Glossary

Japanese poem of three unrhyming lines in 5, 7, and 5 syllables. For example,

windshield wipers swish
and Monday fm blues say
melancholy grace

(I.L.)

See Line.

A Classical Greek and Latin metrical line consisting of eleven syllables, a spondee or trochee, a choriamb, and two iambs, the second of which has an additional syllable at the end / ' ' / ' ~ ~ ' / ~ ' / ~ ' /.

(Greek ‘one thing by two’)

A pair of nouns linked by "and" that are substituted for an adjective-noun pair. Shakespeare was especially fond of employing this structure.

Seven feet, a measure made up of seven feet (fourteeners). Examples are Chapman's translation of Homer's "Iliad," Edgar Allan Poe's "Annabel Lee," and Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy." See Poulter's measure.

See Couplet.

Six feet; sometimes termed hexapody, a six-part foot, one measure made up of six feet. An example is Ernest Dowson's "Non Sum Qualis."

see Ode.

A metrical accent that may apply to either of two sequential syllables, but not to both, and so seems to "hover" over them equally.

Iambic tetrameter couplets like those in Samuel Butler's Hudibras.

A poem praising God or other divine being or place, often sung. E.g., Sabine Baring-Gould, John Henry Newman, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and John Wesley.

(Greek, ‘over-step’)

Inversion of word-order, e.g., noun-adjective.

Exaggeration beyond reasonable credence. An example is the close of John Donne's holy sonnet "Death, thou shalt die!"

See Catalectic.

A verse with one or more syllables than the metre calls for, a line with metrically redundant syllables.