| Alliteration: |
the same consonant at the beginning of words repeated for an effect: 'fireside flickers'. |
| Assonance: |
repetition of vowel sounds for an effect: 'icy winds knife us'. The repetition of the
vowel 'i' helps stress the coldness of the 'winds'. |
| Onomatopoeia: |
words which sound like their meaning: 'buzz' and 'click'. |
| Rhythm and rhyme: |
the poem's pace when read aloud and words endings that sound alike for an effect. |
| Couplet: |
a two-line stanza that rhymes. |
| Caesura or cesura: |
means a 'cutting'. It can be any type of punctuation in poetry that causes the reader to pause.
Poets use them to end-stop their lines and to emphasise points and ideas in their poetry.
A caesura can add a great deal of meaning if placed in the middle of the line. |
| Enjambment or run-on line/ run-on stanza: |
one line runs into another to achieve a poetic effect, often
used to aid rhythm and help enact something. |
| Free verse: |
irregular stanzas, filled with lines of varying length. The form suits
conversational and argumentative poems. Free verse was the most popular form of poetry
in the 20th century and still remains so. |
| Stanza: |
a clear section of a poem, usually two or four lines. |
| Verse: |
an entire poem or collection of poems or poetry. |
| Narrator (first and third person): |
if the whole poem is spoken by the first-person narrator,
who is clearly not the poet, then this is known as dramatic monologue. |
| Tone: |
a poet's or narrator's attitude towards their subject and audience. Note that
tone can change within a poem to emphasise changes of meaning. The poet's use of diction
(words deliberately chosen for their associations and sounds) can affect the tone of a poem. |
