Poetry termsPoetry terms

OxymoronOxymoronis a figure of speech that combines

contradictory terms.Examples:

"And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.“

-Tennyson’s Idylls of the Kings

dark lightliving deadVirtual reality

Oxymoron exampleOxymoron exampleOxymorons are not always a pair

of words; they can also be devised in the meaning of sentences or phrases. The rhyme in the next slide, in which nearly every line contains an oxymoron, serves as an example of various situational oxymorons:

The famous speaker who no one had heard of said: Ladies and jellyspoons, hobos and tramps, cross-eyed mosquitos and bow-legged ants, I stand before you to sit behind you to tell you something I know nothing about. Next Thursday, which is Good Friday, there's a Mother's Day meeting for fathers only, to decide what color to whitewash the church; wear your best clothes if you haven't any. Please come if you can't; if you can, stay at home. Admission is free, pay at the door; pull up a chair and sit on the floor. It makes no difference where you sit, the man in the gallery's sure to spit. The show is over, but before you go, let me tell you a story I don't really know. One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. The blind man went to see fair play; the mute man went to shout "hooray" Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise, and came and killed the two dead boys. A paralysed donkey passing by kicked the blind man in the eye; knocked him through a nine-inch wall, into a dry ditch and drowned them all. If you don't believe this lie is true, ask the blind man; he saw it too, through a knothole in a wooden brick wall.

AssonanceAssonanceResemblance or similarity in sound

between vowels in two or more syllables.

Assonance is only an approximate resemblance of sound, where rhyme is an exact correspondence.

Example:Love and dove are perfect rhymes; lake and fate are examples of assonance.

ConsonanceConsonanceThe repetition at the ends of lines or

words with identical consonant sounds after different vowels.

Examples: yellow and shallow; flock and click