POETIC STRUCTURESMarsh9thEnglish.wordpress.com

BASIC STRUCTURAL TERMS Stanza Couplet Triplet Quatrain Sonnet Shakespearean Sonnet Meter Slant/Approximate Eye Rhyme Lyric

STANZA One of the

divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines.

COUPLET A couplet is a pair

of lines of meter in poetry.

It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter

TRIPLET

A group or set of three of one kind. A group of three lines of verse

Terza Rima is a special triplet combo used in Dante’s Divine Comedy

QUATRAIN A quatrain is a stanza, or a complete poem,

consisting of four lines of verse. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations

SONNET One of several forms of poetry originating in Europe,

mainly Great Britain and Italy, and commonly has 14 lines.

The term "sonnet" derives from the Italian word sonetto, meaning "little song" or "little sound".

By the thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure.

The conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history.

The writers of sonnets are sometimes referred to as "sonneteers," although the term can be used derisively.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET One of the best-known sonnet writers is William

Shakespeare, who wrote 154 of them (not including those that appear in his plays).

A Shakespearean, or English, sonnet consists of 14 lines, each line containing ten syllables and written in iambic pentameter, in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times. The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

METER In poetry, meter (metre in

British English) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse.

Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse meter, or a certain set of meters alternating in a particular order.

The study of meters and forms of versification is known as prosody.

SLANT/APPROXIMATE RHYME imperfect rhyme, slant

rhyme, half rhyme, approximate rhyme, near rhyme, off rhyme, oblique rhyme:

These are all general terms referring to rhymes that are close but not exact:

lap/shape glorious/nefarious.

EYE RHYME This refers to rhymes based on

similarity of spelling rather than sound. Often these are highly conventional, and reflect historical changes in pronunciation: love/move/prove, why/envy.

LYRIC a genre of poetry that expresses personal and

emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre.

Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat.

The lyric poem, dating from the Romantic era, does have some thematic antecedents in ancient Greek and Roman verse, but the ancient definition was based on metrical criteria.

Archaic and Classical Greek culture presupposed live performance accompanied by a stringed instrument.