Poetry Terms

Each unit of stressed and unstressed syllables

• poetry

• foot

• rhyme scheme

• couplet

four line stanza

• quatrain

• structure

• meter

• theme

two line stanza

• structure

• quatrain

• lines

• couplet

Groupings of words

• tercet

• meter

• lines

• couplet

the most musical of literary forms

• poetry

• lines

• meter

• couplet

logical sections of ideas, like paragraphs of an essay

• lines

• stanzas

• structure

• couplet

The meaning, moral, or message about life that the author is trying to show the reader

• poetry

• meter

• foot

• theme

The way the words, lines, groups of lines are arranged

• foot

• structure

• rhyme scheme

• theme

three line stanza

• couplet

• quatrain

• tercet

• meter

the pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines

• couplet

• rhyme scheme

• lines

• meter