Exploring Poetry: A Student's Guide to Verses and Rhymes

1. Poetry Unit Vocabulary 8th Grade Literature Bethany Howard, Ed.S.

2. Textbook Page 670 • Rhythm: the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables • Elegy: a poem for someone who has died • Meter: a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables • Rhyme: the repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words that are close together • end rhymes: rhymes at the end of lines • Couplet: when two rhyming line are consecutive

3. Textbook page 670 (continued) • internal rhymes: rhymes that occur within lines • exact rhymes: rhymes which end in the exact same sound • approximate rhymes: sounds that are similar but not exactly the same • Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds in several words that are close together • Assonance: repeated vowel sounds • Onomatopoeia: the use of words that imitate sounds or suggest their meaning

4. Textbook Page 672 • Imagery: language that appeals to our senses • Symbol: something that has meaning in itself and also stands for something else • figures of speech: words or phrases that describe one thing in terms of another and are not meant literally • Similes: compare two unlike things using words such as like, as, than, and resembles • Metaphor: makes a comparison without using a connecting word • Extended Metaphor: when poets carry a metaphor over several lines • Personification: a nonhuman thing or inanimate thing is described as if it had human or lifelike qualities

5. Textbook Page 673 • Lines: used in poetry instead of sentences • Stanzas: used in poetry instead of paragraphs • Narrative Poem: poems that tell stories • Ballad: is a song or songlike poem that tells stories • Epics: long narrative poems, originally passed down by word of mouth, that tell about heroes who embody the values of the culture recounting the tale • Lyric Poems: usually do not tell a story instead they express personal thoughts and feelings of the poet or the speaker (poem’s narrator) • Sonnet: a specific type of lyric poem that is always 14 lines long and usually has a specific type of meter • Odes: long, lyric poems that were traditionally written to celebrate a famous person or lofty idea • Free-Verse Poems: do not follow regular meter or rhyme scheme, but they do include other elements of poetry such as rhythm, figures of speech, and alliteration