abstract, abstraction-- Abstractions are qualities and characteristics isolated as pure ideas. The word is derived from the Latin 'abstractus', which means literally "drawn away from." Thus an abstraction is a quality or idea considered apart from the thing or situation it is connected to. Sweetness, whiteness, roughness are abstract, but sugar is concrete. Concrete is derived from the Latin 'concretus' which means "grown together." As Ezra Pound said: "Go in fear of abstractions...the natural object is always the adequate symbol."
alliteration - The repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables, as in "on scrolls of silver snowy sentences" (Hart Crane). Modern alliteration is predominantly consonantal; certain literary traditions, such as Old English verse, also alliterate using vowel sounds.
allusion-- Literary definition: A reference to some event, person, or place of literary or historical significance. Common definition: a reference to some event, person, place, thing, or idea, by another such thing. The act of alluding; indirect reference: Without naming names, the candidate criticized the national leaders by allusion. An instance of indirect reference: an allusion to classical mythology in a poem.
archetype - The word "archetype" was coined by Carl Jung, who theorized that humans have a collective unconscious, "deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity.... a kind of readiness to reproduce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas...." This shared memory of experiences has resulted in a resonance of concepts such as 'hero' and 'heroine' that transcend time, place and culture. Jung called these recurring personalities archetypes, from the Greek word archetypos, meaning "first of its kind."
The archetype may emerge into consciousness in myriads of variations. To put it another way, there are a very few basic archetypes or patterns which exist at the unconscious level, but there are an infinite variety of specific images which point back to these few patterns. Since these potentials for significance are not under conscious control, we may tend to fear them and deny their existence through repression. This has been a marked tendency in Modern Man, the man created by the French Revolution, the man who seeks to lead a life that is totally rational and under conscious control.
Where do the archetypes come from? In his earlier work, Jung tried to link the archetypes to heredity and regarded them as instinctual. We are born with these patterns which structure our imagination and make it distinctly human. Archetypes are thus very closely linked to our bodies. Archetypes are elemental forces which play a vital role in the creation of the world and of the human mind itself.
The ancients called them elemental spirits How do archetypes operate? Jung found the archetypal patterns and images in every culture and in every time period of human history. assonance--. Resemblance of sound, especially of the vowel sounds in words, as in: "that dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea" (William Butler Yeats) or scream and beach 2. The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening consonants, as in the phrase tilting at windmills. 3. Rough similarity; approximate agreement breath-- The usage of pauses to alter the pacing of a poem, through punctuation, line length and meter. The William Carlos Williams poem Iris has a very quick breath: short, receding lines and no punctuation. This gives the poem not a sense of contemplation, but of immediate bursting. The poem, To a Dog Injured in the Street however, is opposite to Iris. It moves with a different pace: its much more languid (though still intensive and vivid), particularly with the repetitions of certain words and sounds (of a bomb, a bomb that has laid...). These stylistic choices are not accidents. They are conscious attempts to write the best poem possible in regards to what words the poet uses, what the poet's voice consists of, use of subject matter, etc.
cliché-- Any expression which has lost all freshness and vitality because of continued use in the public. That is, an expression which has become trite. Needless to say, go in fear of these. cacophony - Jarring, discordant sound; dissonance: heard a cacophony of horns during the traffic jam. 2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition, as for poetic effect
consonance-- the repetition of consonant sounds, often employed to create a certain mood or effect. The repetition of liquid (r, l, s,) sounds contributes to a softened effect. The repetition of fricative (f, ch, sh) or plosive (p, t, g) sounds will create different effects.
Feeling each full, cherished, touch
Past twin goats, into the night
connotation - The act or process of connoting. 2a. An idea or meaning suggested by or associated with a word or thing: Hollywood holds connotations of romance and glittering success. b. The set of associations implied by a word in addition to its literal meaning denotation - The act of denoting; indication. 2. Something, such as a sign or symbol, that denotes. 3. Something signified or referred to; a particular meaning of a symbol. 4. The most specific or direct meaning of a word, in contrast to its figurative or associated meanings
diction-- The choice of words in poetry or in other forms of writing. The choice of words in any given poem must be determined by the needs of that specific case in terms of the whole context of the poem. Synonymous in some ways with idiom.
end-stopped-- When the end of a line in a poem coincides with a normal pause (usually a period, but also a comma).
enjambment-- Kinda the opposite of end-stopped. When the end of the line does not coincide with a normal speech pause of any kind. An example of the these two definitions can be seen from Donald Hall:
Above the crowd he holds his breathing box (enjambment)
That only empties, fills, empties, fills. (end-stopped)
epigraph-- A brief inscription at the beginning of a poem. It can be a quotation, a piece of historical context for the poem to follow, or a dedication.
euphony - Agreeable sound, especially in the phonetic quality of words hyperbole - A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.
image, imagery-- The use of vivid or figurative language to represent objects, actions, or ideas. The representation of any sense experience is called imagery. Imagery does not consist merely of mental pictures but may make an appeal to any of the senses. There are two basic approaches the writer can take. When using literal language, you're telling it how it is, as truthfully descriptive that language is capable of being. Note that this does not mean flat or boring; it can be used judiciously to great effect. Wild as the images may be, within the internal realm of the poem itself, they may be quite literal. For example, in a poem a poet may write, "My shell cracked and fell shattered to the unforgiving floor." The poem's speaker would not be saying, 'I was protected as a tortoise in a shell.' The speaker of the poem had the shell, and made amour of it. The juxtaposition of the unreal (the objects themselves) and the realistic (the declarative style in which they are described) can be an interesting strategy to write your poems. Figurative language uses comparisons in a variety of ways to create images. Two frequently used aspects of the figurative include the metaphor and simile, which have their own headings.
irony - figure of speech in which what is stated is not what is meant. The user of irony assumes that his reader or listener understands the concealed meaning of his statement. Perhaps the simplest form of irony is rhetorical irony, when, for effect, a speaker says the direct opposite of what she means. Thus, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, when Mark Antony refers in his funeral oration to Brutus and his fellow assassins as "honorable men" he is really saying that they are totally dishonorable and not to be trusted. Dramatic irony occurs in a play when the audience knows facts of which the characters in the play are ignorant. The most sustained example of dramatic irony is undoubtedly Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus searches to find the murderer of the former king of Thebes, only to discover that it is himself, a fact the audience has known all along.
metaphor-- A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare). 2. One thing conceived as representing another; a symbol: "Hollywood has always been an irresistible, prefabricated metaphor for the crass, the materialistic, the shallow, and the craven." A comparison not using like or as. Robert Frost suggests that poetry is essentially a way of saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another. Considering metaphor is one of the prime strategies of contemporary poetry of all types, there are tons of examples. Remember: comparison is only the method of metaphor; the function is to arrive at, and communicate, insight.
metonymy - figure of speech in which an attribute of a thing or something closely related to it is substituted for the thing itself. Thus, "sweat" can mean "hard labor," and "Capitol Hill" represents the U.S. Congress.
meter-- Aligned with rhythm, and what some in earlier times called the music of the poem, meter is most commonly described as a relationship between stressed and unstressed syllabus (it comes from the Greek word metros: to count). What does this mean? Remember that poetry, up until about 120 years ago, was mainly an oral form of literature, spoken aloud. Meter, because of this, will always be an integral part of poetry, even in free verse. Consider this stanza by Richard Wilbur:
An axe angles
from my neighbors ashcan.
It is hell's handiwork,
the wood not hickory.
Free verse? Not exactly. Read it aloud and you'll notice that each half-line contains two stressed syllables (shown in caps: An AXE ANGles/from my NEIGHbors ASHcan...) and any number of unstressed syllables. What Wilbur is utilizing is an Old English form of poetry that gives the stanza above a solidity that it might not otherwise have. As you can see, rhythm doesn't necessarily mean singsongy and it doesn't have to be associated with rhyme in order to be used effectively. The reading of a poem with meter in mind is called scansion, and has its own subset of terms.
onomatopoeia - when a word's sound mimics its meaning, like buzz, rush, dunk. This is a highly effective device utilized in creative writing. personification - A physical entity typifying an abstraction: embodiment, exteriorization, externalization, incarnation, manifestation, materialization, objectification, personalization, substantiation, type. Rhetoric : prosopopeia (A physical entity typifying an abstraction).
personification-- Giving human characteristics to an object. Laura Jensen's poem "Kitchen" has a great, borderline personification: "Milk is a satisfied whisper." That line would be more personification than metaphor if stated something like The milk whispered, satisfied.
rhyme-- You know what rhyme is by definition. Yet it has many variations beyond the roses are red, violets are blue, etc etc variety. Its ordinarily used in the sense of end rhyme (ending lines), but there are also internal rhymes that might be used to great effect within the line unit:
The horsehead clouds
raise manes. I hope the rains
keep short.
simile - in rhetoric, a figure of speech in which an object is explicitly compared to another object. Robert Burns's poem "A Red Red Rose" contains two straightforward similes:
My love is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June
My love is like the melody
That's sweetly played in tune.
The epic, or Homeric, simile is an elaborate, formal, and sustained simile derived from those of Homer. slant rhymes-- Slant rhymes are approximate rhymes that somewhat stretch against what is considered a rhyme in the first place: lover and trove, form and harm, sparse and harsh. Using this will allow your rhymed poems (if you choose to write any) to have the flexibility and appearance of free verse, and not be weighed/bogged down by a conceivably plodding or (even worse) singsongy rhyme.
simile-- A comparison using 'like' or 'as'. "His smile was like the crack in a broken mirror that you knew brought someone 7 years of bad luck."
speaker - (of the poem or narrator of prose)- 1st person voice, "I"; 2nd person, "you"; 3rd person, "He/she/they/Bob"; 3rd person omniscient- all seeing eye.
tone-- How an emotional capacity is conveyed through the language in the poem, often through an implied context and (surprise, surprise) concrete imagery, not to mention the inclusion of certain kinds of details and exclusion of others. Note that some poems can interchange tones, or begin and end with completely different ones. In Jensen's "Kitchen" you can imagine the speaker to be angry and upset. Yet with the final two questions, it shifts into either being plaintative or utterly sarcastic. Or (paradoxically, but poems are full of paradoxes) both. This can be argued according to your own reading and writing experience, of course. Remember that in general its good to make your tone clear. Use nuances and subtle hints to establish it. Confusion for its own sake usually doesn't work.