Some Basics of Poetic Form in English Verse
Meegan Kennedy
Florida State University
Although you should be able to use these terms correctly, you do not need to memorize them.
Use this guide as a quick reference to remind you of the various possibilities at work in a text.
Meter (Measure)
scansion : a method of graphing the stresses of a line of poetry, using È (or x) and ¾ (or ') for unstressed and stressed accents, or musical notes to indicate degrees of stress and length.
prosody : the study of rhythm in poetry, prose, or dialogue
Anglo-Saxon meter : 4-stress lines halved by a caesura, in which 3 of the 4 stresses (preferably at least stresses 1 and 3) alliterate
accentual meter : verse in which only stresses are counted [Eliot, Waste Land opening, Hopkins' overstressed "sprung rhythm," because strength resides in stress]
syllabic meter : verse in which only the number of syllables is counted, lumping stressed in with unstressed syllables [Moore]
accentual-syllabic meter : verse in which the number of stresses, and the total number of syllables, are both counted. The most common form of English verse.
foot :
iamb - / iambic
trochee / - trochaic
anapest - - / anapestic
dactyl / - - dactylic
spondee / / spondaic
pyrrhic - - pyrrhic
double iamb - - / / [pyrrhic-spondee]
Variation in meter
substitution of one foot with another
elision : pronouncing two syllables as one by dropping an unstressed vowel
truncation ( catalexis ): drop final unstressed syllable(s) of a line ending with a trochee or dactyl
courtesy accent : when scanning a poem, according a syllable the stress ( ¾ ) that the poetic form calls for, but that the word itself in that place does not necessarily demand. Not to be mistaken for substitution.
Use parentheses if necessary to indicate a doubtful call ( ¾ ), and think about what is produced by the tension between the expected rhythm and the heard rhythm .
Line1 foot monometer
2 feet dimeter
3 feet trimeter
4 feet tetrameter
5 feet pentameter
6 feet hexameter
7 feet heptameter (fourteeners)
8 feet octameter
end-stopped lines : ending with a natural pause indicated by the syntax and confirmed by the sense of the line
enjambed or run-on lines : a line in which the sense continues on to the next line without a natural syntactical pause, establishing a strong grammatical pull between lines ( enjambment )
caesura : pause in the middle of a line
refrain : repeated line, usually at the end of a stanza
feminine ending : a line ending with an unstressed syllable
Stanza2 lines couplet
3 lines triplet (if rhymed) or tercet
4 lines quatrain
6 lines sestet
8 lines octave
closed or open stanza : like end-stopped or enjambed lines, but at the stanza break
stichic verse : verse without discrete stanzas (usually narrative or dramatic verse)
verse paragraph ( strophe ): a stanza in free verse
Rhyme and rhyme scheme
full or exact or perfect rhyme
half - or off - or near - or slant-rhyme
feminine (double-syllabic) and triple rhymes
eye rhyme : "rhyming" words that look alike but do not have full rhyme
alliteration : repeating consonant sounds (when at end of words, called terminal alliteration ; when at beginning, sometimes called initial rhyme or head rhyme )
consonance : repeating initial and concluding consonant sounds (pararhyme)
assonance : repeating vowel sounds (vowel rhyme)
onomatopoeia ( echoism ): a word or phrase that sounds like what it describes
Remember that rhyme may be internal (within a line) as well as between lines.
blank verse : unrhymed iambic pentameter [Shakespeare's tragedies; Milton, Paradise Lost ]
heroic couplets : closed iambic pentameter couplets [Pope, Essay on Criticism ]
alexandrine : iambic hexameter
terza rima : aba bcb cdc... [Dante, Divine Comedy ; Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind"]
ballad stanza ( common meter or common measure , often used in hymns): quatrain of iambic tetrameter, trimeter, tetrameter, trimeter, rhyming abcb or abab
long meter ( long measure ): iambic tetrameter quatrain
short meter ( short measure ): iambic trimeter quatrain
heroic quatrain ( elegiac stanza ): iambic pentameter quatrain, abab [Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"]
Sapphic stanza (anglicized): quatrain of 3 tetrameters and 1 dimeter line
tail-rhyme ( rime couée ): a six-line stanza of iambic tetrameter, tetrameter, trimeter, tetrameter, tetrameter, trimeter, rhyming aabccb
rime royal : 7 lines of iambic pentameter, ababbcc [Chaucer, Troilus and Criseide ]
ottava rima : 8 lines of iambic pentameter, abababcc
Spenserian stanza : 8 lines of iambic pentameter followed by 1 iambic hexameter, abab bcbc c
sonnet : 14 lines of iambic pentameter, with a "turn"
Shakespearean or Elizabethan or English sonnet : 3 quatrains and a couplet, abab cdcd efef gg
Italian or Petrarchan sonnet : an octave and a sestet, abbaabba cdecde or cdcdcd
Spenserian sonnet : three quatrains and a couplet, abab bcbc cdcd ee
[ Sidney's sonnet : Elizabethan sonnet in iambic hexameter]
villanelle : 5 triplets and a quatrain, aba aba aba aba aba abaa, repeating entire lines as follows: aXc XXa XXc XXa XXc XXac [Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"]
sestina : 6 sestets and 1 triplet, repeating the words at the ends of lines as follows: abcdef faebdc cfdabe ecbfad deacfb bdfeca and in the triplet in midline and line end, be - dc - fa
free verse or vers libre : verse written without a particular metrical pattern. Free verse is NOT verse written without form, without rhythm, without rhyme, or without pattern.
run-on
end-stopped (contrast to stacked prose , in which line breaks occur only at each syntactical break)
syllabic
aubade : a lovers' morning farewell
epigram : a short and witty commentary
epistle : an informal lyric written as if a letter to a friend
epithalamium : a lyric celebrating a marriage [Spenser, "Epithalamion"]
elegy : a formal lyric of mourning
pastoral : a lyric about love in a rural, idyllic setting (think shepherds)
satire : a mocking critique of evil or foolishness
ode : a formal, ceremonial, complex lyric, generally in celebration or commemoration of a person or object, but sometimes to mark a moment of crisis
For more information, see the appendix on "Versification" in your Norton Anthology of Poetry (1103-22). See also Paul Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form , rev. ed. (NY: U Penn Press, 1979) and John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse , enl. ed. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1989). The ultimate guide is the Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms , ed. Alex Preminger, with Frank J. Warnke and O.B. Hardison, Jr (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986).