The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

by Stephen Fry

  aubade A poetic celebration of dawn or a lament at daybreak’s interference with lovers and their private bliss e.g. Romeo and Juliet: ‘But soft what light at yonder window breaks?’, Donne’s ‘The Sun Rising’ etc. Also called an alba.

  ballad Traditional verse form, often sung, usually in four-stress cross-rhyming quatrains, often alternating with three-stress lines. Not to be confused with ballade or salad q.v.

  ballade Verse form of three stanzas, three rhymes and envoi: ababbabA ababbabA ababbabA babA.

  bang, bang, bang – crash! Michael Alexander’s phrase describing the alliterative principle behind Anglo-Saxon verse. Three alliterated stresses followed by a non-alliterated one.

  bathos, bathetic A (comic or pathetic) failure to achieve dignity, a banal anticlimax.

  binary A metrical foot of two units: iambic, trochaic, spondaic or pyrrhic.

  blank verse Non-rhyming verse: most often applied to iambic pentameter, such as that found in Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Wordsworth’s The Prelude.

  burden A refrain, q.v.

  cadence Lit. ‘falling’, the natural rhythm derived from accentuation, i.e. the rise and fall of stress. The sound that precedes a pause.

  caesura Of metrical verse: a pause or breath in mid line.

  canto A series of long poems.

  canzone A lyric poem, usually with envoi.

  catalexis, catalectic Truncation: the docking of a final metrical unit, such as the last feminine syllable of a trochaic line.

  cataplexis, cataplectic Hardly relevant, but a fun word. It means a poetical or rhetorical threatening of punishment, horror or disaster. Like King Lear’s ‘I will do such things, What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth’.

  cauda, caudate sonnet Lit. tail. A three-line coda to a sonnet, consisting of a trimeter and two pentameters.

  cento A collage poem made up of lines of real verse from different poems.

  chant royal A sixty-line poem with envoi. I spared you it in Chapter Three out of care for your sanity.

  chiasmus From the Gr. letter chi, meaning a ‘crossing’ of sense. A common rhetorical figure, ‘It’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men’, ‘one should eat to live, not live to eat’, ‘Real pain for sham friends, Champagne for real friends’ etc.

  choliamb A scazon q.v. – kind of metrical substitution, usually with ternary feet replacing binary. Forget about it.

  chronogram A gematric q.v. poem or motto whose letters when added as Roman numerals make up a significant number, such as a date: e.g. Lord have mercie vpon vs = 1666 (or 1464 or permutations thereof).

  cinquain A stanza of five lines. Esp. in reference to the verse of Adelaide Crapsey.

  clerihew From Edmund Clerihew Bentley. A non-metrical comical and biographical quatrain whose first line is the name of its subject.

  clipped As acephalous q.v., omission of the first metrical unit in a line of verse.

  closed form Any form of verse whose stanza length, rhyme scheme and other features are fixed.

  closet drama Not, as you might think, the hysterics attendant upon coming out, but a play written to be read, not performed. A genre invented by the Roman playwright Seneca.

  Cockney School Blackwood (of Magazine fame) and the Quarterly Review q.v. used this snobbish and wholly inappropriate appellation to describe the ‘bad’ poetic diction of Keats and Leigh Hunt and their circle. Byron, too, ‘disapproved of that School of Scribbling’ and believed Keats guilty of wasting his talents in ‘Cockneyfying and Suburbing’ (letter to John Murray, 1821).

  common metre ballad metre, i.e. 4-3-4-3, rhyming abab or abcb

  conceit An extended metaphor or fanciful image.

  connotation The associative, implied meaning of a word, as opposed to its denotation q.v.

  consonance A loose or exact repetition of consonant sounds either used internally, or as partial rhyme. ‘And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old’, fuck/fork, pushing/passion, past the post etc.

  corona sequence A sonnet sequence where the last line of a sonnet is used as the first line of the next. The final sonnet will end with the opening line of the first in the sequence.

  coronach A threnody or funeral dirge.

  counter-turn Ben Jonson’s word for antistrophe q.v.

  couplet A pair of rhyming lines.

  cretic Alternative name for the amphimacer q.v., after the Cretan poet Thaletas.

  cross-rhyme End-rhyming of alternate lines: abab cdcd etc.

  curtal Name for a sonnet that falls short of the usual fourteen lines, if such a thing can be said to exist. Properly speaking, the Hopkins stanza with an octave reduced to a sestet.

  cynghanedd From Welsh poetry, a style of interlaced alliteration:as employed by Hopkins.

  dactyl Ternary foot. , or long-short-short in classical prosody.

  denotation The strict, literal meaning of a word, stripped of its connotation q.v., colour, suggestion, implications etc.

  diacritic -al A sign, such as an accent or cedilla, that goes above or below a letter to indicate a change in pronunciation.

  diamante Wretchedly silly diamond-shaped verse form in which one word becomes its opposite or antithesis according to pointless rules that I can’t be bothered to go into again.

  diction In poetry, the choice of words. The discourse, frame of reference, atmosphere, coloration and other aspects of word choice are all elements of poetic d.

  didactic Lit. ‘teaching’ – writing that intends (usu. moral) instruction.

  dieresis Diacritical mark – the two dots used to show that a diphthong’s vowel sounds should be pronounced separately, ‘Noël’, ‘naïve’; etc. In metre, a word meaning a natural caesura (i.e. one that does not break a word or clause).

  dimeter A verse line of two metric feet.

  diminishing rhyme A rhyme scheme where each new rhyme takes a syllable or letter less than its predecessor: promotion, emotion, motion, ocean and passing, arsing, sing etc.

  diphthong Two vowels together.

  dipodic Composed of two feet (as most humans are).

  dirge A mourning, wailing lament.

  dithyramb, dithyrambic Wild choral Dionysiac celebratory verse. Often used to describe overblown poetic diction q.v.

  divine afflatus (Now mock comic) phrase used to describe poetic inspiration.

  dramatic monologue (Non theatrical) verse in the voice of a character, often addressing another imaginary character or the reader him/herself. ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘Andrea del Sarto’, sections of The Waste Land etc.

  eclogue From Virgil, pastoral poem.

  elegiac Of mourning. The elegiac quatrain abab in iambic pentameter was developed by Thomas Gray for his country churchyard.

  elision The omission of words or parts of words.

  encomium Praise song or ode for a (usu. living) person.

  endecasíllabo Italian name for a hendecasyllabic line of iambic pentameter.

  end-rhyming The rhyming of final words, or final stressed syllables in lines of verse. Usual rhyming, in fact.

  end-stopped Lines of verse which do not run on in sense, but whose thought ends with the line. Lines without enjambment q.v.

  enjambment The running-on of sense over the end of a line of verse. Verse that is not end-stopped q.v.

  entry Just testing to see whether you had got to q.v. q.v. yet.

  envelope rhyme A couplet nested in two outer rhymes, as in abba.

  envoi A short stanza of summation or conclusion at the end of a poem. Found in certain closed forms, such as the sestina and ballade q.q.v.

  epanalepsis General word for repetition or resumption of a theme.

  epanaphora Extreme anaphora q.v. As in Wendy Cope’s ‘My Lover’ in which every line begins with the word ‘For’.

  epanodos Recapitulation and expansion of an image or idea.

  epigram Memorably witty remark, saying or observation.

  epistrophe Repetition at the
end of clauses or sentences:‘When I was a child, I spake as I child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child’ etc.

  epithalamium A poem celebrating a wedding: nuptial or hymeneal verse. No specific formal requirements. Much the same as prothalamium to be honest.

  epode The third part of the Pindaric Ode’s triad. Called by Jonson the stand.

  esemplastic Rather fine word coined by Coleridge to describe an unlike imaginative union of two qualities or things.

  expletive A word or words used to fill the metrical requirements of a line. The iambic pentameter ‘He thus did sit him down upon the rock’, is saying no more than ‘he sat on the rock’, the other five words are expletives.

  fabliau A (sometimes comic) tale, originally medieval French, now applied to any short moral fable in verse or prose.

  falling rhythm Metre whose primary movement is from stressed to unstressed, dactylic and trochaic verse, for example.

  false friend Word or phrase whose meaning is confused with other words or phrases (often from another language) which sound similar. ‘To meld’ is used often to mean to ‘fuse’ or ‘unite’ through false friendship with ‘melt’ and ‘weld’ – it actually means ‘to announce’. Similarly ‘willy-nilly’ is used to mean ‘all over the place’ where in reality it means ‘whether you like it or not’, i.e. ‘willing or unwilling’. Only sad pedants like me care about these misuses which are now common enough to be almost correct.

  feedback See loop.

  feminine ending An unstressed ending added to an iamb, anapaest or other usually rising foot. Hanging, waiter, television etc.

  feminine rhyme The rhyming of feminine-ended words. The rhyme is always on the last stressed syllable. Rhymes for the above could be banging, later, derision.

  fescennine Indecent or scurrilous verse.

  filidh An Irish bard.

  foot A metrical division: five feet to a pentameter, four to a tetrameter etc.

  fourteeners Iambic heptameter. Seven iambs make fourteen syllables.

  free verse Verse that follows no conventional form, rhyming scheme or metrical pattern.

  ghazal Middle Eastern couplet form following special rules as described in Chapter Three.

  gematri-a, -ic (Originally Kabbalistic) assignation of numerical value to letters – as in chronogram q.v.

  glyconic Latin style of verse usu. with three trochees and a dactyl.

  haijin A haiku practitioner.

  haikai (no renga) The ancestor of haiku. Playful linked Japanese verse developed from the waka in the sixteenth century.

  haiku Three-line verses (in English at least) with a syllable count of 5-7-5 and adhering to certain thematic principles.

  hemistich A half-line of verse: the term is most often found in reference to Anglo-Saxon and Middle English poetry.

  hendecasyllabic Composed of eleven syllables.

  hendiadys Lit. ‘one through two’: a trope where a single idea is expressed by two nouns where usually it would be a qualified or modified noun: ‘nice and warm’ for ‘nicely warm’, ‘sound and fury’ for ‘furious sound’. Also phrase where ‘and’ replaces infinitive ‘to’ as in ‘try and behave’ for ‘try to behave’.

  heptameter A line of verse in seven metrical feet. Fourteeners, for example.

  heroic couplets Rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter.

  heroic line Iambic pentameter.

  heroic verse Poetry cast in heroic couplets.

  hexameter A line of verse in six metrical feet.

  hokku The opening verse of haikai, from which the haiku is descended.

  homeoteleuton Repetition of words ending in like syllables: e.g. ‘readable intelligible syllables are horrible’, ‘a little fiddle in a pickle’ etc.

  homostrophic Arrangement of identically structured stanzas, esp. as in Horatian and other ode forms.

  Horatian Ode Ode in the manner of the Roman poet Horace, adopted, adapted, translated and imitated in English verse esp. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

  Hudibrastic Used to describe the kind of tortured polysyllabic rhyming found in Samuel Butler’s mock-epic Hudibras.

  hypermetric A line with an extra syllable. Technically, a hendecasyllabic line of pentameter is hypermetric.

  hypermonosyllabic Optional synaeresis q.v. A word that can be sounded with either one or two syllables, i.e. ‘re´al’, ‘flo´wer’ and ‘li´ar’ (can be said as ‘reel’, ‘flour’ and ‘lyre’).

  ictus The unit of stress within a foot. The second element in an iamb, the first in a trochee, the third in an anapaest etc.

  idyll A short pictorial poem, chiefly lyrical or pastoral: ‘idyllic’ is often now used to mean ‘ideal’ and ‘perfect’.

  internal rhyme Oh for heaven’s sake it’s obvious, isn’t it?

  inversion Reversal of usual sentence structure.‘Happy am I’, etc.

  jeu d’esprit Merry word play or similar gamesome larkiness.

  kenning A Norse and Anglo-Saxon metaphorical or metonymic yoking of words, such as ‘whale road’ for sea.

  kigo The ‘season word’ placed in a haiku to tell the reader in which time of year the verse is set.

  tomato A red savoury fruit sometimes known as a love-apple which has a place in many sauces and salads but none whatever in a glossary of poetical terms. Especially when it has not been inserted in the correct alphabetical order.

  kireji The caesura that should occur in the first or second line of a haiku.

  kyrielle A refrain verse form descended from an element of Catholic mass.

  lay Narrative poem or short song.

  leonine rhyme Internal rhyming in verse of long measure where the word preceding the caesura rhymes with the end-word.

  limerick You know perfectly well.

  lineation The arrangement of lines in a poem, how they break and how their length is ordered. Prescribed in metrical verse but at the poet’s discretion in free verse. See stichic.

  lipograms Verse or writing where for some reason best known to himself the poet has decided to omit one letter throughout. As I have unquestionably done with the letter q here. Damn.

  litotes Understatement for comic effect, often cast in negatives to indicate a positive: ‘a not unsatisfactory state of affairs’ for ‘a splendid outcome’ etc. Same as meiosis q.v.

  loop See feedback.

  luc bat A Vietnamese form described in Chapter Three.

  lyric ode An open form of rhymed, stanzaic verse, usually in iambic pentameter, descended as much from the sonnet as from the Horatian Ode. Used to describe the odes of Keats and other romantic poets.

  majuscule Capital letters. Upper Case.

  masculine ending A stressed word end.

  masculine rhyme The rhyming of same.

  meiosis Cell division to a biologist, understatement to a grammarian. Often comical. See litotes.

  melon Sweet pleasant fruit. What possible reason can it have for being in this glossary? Andrew Marvell stumbled on them as he passed, but otherwise they have no business being here. Please ignore this entry.

  melopoeia Word coined by Ezra Pound to describe the overall soundscape of a poem.

  mesostich Halfway point of a line – used to apply to acrostics that descend therefrom.

  metaphor Figurative use of a word or phrase to describe something to which it is not literally applicable. ‘The ship ploughed through the waves’, ‘Juliet is the sun’, ‘there’s April in her eyes’ etc.

  metonym A metaphoric trope in which a word or phrase is used to stand in for what it represents: ‘the bottle’ is a metonym for ‘drinking’, ‘the stage’ for ‘theatrical life’, ‘Whitehall’ for the civil service etc. Kennings q.v. and synecdoche are often metonymic.

  minuscule non capital letters. lower case.

  molossus A ternary foot of three long, or stressed, units.‘Short sharp shock’, etc.

  monody Ode or dirge sung or declaimed by a single individual.

  monometer A metric line of one foot
.

  monosyllable Let me say this in words of one sill ab uhl.

  mora From Lat. for ‘delay’. In syllable-timed languages the duration of one short syllable. Two morae make a long syllable. Equivalent of crotchet and minim in music.

  Muses Nine multi-domiciled girls (the daughters of Mnemosyne or Memory) who shuttle between Pieria, Parnassus and Mount Helicon and give poets and others inspiration. Erato helps us with our Love Poetry, Calliope with our epics, Melpomene with our tragedies, Polyhymnia is good for sacred verse and Thalia for comedy. For non-poets Clio looks after History and Renault motor cars, Euterpe is in charge of music, Terpsichore is the dance mistress and Urania teaches astronomy.

  near rhyme Echoic devices such as assonance, consonance and homeoteleuton q.q.v

  negative capability Keats’s phrase (used in a letter of 1818 and referring to Shakespeare after being inspired by Kean’s performance as Richard III) ‘when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’. A phrase now used to describe the poetic ability to efface self and take on the qualities being described.

  nonce word A word coined for use on one occasion: not a nonsense word – that would be a false friend q.v.

  nonet No, no. Silly verse form of ascending or diminishing syllabic count.

  numbers A now archaic word for lines of verse.

  objective correlative Phrase coined by T. S. Eliot in a 1919 essay on Hamlet to refer to the context of an emotion, the pattern of events, diction etc. leading to an emotional response. Now often used to mean the poet’s intended emotional effect. Eliot felt that Hamlet lacked an o. c.

  octameter A metric line of eight feet.

  octave The first eight lines of a (usually Petrarchan or Petrarchan variant) sonnet.

  ode Verse form on one theme, now usually applied to lyric poems.

  Old English Anglo-Saxon (approx. fifth–twelfth century). Applies to four-stress hemistichal alliterative accentual verse, e.g. Beowulf.

  onomatopoei-a, -ic Of words whose sounds imitate their meaning: e.g. ‘click’, ‘hiss’, ‘susurration’ etc.

  open form Metrical rhymed verse where issues like the number of stanzas are not fixed, but up to the poet.

  ottava rima An open form of eight-line verse rhyming abababcc. Byron’s Don Juan, late Yeats etc.