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28 October 2008

Anthimeria

Poetic device.

When one part of speech is used in place of another. Most commonly, nouns in place of verbs.

Example: Table that agenda item until next month.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Anaphora

Poetic device.

The repetitive of parallel structures, such as the beginning phrase of adjacent sentences or lines.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Anapest

Poetic foot.

Notation: xxX

As with the dactyl and amphibrach, the anapest is often used in light verse in English poetry.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Anacrusis

Poetic device.

Adding unstressed syllables to the beginning of a line. These extra syllables are not considered part of the first foot.



© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

27 October 2008

Anaclasis

Poetic Device

Substituting different measures to break up the rhythm. Getting things not quite right.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Anachronism

Poetic Device

Misplacement of an object, event or person chronologically.

Example: Christian church bells announcing the time in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Amphigory

Poetic Term

Nonsense verse, especially in the case of nonsense parodies.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Amphibrach

Poetic Foot

Notation: xXx

A three-syllable rhythmic pattern with a single stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables. Like most triple meters in English amphibrachic lines lend themselves to humorous verse.




© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Allusion

Poetic Device

An indirect reference to some cultural titbit, such as a Greek god or cultural event.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Alliteration

Poetic Device

Repetition of initial or stressed consonants. It is used heavily in accentual verse and sports headlines.

Example: Dodgers dazzle the Sox and leave them dazed.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Allegory

A story in which things and events have some hidden meaning. Often used for moral or Gnostic instruction.

© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Alexandrine

Poetic Line

It comes from the French who don’t believe their language is stressed. As such, their poetry is syllabic, and the Alexandrine is a twelve-syllable line. It is as important to the French as iambic pentameter is to English poetry. In English iambic hexameter is often considered Alexandrine.

Schema:

xX xX xX xX xX xX.
or
xxxxxxxxxxxx


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Adynaton

Poetic Device

Hyperbole on steroids. Adynaton expresses impossibility using extreme comparisons.

Example: Pigs will fly before he gets that machine off the ground.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Adonics

An Adonic is a two-foot line: Xxx Xx or Xxx XX. It is more often found as a tagline on the end of a stanza than as separate stanzas.

© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Acephalexis

Poetic Device

Truncation of unstressed syllables at the beginning of a line.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Accentual-Syllabic Verse

Accentual-syllabic verse is based on counting both stressed and unstressed syllables. It uses specific patterns, such as iambic pentameter or the classical hendecasyllabic. Every syllable counts to create the proper rhythm and flow of the meter. Most of the verse forms that the English created based on Italian or French forms are accentual-syllabic. While blank verse is an exception, many other accentual-syllabic forms rhyme. Geoffrey Chaucer and his generation of poets were largely responsible for the fusion of the accentual of English and the syllabic of French into the modern English accentual-syllabic forms.

© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Accentual Verse

Method of measurement.

Measuring poetry as accentual verse, one only counts the stressed syllables in the line, so a line might have four stresses and anywhere from four to sixteen syllables and still be considered a four-stress line. Many forms of accentual verse use alliteration to tie the stresses together.


© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

24 October 2008

Acatalectic

A verse that has all of its unaccented syllables in the final foot.

© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.

Abstract Language

Language representative of ideas rather than physical objects

© Jem Farmer 2008, all rights reserved.