Glossary of Poetic Terms

A brief, dramatic pastoral poem, set in an idyllic rural place but discussing urban, legal, political, or social issues. Bucolics and idylls, like eclogues, are pastoral poems, but in nondramatic form. See Edmund Spenser’s “Shepheardes Calendar: April,” Andrew Marvell’s “Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn,” and John Crowe Ransom’s “Eclogue.”

Similar to ethnopoetics in its emphasis on drawing connections between human activity—specifically the making of poems—and the environment that produces it, ecopoetics rose out of the late 20th-century awareness of ecology and concerns over environmental disaster. A multidisciplinary approach that includes thinking and writing on poetics, science, and theory as well as emphasizing innovative approaches common to conceptual poetry, ecopoetics is not quite nature poetry. The influential journal Ecopoetics, edited by Jonathan Skinner, publishes writing that explores “creative-critical edges between making and writing” and features poets such as Jack Collom, Juliana Spahr, and Forrest Gander.

“Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion:

               What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
            What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

            Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
                     Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
            Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
                     Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
            Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
                     Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
                 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
            Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
                   She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
                         For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

            Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
                       Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
            And, happy melodist, unwearied,
                       For ever piping songs for ever new. . . .

See W. S. DiPiero’s poem guide on Robert Browning for more on ekphrasis. Browse more ekphrastic poems.

In traditional English poetry, it is often a melancholy poem that laments its subject’s death but ends in consolation. Examples include John Milton’s “Lycidas”; Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”; and Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.” More recently, Peter Sacks has elegized his father in “Natal Command,” and Mary Jo Bang has written “You Were You Are Elegy” and other poems for her son. In the 18th century the “elegiac stanza” emerged, though its use has not been exclusive to elegies. It is a quatrain with the rhyme scheme ABAB written in iambic pentameter. Browse more elegies.

The brief stanza that ends French poetic forms such as the ballade or sestina. It usually serves as a summation or a dedication to a particular person. See Hilaire Belloc’s satirical “Ballade of Modest Confession.”

A long narrative poem in which a heroic protagonist engages in an action of great mythic or historical significance. Notable English epics include Beowulf, Edmund Spenser’s  The Faerie Queene (which follows the virtuous exploits of 12 knights in the service of the mythical King Arthur), and John Milton’s   Paradise Lost, which dramatizes Satan’s fall from Heaven and humankind’s subsequent alienation from God in the Garden of Eden. Browse more epics.

A detailed, often complex poetic comparison (see simile) that unfolds over the course of several lines. It is also known as a Homeric simile, because the Greek poet Homer is thought to have originated the device in the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. In the following passage from Book I of Paradise Lost, John Milton compares Lucifer’s massive army to scattered autumn leaves:

            His legions—angel forms, who lay entranc’d
            Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
            In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades
            High over-arch’d embow’r; or scatter’d sedge
            Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm’d
            Hath vex’d the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew
            Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
            While with perfidious hatred they pursu’d
            The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
            From the safe shore their floating carkases
            And broken chariot-wheels: so thick bestrown,
            Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
            Under amazement of their hideous change.

A pithy, often witty, poem. See Walter Savage Landor’s “Dirce,” Ben Jonson’s “On Gut,” or much of the work of J.V. Cunningham:

       This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
       Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.

Browse more epigrams.

A quotation from another literary work that is placed beneath the title at the beginning of a poem or section of a poem. For example, Grace Schulman’s “American Solitude” opens with a quote from an essay by Marianne Moore. Lines from Phillis Wheatley’s “On Being Brought from Africa to America” preface Alfred Corn’s “Sugar Cane.” Browse more poems with epigraphs.

A letter in verse, usually addressed to a person close to the writer. Its themes may be moral and philosophical, or intimate and sentimental. Alexander Pope favored the form; see his “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” in which the poet addresses a physician in his social circle. The epistle peaked in popularity in the 18th century, though Lord Byron and Robert Browning composed several in the next century; see Byron’s “Epistle to Augusta.” Less formal, more conversational versions of the epistle can be found in contemporary lyric poetry; see Hayden Carruth’s “The Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill” or “Dear Mr. Fanelli” by Charles Bernstein. Browse more epistles.

A lyric poem in praise of Hymen (the Greek god of marriage), an epithalamion often blesses a wedding and in modern times is often read at the wedding ceremony or reception. See Edmund Spenser’s “Epithalamion.” Browse more epithalamions.