Term	Pronunciation	Definition
cadence		The progressive rhythmical pattern in lines of verse; also, the natural tone or modulation of the voice determined by the alternation of accented or unaccented syllables. NOTE: Cadence differs from meter in that it is not necessarily regular, but rather a more flexible concept of rhythm such as is characteristic of free verse and prose poetry. (See also accent, ictus, sprung rhythm, stress) (Compare caesura)
caesura	siz-YUR-uh	A rhythmic break or pause in the flow of sound which is commonly introduced in about the middle of a line of verse, but may be varied for different effects. Usually placed between syllables rhythmically connected in order to aid the recital as well as to convey the meaning more clearly, it is a pause dictated by the sense of the content or by natural speech patterns, rather than by metrics. It may coincide with conventional punctuation marks, but not necessarily. A caesura within a line is indicated in scanning by the symbol (||), as in the first line of Emily Dickinson's, I'm Nobody! Who Are You? I'm no | body! || Who are | you? NOTE: As a grammatical, rhythmic, and dramatic device, as well as an effective means of avoiding monotony, the caesura is a powerful weapon in the skilled poet's arsenal. NOTE: Since caesura and pause are often used interchangeably, it is better to use metrical pause for the type of "rest" which compensates for the omission of a syllable. NOTE: A caesura occurring at the end of a line is not marked in the scanning process. NOTE: The classical caesura was a break caused by the ending of a word within a foot. (See diaeresis) (See also alexandrine, hemistich) (Compare accent, cadence, rhythm)
calligram	CAL-ih-gram	Also called concrete poem or pattern poem, poetry in which the letters, words, and lines are configured in such a way that the poem's printed appearance on the page forms a recognizable outline related to the subject, thus conveying or extending the meaning of the words.
canto		A major division of a long or extended poem. A canto of a poem corresponds to a chapter of a novel. (Compare stanza)
canzone	kan-ZO-nee	A medieval Italian or Provençal lyric poem of varying stanzaic form, usually with a concluding short stanza or envoi. NOTE: Milton's pastoral elegy, Lycidas, is an example in English poetry of a canzone-like structure. (Compare ghazal, melic verse, ode, romance, society verse)
carpe diem	KAHR-peh DEE-em	Latin for "seize the day," a common motif in lyric verse throughout the history of poetry, with the emphasis on making the most of current pleasures because life is short and time is flying, as in Robert Herrick's To the Virgins or Edward Fitzgerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
catachresis	kata-KREE-sis	Misuse or abuse of words; the use of the wrong word for the context, as atone for repent, ingenuous for ingenious, or a forced trope in which a word is used too far removed from its true meaning, as "loud aroma" or "velvet beautiful to the touch." (See also enallage, malapropism, mixed metaphor, oxymoron, paradox, solecism, synesthesia)
catalectic, catalexis		Metrically incomplete; the dropping of one or two unaccented syllables from the end of a line, thus ending with an incomplete foot. NOTE: In versification, poets sometimes use catalexis in lines of trochaic and dactylic verse to achieve a final accented syllable for a rhyme, as did William Blake in Tyger! Tyger! (Compare acatalectic, acephaly, hypercatalectic)
cataphora		The use of a grammatical substitute (like a pronoun) which has the same reference as the next word or phrase, as in, "Before him John saw a sea of smiling faces." (Compare antonomasia, metonymy)
cento		Poetry made up of lines borrowed from a combination of established authors, usually resulting in a change in meaning and a humorous effect. (Compare parody, pastiche)
chain rhyme		Also called interlocking rhyme, a rhyme scheme in which a rhyme in a line of one stanza is used as a link to a rhyme in the next stanza, as in the aba bcb cdc, etc. of terza rima or the aaab cccb of La Tour Eiffel. NOTE: Another type of chain rhyme, which is usually referred as rime enchainée, links consecutive line., with the last word of one line rhyming with the first word of the following line. (Compare anadiplosis, envelope rhyme)
chain verse		Similar to chain rhyme, but links words, phrases, or lines (instead of rhyme) by repeating them in succeeding stanzas, as in the pantoum, but there are many variations. (Compare envelope, rondeau)
chanson de geste	shan-SAWN duh ZHEST	Literally, a song of heroic deeds, it refers to a class of Old French epic poems of the Middle Ages, such as the Chanson de Roland, believed to have been written by the Norman poet, Turold. (See jongleur, trouvere) (See also epic, epopee, epos, heroic quatrain) (Compare ballad, narrative, tragedy)
chiasmus	kye-AZ-mus	An inverted parallelism; the reversal of the order of corresponding words or phrases (with or without exact repetition) in successive clauses which are usually parallel in syntax, as in Pope's "A fop their passion, but their prize a sot," or Goldsmith's "to stop too fearful, and too faint to go." NOTE: While the term, chiasmus, is usually used in reference to syntax and word order, it also includes the repetition in reverse of any element of a poem, including sound patterns. NOTE: An antimetabole (an-tye-muh-TAB-uh-lee) is a type of chiasmus in which the words reversed involve a repetition of the same words, as in "do not live to eat, but eat to live," or Shakespeare's "Remember March, the ides of March remember." The distinction is not generally observed, however. (See also anastrophe, hypallage) (Compare envelope, palindrome)
choree	koh-REE	A rare form of trochee, also written as choreus.
cinquain	sing-KANE	A five-line stanza of syllabic verse, the successive lines containing two, four, six, eight and two syllables. The cinquain, based on the Japanese haiku, was an innovation of the American poet, Adelaide Crapsey. (See also quintet)
classicism		The adherence to traditional standards that are universally valid and enduring. (Compare idealism, imagism, impressionism, metaphysical, objectivism, realism, romanticism, symbolism)
clerihew	KLEHR-ih-hyew	A comic light verse, two couplets in length, rhyming aabb, usually dealing with a person mentioned in the initial rhyme. It was named for its originator, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, an English writer, who wrote the following example at age sixteen: Sir Humphrey Davy Detested gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium.
cliché	klee-SHAY	A trite or overused expression or idea.
close rhyme		A rhyme of two contiguous or close words, such as in the idiomatic expressions, "true blue" or "fair and square." NOTE: Close rhymes are a distinguishing characteristic of echo verse. (Compare ricochet words)
closed couplet		A couplet in which the sense and syntax is self-contained within its two lines, as opposed to an open couplet. (See also distich, heroic couplet.
common measure		A meter consisting chiefly of seven iambic feet arranged in rhymed pairs, thus a line with four accents followed by a line with three accents, usually in a four-line stanza. It is also called common meter. NOTE: A meter of four-line stanzas of tetrameter verse is called a long meter (L.M.). A meter of four-line stanzas in which the first, second and fourth are trimeter and the third tetrameter is called a short meter (S.M.). Eight-line stanzas of which the first four are tetrameter and the last four trimeter is called hallelujah meter (H.M.). NOTE: While essentially the same as ballad meter, common measure is more regularly iambic.
companion poem		A poem that is associated with another, which it complements. (See also anthology, canon, cycle, lyric sequence, sonnet sequence.)
conceit		An elaborate metaphor, often strained or far-fetched, in which the subject is compared with a simpler analogue usually chosen from nature or a familiar context. An excellent example of a conceit is Sir Thomas Wyatt's My Galley, an adaptation of Petrarch's Sonnet 159. (See also euphuism, gongorism, marinism, melic verse, metaphysical)
concrete poetry		Poetry that forms a structurally original visual shape, preferably abstract, through the use of reduced language, fragmented letters, symbols and other typographical variations to create an extreme graphic impact on the reader's attention. The essence of concrete poetry lies in its appearance on the page rather than in the written text; it is intended to be perceived as a visual whole and often cannot be effective when read aloud. (Compare pattern poetry, visual poetry)
connotation		The suggestion of a meaning by a word beyond what it explicitly denotes or describes. The word, home, for example, means the place where one lives, but by connotation, also suggests security, family, love and comfort. NOTE: Sometimes one of the connotations of a word gains enough widespread acceptance to become a denotation. (See also allusion, symbol)
consonance		A pleasing combination of sounds; sounds in agreement with tone. Also, the repetition of the same end consonants of words such as boat and night within or at the end of a line, or the words, cool and soul, as used by Emily Dickinson in the third stanza of He Fumbles at your Spirit. (See also euphony, modulation, resonance, sound devices) (Compare alliteration, assonance, rhyme)
content		The substance of a poem; the impressions, facts and ideas it contains--the "what-is-being-said." (Compare diction, form, motif, persona, style, texture, tone)
couplet		Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal length and rhythmic correspondence, with end-words that rhyme. The couplet, for practical purposes, is the shortest stanza form, but is frequently joined with other couplet. to form a poem with no stanzaic divisions, as in Robert Browning's My Last Duchess. NOTE: If the couplet is written in iambic pentameter, it is called an heroic couplet. (See also couplet.>closed couplet./A>. open couplet, distich, elegiac)
crambo		A game in which one player gives a word or line of verse to be matched in rhyme by the other players. (See also bouts-rimes)
criticaster		An inferior or petty critic.
cross rhyme		A rhyme scheme of abab, also called alternate rhyme. The term derives from long-line verse such as hexameter in which two lines have caesural words rhymed together and end words rhymed together, as in Swinburne's Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides; But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides. If the two long lines were to be broken into four short lines, cross rhyming would be apparent. (Compare envelope rhyme)
cycle		The aggregate of accumulated literature, plays or musical works treating the same theme. In poetry, the term is typically applied to epic or narrative poems about a mythical or heroic event or character, such as the Siege of Troy or the Nibelungs of medieval times. NOTE: After the death of Homer, a certain group of epic poets, between 800 and 550 B.C., wrote continuations and additions on the subject of the Trojan War; chief among them were Agias, Arctinos, Eugamon, Lesches and Strasinos. Since their writing was confined to that single subject, they were referred to as cyclic poets. (See also anthology, canon, companion poem, lyric sequence, sonnet sequence.)

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