meter and rhyme
Poetry's formal backbone
Meter and rhyme are the two fundamental elements of traditional verse.
Meter is the rhythmic pattern created by stressed and unstressed syllables; rhyme is the correspondence of sounds at line endings.
Together they give poetry its musical quality: The poem's meter and rhyme made it easy to memorize.
Free verse abandons both.
- stanzaPoem's line grouping
- coupletTwo successive verse lines
- heroic coupletRhymed pentameter pair
- iambic pentameterUnstressed-stressed pattern, five feet
- spondeeDouble-stress metrical unit
alliteration · consonance · quatrain · caesura · villanelle · sestina · cadence · scansion · sonnet · elegy · ode · onomatopoeia · euphony · epic poetry · ballad · limerick · tanka · stressed syllable
meter and rhymefree verse
Poetry without fixed structure
prose · blank verse · prose poetry · experimental poetry · sprung rhythm
meter and rhymestream of consciousness
Narrative mimicking uninterrupted thought
improvisation · formlessness · automatic writing · conversational style
meter, rhyme, meters, metered, metering, metric, metrical, metrics, metronome