Anapest
A foot of peotry that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable
Ballad
A short, narrative poem
blank verse
unrhymed iambic pentameter
Caesura
a pause in a line of poetry
Dactyl
A foot of poetry that consists of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables
Dimeter
a line of verse consisting of two metrical feet
End-stop
a line of poetry that ends with punctuation
Enjambment
A poetic statement that spans more than one line
Foot
Any unit of stressed and unstressed syllables
free verse
Poetry that lacks a regular meter of rhyme scene
heptameter
A line of verse consisting of seven metrical feet
heroic couplet
A pair of rhymed lines written in iambic pentameter
Hexameter
a line of verse consisting of six metrical feet
Iamb
a foot with one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
internal rhyme
Similar sounds that occurs within a line of verse
Meter
The rhythmic pattern of syllables in a poem
Monometer
a line of verse consisting of one metrical foot
octameter
a line of verse consisting of eight metrical feet
Octave
an eight-line stanza
Pantoum
A poem of quatrains in which the second/fourth line of each stanza become the first/third lines of the next
Pentameter
a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet
Quatrain
a stanza containing four lines
Refrain
A phrase or line that recurs throughout a poem or song
Sestet
A stanza containing six lines
slant rhyme
Similar sounds that do not rhyme perfectly
Sestina
A posm made up of six sestets and a three-line envoy that employs lexical repetition
Lexical repetition
the organizing principle of sestinas involving recurrent and patterned end-words instead of rhyme
Sonnet
A poem of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter
Spondee
A foot of poetry that containes two stressed syllables
Stanza
Any number of grouped lines in a poem
Tarcet
A group of three lines of verse
Tetrameter
A line of verse consisting of four metrical feet
Trimeter
a line of verse consisting of three metrical feet
Trochee
A font of poetry that contains one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable
Verse
Any rhythmical composition
Villanelle
A nineteen-line poem consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain with only two rhymes
Italian sonnet
a sonnet consisting of an octave with the rhyme pattern abbaabba, followed by a sestet with the rhyme pattern cdecde or cdcdcd, Petrarch
English sonnet
a sonnet consisting three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg, Shakespeare