SOME POETRY TERMS

And a few examples

ENJAMBMENT French for “striding over” A poetic expression that spans more

than one line. Lines exhibiting enjambment do not end with grammatical breaks, and their sense is not complete without the following line. Sometimes these lines are referred to as “run-on” lines.

EXAMPLE: FROM A SONNET BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1807

“It is a beautious evening, calm and free,The holy time is quiet as a NunBreathless with adoration; the broad sunIs sinking down in its tranquility.”

FROM “AN AGONY” BY AMIRI BARAKA 1964

“I am inside someonewho hates me. I lookout from his eyes. Smellwhat fouled tunes come into his breath. Love hiswretched women.”

CAESURA

A pause in a line of poetry. Sometimes it occurs with punctuation, but occasionally it occurs where a slight pause is inevitable. The caesura is indicated not by the meter of the poem, but by natural speaking rhythm. The caesure is indicated with ||

SOME EXAMPLESFrom Willliam Butler Yeats “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1893)

“I will arise and go now,|| for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping||with low sounds by the shore…”

From Shakespeare:

“To err is human, || to forgive, divine.

From Andrew Marvell “To His Coy Mistress”

“Had we but world enough, ||and time

This coyness, lady, ||were no crime.

We would sit down, ||and think which way

To walk, ||and pass our long love’s day.

APOSTROPHE

A figure of speech in which directly and often emotionally a person who is dead or otherwise not physically present, an imaginary person or entity, something inhuman, supernatural, or a place or concept

The speaker addresses the object of the apostrophe as though it is present and capable of understanding.

AN EXAMPLE:

From “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by Lord Byron:

“I said to Love,‘It is not now as in old daysWhen men adored thee and thy waysAll else above;Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the OneWho spread a heaven beneath the sun.’I said to Love.”

ANOTHER EXAMPLEFrom Narrative of the Life of Frederick

Douglass, An American Slave (yes, apostrophe appears in prose as well)

(Douglass is addressing ships sailing through Chesapeake Bay)

“You are loosed from your moorings and are free; I am fast in my chains and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!

ELISION

The omission of part of a word (typically a letter) and the replacement of it with an apostrophe.

Often employed to make verse more rhythmic, or to conform to a metrical pattern

Like “Ne’er” for “never” or “o’er” for “over”

EXAMPLES“Sol thro’ white curtains shot a tim’rous

ray,And op’d those eyes that must eclipse the day…” (don’t you feel smart for recognizing this?)

From “Beauty” by Abraham Cowley (1656)“Thou flatt’rer which compli’st every

sight! Thou Babel which confound’st the eyeWith unintelligible variety!”(two versions of “apostrophe” here)

CHIASMUS

A rhetorical device in which certain words, sounds, concepts, or syntactic structures are reversed or repeated in reverse order. The term comes from the Greek letter X or “chi” implying that the two parts of a chiastic whole mirror each other like the letter.

EXAMPLES: Shakespeare (from Macbeth)

“Fair is foul and foul is fair”

From The Dead by James Joyce

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling.”

From Coleridge:

“Flowers are lovely, love is flowerlike.”

From John F. Kennedy:

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”