Selected Poetry Terms

Selected Poetry Terms

Consider using these tools when writing your poem.

Alliteration: the repetition of a sound at the beginning of two or more neighboring words

Example: “I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet” (from “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost)

Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase meaning one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a similarity between them

Example:

"The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on." (From “The Fog” by Carl Sandburg)

Personification: the representation of a thing or idea as a person or by the human form

Example:

“I like to see it lap the miles,

And lick the valleys up,

And stop to feed itself at tanks...”

(From “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson)

Repetition: the act or an instance of repeating

Example:

“Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn....” (From “Ash Wednesday” by T. S. Eliot)

Rhyme: close similarity in the final sounds of two or more words or lines of verse

Example:

“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.” (From “Shall I Compare Thee...” by William Shakespeare)

Simile: a figure of speech in which things different in kind or quality are compared by the use of the word like or as 

Example:

“O My Luve's like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June;

O My Luve's like the melodie

That's sweetly played in tune.”

(From “A Red, Red Rose” by Robert Burns)

Definitions taken from Merriam Webster’s Student Dictionary

care of Smithsonian Institution