Alliteration

When two or more words in the beginning of a poem have the same letter or sound.

Analogy

An extended comparison showing the similarities between two things.

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds.

Ballad

A story told in verse and usually meant to be sung.

Blank Verse

Verse written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, where each line usually contains ten syllables and every other syllable is stressed.

Consonance

Repeated consonant sound within words.

Haiku

Format Varies Slightly Depending on whom one is talking to, but the basic, most widely recognized form is a 3 line stanza with a 5,7,5 syllable pattern.

Figurative Language

Language that is not intended to be interpreted in a literal sense. Figurative language always makes use of a comparison between different things. By appealing to the imagination, figurative language provides new ways of looking at the world.

Free Verse

Poetry that has no fixed meter or pattern and that depends on natural speech rhythms. Free verse may rhyme or not rhyme; its lines may be of different lengths; and like natural speech, it may switch suddenly from one rhythm to another.

Imagery

Representation through language  of a sensory experience

Lyric Poem

A poem that has song-like quality 

Narrative poem

A poem that tells a story and has a plot

Ode

A lyric poem that expresses a noble feeling with dignity 

Rhyme

Close similarity in the final sounds of two or more words or lines of verse

Rhythm

the arrangement of words into a more or less regular sequence of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables  

Shakespearean sonnet

A sonnet consisting three quatrains and a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg

Petrarchan sonnet

A sonnet form associated with the poet Petrarch, having an octave rhyming a b b a a b b a and a sestet rhyming either c d e c d e or c d c d c d Also calledItalian sonnet