A ongoing glossary of poetic terms, Beginning with the Alexandrine

Alexandrine, pronounced al ihg ZAN drihn, and also known as an Iambic Hexameter is a line of verse having 12 syllables. It is the most common meter in French poetry.

An example from Alexander Pope, this is perhaps the most famous of Alexandrine couplets.

A needless alexandrine ends the song
that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along

Another famous example is cited in Spenser's "The Faerie Queen" whereupon 8 lines of pentameter are followed by an alexandrine, the 6-foot line slowing the regular rhythm of the 5-foot lines.


TO
THE MOST HIGH,
MIGHTIE
and
MAGNIFICENT
EMPRESSE RENOVV-
MED FOR PIETIE, VER-
TVE, AND ALL GRATIOVS
GOVERNMENT ELIZABETH BY
THE GRACE OF GOD QVEENE
OF ENGLAND FRAVNCE AND
IRELAND AND OF VIRGI-
NIA, DEFENDOVR OF THE
FAITH, &. HER MOST
HVMBLE SERVANT
EDMVND SPENSER
DOTH IN ALL HV-
MILITIE DEDI-
CATE, PRE-
SENT
AND CONSECRATE THESE
HIS LABOVRS TO LIVE
VVITH THE ETERNI-
TIE OF HER
FAME.

Alliteration, pronounced uh liht uh RAY shuhn, occurs when two or more words begin with the same sound.

An example would be the old tongue twister. "She sells sea shells by the sea shore"

Anacrusis, pronounced an uh KROO sihs, is one or more unstressed syllables at the beginning of a line that do not form part of the regular meter, mainly appied to the lyric or verse poems, or unstressed notes in songs. anacrustic, a.

Anapest, pronounced AN uh pehst, refers to a three-syllable foot in which the greatest stress falls on the final syllable

ex. Intercede, unabridged.

Assonance, pronounced AS uh nuhns, is the repetition of vowel sounds with varying consonant sounds. The words mine and night, for example, have assonance of i sounds.

ballad:

An elementary poetic form found in many languages which tells and / or dramatizes a story in a lyrical stanza apt for oral transmission (and singing): four lines of varying length, rhyme scheme abab. The traditional, anonymous ballad sang of wars, feuds, and fatal love stories, often with chilling power and great pathos; While in the Middle Ages singing poets called minstrels wandered over Europe, performing ballads in castles and villages, the modern 'literary' ballad has been used by many 19th-c and 20th-c poets (eg Coleridge, Keats, D H Lawrence, Auden)and has been implimented vastly by modern folk and popular music songwriters.

ballade

Pronunciation: [balad]

An Old French form, consisting normally of three eight-line stanzas and a concluding four-line section, strictly rhymed. Used by de Machaut and Villon, the latter of whom also created the villanelle, in the 14th-15th-c, it has been resurrected by a few sophisticated poets in the 19th-20th-c.

Also a music form, the Polish composer Frederic Chopin first used the term in the 1800's to describe instrumental pieces that combined a lyrical quality with dramatic subject matter.

In 1869, the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti translated Villon's haunting "Ballade of Dead Ladies." In Rossetti's version, the poem's stanzas and envoi end with the famous refrain, "But where are the snows of yester-year?"

Sources: World Book Encyclopedia;
Merriam Webster Encyclopedia;