve an overall theme. For example, the repeated questions of an ubi sunt poem compose a motif of the fleeting nature of life. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s. . .

Hyperbole

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A figure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration. For example, see James Tate’s lines “She scorched you with her radiance” or “He was more wronged than Job.” Hyperbole usually carries the force of strong emotion, as in Andrew Marvell’s description of a forlorn lover:

The sea. . .

Personification

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person. William Blake’s “O Rose, thou art sick!” is one example; Donne’s “Death, be not proud” is another. Gregory Corso quarrels with a series of personified abstractions in his poem

Quatrain

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A four-line stanza , rhyming
-ABAC or ABCB (known as unbounded or ballad quatrain), as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”
-AABB (a double couplet); see A.E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young.”
-ABAB (known as interlaced, alternate, or heroic), as in Thomas. . .

Ode

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. Its stanza forms vary. The Greek or Pindaric (Pindar, ca. 552–442 B.C.E.) ode was a public poem, usually set to music, that celebrated athletic victories. (See Stephen Burt’s article

Zeugma

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A figure of speech in which one verb or preposition joins two objects within the same phrase, often with different meanings. For example, “I left my heart—and my suitcase—in San Francisco.” Zeugma occurs in William Shakespeare’s “Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun”: “Golden Lads, and Girles all. . .

Heptameter

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A meter made up of seven feet and usually 14 syllables total (see Fourteener). George Chapman’s translation of Homer’s the Iliad is written in heptameter, as is Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee.” See also Poulter’s measure.

Cockney School of poets

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A dismissive name for London-based Romantic poets such as John Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The term was first used in a scathing review in Blackwood’s Magazine in October 1817, in which the anonymous reviewer mocked the poets’ lack of pedigree and sophistication.

Choriamb

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of two stressed syllables enclosing two unstressed; a trochee followed by an iamb. It is rarely used as a metrical scheme in English poetry, though Algernon Charles Swinburne imitated this classical meter in “Choriambics.”

Limerick

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A fixed light-verse form of five generally anapestic lines rhyming AABBA. Edward Lear, who popularized the form, fused the third and fourth lines into a single line with internal rhyme. Limericks are traditionally bawdy or just irreverent; see “A Young Lady of Lynn” or Lear’s “There was an Old. . .

Augustan Age

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

The first half of the 18th century, during which English poets such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift emulated Virgil, Ovid, and Horace—the great Latin poets of the reign of the Emperor Augustus (27 BCE to 14 CE). Like the classical poets who inspired them, the English Augustan writers. . .

Poet laureate

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

According to Virgil , the Greek god Apollo decreed that poets should receive laurels as a prize. The British crown created the post of poet laureate in 1688 and awarded it to poets for life. In the United States, the Library of Congress appoints the position, with the official title of Poet. . .

Postmodernism

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Defined variously as a reaction to modernism or merely the movement that followed it, postmodernism remains a controversial concept. As a term, it tends to refer to an intellectual, artistic, or cultural outlook or practice that is suspicious of hierarchy and objective knowledge and embraces. . .

Metaphor

Fri, 31 May 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A comparison that is made directly (for example, John Keats’s “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”) or less directly (for example, Shakespeare’s “marriage of two minds”), but in any case without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.”. . .

Madrigal

Thu, 30 May 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A song or short lyric poem intended for multiple singers. Originating in 14th-century Italy, it became popular in England in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. It has no fixed metrical requirements. See “Rosalind’s Madrigal” by Thomas Lodge.

Spenserian stanza

Wed, 29 May 2013 06:00:00 GMT

The unit of Edmund Spenser’s long poem The Faerie Queene, consisting of eight iambic-pentameter lines and a final alexandrine, with a rhyme scheme of ABABBCBCC. Later uses of this stanza form include John Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais,” and Alfred Lord. . .

Common measure

Tue, 28 May 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A quatrain that rhymes ABAB and alternates four-stress and three-stress iambic lines. It is the meter of the hymn and the ballad. Many of Emily Dickinson’s poems are written in common measure, including [It was not death, for I stood up]. See also Robert Hayden’s “The Ballad of Nat Turner” and. . .

Alcaic

Mon, 27 May 2013 06:00:00 GMT

A four-line stanza invented by the Classical Greek poet Alcaeus that employs a specific syllabic count per line and a predominantly dactylic meter. Alfred, Lord Tennyson imitated its form in his poem “Milton.”

Curtal sonnet

Sun, 26 May 2013 06:00:00 GMT

See Sonnet.