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A. Ostriker


Prosody Glossary

TYPES OF FEET

Iamb (iambic) / Repent!
Trochee (trochaic) / Worship!
Anapest (anapestic) / Disappear!
Dactyl (dactylic) / Glorify!
Spondee (spondaic) / / Go home!
Pyrrhic I am the doubter and the doubt

 

 

LINE LENGTH

Monometer (one foot) How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews.
Dimeter (two feet) Jack and Jill
Went up the hill.
Trimeter (three feet) Adieu, farewell, earth's bliss,
This world uncertain is.
Tetrameter (four feet) The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Earth, receive an honored guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Pentameter (five feet) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Alexandrine (six feet) And like a wounded snake drag its slow length along
English Hexameter (six feet) This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock
Septenary (seven feet) Awake! O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! Expand!
I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine:
Fibres of love from man thro Albions pleasant land.


 

VERSE FORMS

Ballad stanza:

quatrain which usually rhymes abcb, sometimes rhymed abab

 
Blank verse:

unrhymed iambic pentameter

 
Couplets:

pairs of rhyming lines

 
Free verse:

poetry without either rhyme or meter as a structural principle

 
Heroic couplets:

iambic pentameter couplets

 
Ottava rima:

eight-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc

 
Quatrains:

four-line stanzas of any kind

 
Rime royal:

seven-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc

 
Sonnet:

fourteen iambic pentameter lines, in one of the following forms:

1) Petrarchan sonnet: (or Italian sonnet) divides into octet and sestet; octet rhymes abbaabba, sestet rhymes cdecde or cdcdcd (but many English sonneteers use the Petrarchan sonnet with a looser rhyme scheme, while preserving octet-sestet division)

2) Shakespearean sonnet: (or English sonnet) divides into three quatrains and a couplet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg.

 
Spenserian stanza:

nine-line stanza rhyming ababbcbcc

 
Terza Rima:

triplet stanzas rhyming aba bcb cdc . . . etc.

 
Triplets:

three-line stanza or three rhyming lines

 

 

OTHER TERMS

Alliteration:

repetition of initial sounds, usually consonants, e.g., I kissed her ere I killed her.

 
Assonance:

repetition of internal vowel sounds, e.g., Crazy Jane

 
Caesura:

pause within the line

 
End-stopped lines:

lines where the end coincide with a pause

 
Enjambed or run-on lines:

lines where the construction carries over with little or no pause to the following line

 
Eye Rhyme:

rhyming words spelled similarly but pronounced differently, e.g., love-move

 
Feminine ending:

an extra unstressed syllable at the end of a line

 
Inversion and substitution:

the use of nonconforming feet within a line

 
Off-rhyme: rhyming words with different vowel sounds, e.g., hate-heat