A kind of rhythm, though less regular than that of a metre, eg. the rhythm of speech or free verse.

A pause in a line of verse, often but not always coinciding with a punctuation mark. A caesura most often appears near the middle of a line, but a poet may choose to position it earlier or later. See scansion.

A break in the flow of sound in a line of poetry or can be used for rhetorical effect, as in Alexander Pope's line:
To err is human; || to forgive, divine.

A section of a long poem, such as an epic (or a mock epic); e.g. the first section from Pound's "Cantos."

Literature of the reign of Charles I (1625-42), especially the by the Calvalier poets, who numbered Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and John Suckling, among others.

A type of verse termed by George Puttenham in 1589 "maimed" because it is missing a syllable in the last foot. An acatalectic verse is complete. A hypercatalectic line has an extra syllable.

Japanese form with alternating lines of five and seven syllables, ending with a couplet of seven-syllable lines.

Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of long, short, short, and long syllables / ' ~ ~ ' /; also an iambic alexandrine line with a spondee or trochee instead of an iambus in the sixth foot. For example, Swinburne's "Choriambics."

It is a five line stanza, varied in rhyme and line, usually of the with the rhyme scheme ababb. An example of cinquain is the following stanza from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "To a Skylark":

Teach me half the gladness -A-
That thy brain must know, -B-
Such harmonious madness -B-
From my lips would flow -A-
The world should listen then, as I am listening now. -B-
(B lines rhyme with other B lines, and A lines rhyme with other B lines. This poems last line may not precisely fit this pattern.)

Speaking around a point rather than getting to it, such as S. T. Coleridge's "twice five miles of fertile ground" in "Kubla Khan." Also known as periphrasis.

Poetry Pre-Christian Roman and Greek poets such as Homer, Horace, Virgil, Ovid etc.

A form of light verse, usually consisting of two couplets, with lines of uneven length and irregular meter, the first line usually containing the name of a well-known person. Example:

It was a weakness of Voltaire's
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.

E. Bentley

Experimental poetry which emerged during the 1950-1960s and concentrated on the visual appearance of the words on the page.

Where the poet writes intimately about his/her personal experiences. Confessional poetry is normally written using the 'I' form.

A common way of doing something, such as a poetic form, or a common topic like the "carpe diem" or "ubi sunt" themes, or making lists, or a regularly-used figure of speech.

(Latin, 'crown')
A sonnet sequence where the last line in one sonnet becomes the first line of the next sonnet, and the final line in the sequence repeats the first line of the first sonnet. An example is the seven sonnets that open John Donne's holy sonnets.

Two successive rhyming lines of verse, such as the pair of lines that end a Shakespearean sonnet.

Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of long, short, and long syllables.