F

FOOT ~ basic unit measurement of accentual-syllabic meter, usually thought to contain one stressed syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. The standard type of feet in English are, iambic, rochaic, dactylic, anapestic, spondaic, and pyrrhic.

FREE VERSE ~ verse structure without regular meter, may or may not rhyme.

L

LIMERICK ~ a five-line nonsense verse aabba. The first, second and fifth lines have three feet and the third and fourth lines have two feet.

LYRIC ~ a short poem in which the poet, the poet's persona or a speeker expresses personal feelings, and often addressed to the reader.

M

MACARONIC VERSE ~ poems that consist of expressions in more than one language.

MAKER ~ a medieval and early Renaissance term for 'poet.'

METAPHOR ~ comparison or contrast between two nouns to one another [e.g., "I am a rainbow" - comparison of a person and a rainbow. "I am not anger" - contrasting a person and anger]. - The difference between a metaphor and a simile is, a simile uses the words "like" or "as".

METER ~ a recurring pattern of stressed (accented, or long) and unstressed (unaccented, or short) syllables in lines of a set length.

MUSE ~ the source of a poet's or artist's inspiration.

O

OBJECTIFICATION ~ figure of speech. the poet treats an abstract thing or object as if it were a place.

ODE ~ a poem, usually of complex structure and exalted lyrical rhapsodic mood.

ONOMATOPEIA ~ word-formation by imitation of the sound made by what is represented [e.g., 'splash' could be something or someone falling into water].

P

PANEGYRIC ~ a poem in great praise of someone or something [e.g., my piece entitled, "When I Think of You"].

PENULTIMATE ~ of or relating to the next to the last syllable of a word.

PERSONIFICATION ~ the treating of an abstract quality or thing as if it had human qualities.

PLEONASM ~ unnecessary verbiage, redundancy [e.g., 'It was a dark and lightless night'].

POEM ~ defined by Samuel Johnson as "The work of a poet"; a metrical composition.

POESY ~ the art and craft of writing poems, or the poems themselves.

POETASTER ~ a writer of trivial or bad verse.

POETIC LICENSE ~ the right/freedom of a poet to deviate from the conventional rules of syntax, grammer, etc.

POETRY ~ a type of discourse which achieves its effects by rhythm, sound patterns and imagery.

PROSE POETRY ~ continuous, non-end-stopped writing that has other traits of poetry and is, from its content associated with poems.

PUN ~ an expression that uses a homonym [two different words spelled the same] to deliver two or more meanings at the same time ["When Professor Fudge asked his graduate students to bring a really good lay to the next class, their collective opinion of the scholar went up a notch."]