Techniques glossary

How to Analyse Poetry

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What makes a Poem a Poem?

How to Read and Annotate Poems

Appendices

General techniques

Alliteration The use of identical initial consonant or vowel sounds to stress syllables
Assonance The rhyming of vowel sound
Connotation The suggested meaning of a word in the context of a text
Consonance The duplication of consonant sounds
Hyperbole Exaggerated statements or claims as emphasis in poetic expression
Imagery Visually descriptive or figurative language, employed in poetry to create a certain mental picture
Metaphor A thing regarded as representative of something else
Personification The use of human qualities as a means to poetically assign concepts and characteristics to objects
Repetition The recurrence of the same words or phrases to effectively reiterate or emphasise an idea
Simile A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid
Symbolism The use of symbols to represent poetic ideas or qualities
Tone The voice conveyed through the choice of words, or the viewpoint of a poet and/or persona

Form-specific techniques

Accent stress placed on individual syllables to indicate the intensity of its pronunciation
Analysed rhyme four rhyming end words, each word rhyming assonantally with one of the other words and consonantally with another; an example would be “home...tone...rhyme...mime.”
Clashing accents the juxtaposition of two strongly stressed syllables that has a strong marked effect.
Caesura a brief pause; can be marked with a space by the typesetter.
Endstopping when a strong punctuation mark is employed to conclude a line such as the period, question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semi colon, hyphen or comma.
Enjambment when a line concludes without a punctuation mark to allow the reader to continue reading without a pause; is a key expressive resource in poetry.
Eye rhyme the rhyming of two syllables where vowels pronounced differently are spelled the same and so used as rhyme.
Homophonic rhyme rhyming words that have identical sounds but different connotations based on the context of the line.
Identical rhyme the rhyming of a word with itself.
Interlinear internal rhyme rhyme between words not in end position.
Internal rhyme the presence of rhyming words within a line rather than at the end; often employed to insist phonic echo and hence, is reserved for emphasis.
Line a unit comprised of words that can be examined in isolation as a “stepping stone” for the poem.
Meter auditory stimuli in the form of a pattern that the audience hears and thereafter expects to continue hearing (with only some variations) throughout the work.
Off rhyme or slant rhyme rhyming words with similarities of sound.
Free verse poetry without a regularly recurring numerical principle in its rhythmic construction
Refrain a returning word, line or stanza repeated verbatim at regular intervals throughout a poem.
Rhyme scheme sequences that govern the joint interaction of the stanzas and the periodic recurrence of rhymes; assigned with letters that are repeated every time the same rhyming sounds recur.
Rhythm the pattern of accents in time (measured motion) where the ear is able to hear a recurrent sequence of accents at predictable intervals.
Verse form a poem with a fixed number of lines and rhyme scheme.

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