A
poem is an artifice of thought as well as of metrics, sonics, and tropes, and
there is no thought except in language.
A poem, like all literary genres, is an expression of the human condition.
Poetry is a perception—of humankind and its language—which the poet attempts
to convey to an audience by means of language artifice; a perception that must
be conveyed in words or symbols.
Schemas have to do with changes in the normal order of words, and they
may be subdivided into various kinds:
Orthographical Schemas:
these have to do with single words and syllables.
1.
Prosthesis: adds syllables at the beginning of a word; i.e.,
“configuration” for figuration.
2.
Proparalepsis: adds syllable at the end of a word; i.e., “figuration”
for figure.
3.
Epenthis: adds syllables in the center of a word; i.e., “disenfigure”
for disfigure.
4.
Aphaeresis: is a technique of overt elision which drops the initial
unstressed syllable—usually a vowel—of a word; i.e., “’til” for until,
“’tis” for it
is.
5.
Apocope: drops syllable formt he end of a word—“morn” for
morning.
6.
Syncope: is a technique of overt elision which drops
a syllabe from the center of a word; i.e., “suff’ring” for suffering.
7.
Synalepha: is a technique of overt elision by means of which
one of two adjacent unaccented vowels is suppressed in order to achieve the
effect of only one unaccented syllable; i.e., “Th’ art of poetic diction.”
8.
Hyphaeresis: is a technique of overt elision which drops a consonant
from the center of a word in order to telescope two syllables and make them
one, as in “Whene’er” for whenever.
Aphaeresis, apocope, hyphaeresis, synalepha,
and syncope are methods of contraction.
9.
Amphisbaenia: turns a word backward to make another word, as in
“He mined
ore in denim
cloth.”
10.
An
Anagram:
is a word, phrase, or sentence which is constructed by rearranging (transposing)
the letters of another word, phrase, or sentence: “live” = vile,
“stunted” = student.
11.
Antisthecon:
changes the sound of a word; for instance, “stoont” for student.
12.
Diaeresis:
concerns the pronunciation of two contiguous vowels in different ways: i.e.,
“cooperation,”
“de-emphasize.”
13.
Dialectic:
changes the spelling of a word, but not its meaning; examples: “evermare” for
evermore,
“wrang” for wrong,
“gould” for gold,
and so forth.
14.
Homographs
(homomorphs):
are words that are spelled alike, but that have totally different meanings,
such as bore:
“to drill” and bore: “a dull person.”
15.
Homonyms:
are words that sound alike, but that are spelled differently and have different
meanings: bear-bare,
time-thyme.
16.
Metathesis:
transposes the letters of a word—it is the process of the anagram (above).
17.
Palindrome:
is a word, phrase, or clause or longer unit that reads the same backwords as
forward: “radar”=radar;
“Able was I ere I saw Elba”= Able
was I ere I saw Elba.
18.
Themis:
is the breaking up of a compound word, usually by insertion of a related word;
i.e., “When you ever go” in stead of whenever
you go. This was a favorite technique of E. E. Cummings.
Constructional Schemas:
19.
Parallelism:
has to do with the coordinate balance of structures in a grammatic sequence
of two or more words, phrases, or clauses.
Whole prosodies have been built on parallelism.
A catalog
is a parallel series of nouns (“I saw horses,
dogs, and trees”),
or phrases (“A government of
the people, by the people, and for
the people”), or clauses (“I
came, I saw, I conquered”), or any other parallel series of grammatic
elements. The preceding sentence
is itself a catalog of parallels.
20.
Synonymia:
is a paraphrase in parallel structures (“I love you; you are my beloved”).
21.
Synthesis:
is consequence in parallel structures (“I love you; therefore, I am yours”).
22.
Antithesis:
is the opposition of ideas expressed in parallel structures (“I love you, and
I loathe
you”).
23.
Auxesis:
is the building up, in parallel structures, of a catalog or series which ultimately
closes at a zenith (high point) of the set (the climax): “I love your eyes,
hair, your very breath; I love the way you walk and speak; I love you.”
24.
Meiosis:
is the building up, in parallel structures, of a catalog or series which ultimately
closes at the nadir (low point) of the set (the anticlimax): “We struggled through
dense forests; we forded raging torrents; we battled the terrors of storm and
starvation to reach the road; we took the bus home.”
In effect, the poet unbuilds to an anticlimax.
Meiosis is often a technique of satire or self-derogation.
25.
Chiasmus:
is cross-parallelism in parallel structures (“I
vied with the wind, she fought the air / And as she lost, I was victorious”).
26.
Syneciosis:
cross-couples antonyms (words that are antithetical in meaning) or opposites
in such a way as to make them agree, as in the poem “November 22, 1963” in Chap.
20. (the italicized words are the antonyms):
We
are ourselves victim
and victor.
You
were and are ourselves. In killing
you
we
murder an emblem of what we strive
to
be: not men, but Man.
27.
Isocolon:
is a term that designates perfect parallelism—that is, when parallel grammatic
structures are of exactly the same number of words, or even syllables; examples:
“A time to live, a time to die.” “It
was the best of times. It was the
worst of times.”
28.
Brachiologa:
is the technique of separating words by pauses, usually indicated by means of
punctuation, commas in particular (as in the line from “The Weed Garden,” where
there is a catalog of herbs—“feverfew, mouse-ear, / Sundew and cup-moss, tormentils”),
but sometimes typographically by means of spaces.
29.
Parison:
is construction by parallel clauses of equal weight, as in Chidiock Tichborn’s
“Elegy”:
My
prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My
feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My
crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And
all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The
day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And
now I live, and now my life is done.
30.
Hyperbaton:
is a term that covers the various kinds of dislocation or inversion of grammatic
syntax (word order):
31.
Anastrophe:
has to do with the inversion of normal word order (“Go I shall” for I shall go).
32.
Cacosintheton:
is anastrophe misused.
33.
Hypallage:
is an exchange of words in phrases or clauses.
It was a technique E. E. Cummings used often. This disjunctive allows lines to work ambiguously on more than
one associative level, and it is sometimes used humorously: “I smell a smile;
will she rat on me?” instead of
I smell
a rat; will she smile on me?
34.
Parenthesis:
has to do with the insertion of material that interrupts the thought (“I was
going—or have I told you this?—to go away”).
35.
Epitheton
(apposition):
is an inserted synonymous modification of a sentence element (“John Jones, my
good friend, is a poet”).
36.
Anacoluthon:
is a shift of grammatic construction in mid-sentence which leaves the beginning
unfinished (“You may remember the night—the dog is barking at the door”).
37.
Hendiadys:
is a construction that treats a double subject or object as though it were singular,
not plural, in order to express one thought that operates on more than one level
(“My lust and her adamance is Hell”).
38.
Hysteron Proteron:
is the reversal of chronological events for purpose of intensification or stress
(“Let us break our necks and jump” rather than Let
us jump and break our necks”).
39.
Zeugma (to
be distinguished from zuegmatic syllepsis) is a yoking or binding of two parts
of speech by means of another part. Three
kinds of zeugma have been distinguished:
40.
Prozeugma:
in which the binding word precedes the part it binds (the carat indicates the
point at which the bond takes place: “Everyone
wishes to come, and ^ will do so, regardless”);
41.
Mesozeugma:
in which the binding word is mediary between
the yoked parts (“This is the place he loved, and the woman”);
42.
Hypozeugma:
in which the binding word follows the yoked parts (“Neither life ^, nor death
itself, need be feared”).
Exclusive Schemas:
43. Ellipsis; leaves out words and says something in a starker way than usual (“I love darkness” rather than I am in love with darkness). Ellipsis is an essential part of the haiku.
44.
Asyndeton:
is the opposite of polysyndeton,
concerns the elimination of articles, conjunctions, and sometimes prepositions
and pronouns from normal grammatic constructions (“I chased [the] wind, [the]
wind chased me”).
45.
Aposiopesis:
is the simple deletion of an important letter, syllable, word, or passage (“You
can go to ****!”).
46.
Syllepsis
is of two kinds:
47.
Elliptical Syllepsis:
is a grammatic situation in which one part of speech controls two other elements,
with only one of which it agrees (“She kisses
me, and I, ^ her”; i.e., “I kiss
her”).
48.
Zeugmatic Syllepsis;
is a part of speech used correctly controlling two other elements, but controlling
them in different ways (“He waited
with mind and dagger
sharp”).
Inclusive Schemas:
49.
Enallage:
changes the tense, gender, or number of some part of speech.
50.
Irmus:
is suspended sense. Not till the
end of a passage does the reader fully understand what is being spoken of.
51.
Merismus:
expands upon a subject by particularizing each element of it; for instance,
instead of saying, “I met an old acquaintance in the street,” one might describe
the situation in each particular of the meeting.
52.
Prolepsis:
expands upon a general statement, particularizing it and giving further information
regarding it.
Substitutive Schemas:
53.
Anthimeria:
substitutes one part of speech for another—for example, a noun for a verb as
in “The clock’s chime belfries over the town.”
54.
Antonomasia;
substitutes for a noun a phrase that is descriptive of the noun. The descriptive phrase is derived from some quality associated
with the noun. For instance, instead
of saying “Queen Elizabeth I,” we might (and often do) say, “The Virgin Queen.”
55.
Hyperbole:
is calculated exaggeration (“Her eyes were as big as moons”).
56.
Implied Aposiopesis:
substitutes another letter, syllable, word, or passage for the dropped material
(“You are an as-phyxiating
person”).
57.
Litotes:
the reverse of hyperbole, is studied understatement (“Her eyes were eyes, and
they were open”).
58.
Metalepsis:
substitutes for a word a synonym that is essentially metaphorical, in that the
equation between the word and its synonym is not obvious. For instance, “I met Ray just as he first thumbed / the last
of thirteen buttons,” instead of
I met Ray on the day he enlisted in the Navy.
Out of context the line seems farfetched.
In a way, it is
farfetched; and, in fact, metalepsis is often called “the figure of the farfetched.”
59.
Metonymy:
is a way of describing by using a word related to a word, rather than the original
word itself (“The heart will find a way” rather than “Love will find a way”).
60.
Periphrasis:
is a way of saying something in a more grandiloquent or roundabout way than
is usual (“She was taken unto the bosom of her forebears,” rather than she died.
61.
Prosonomasia;
is a way of nicknaming something by substituting a letter or letters in his/her
name to describe him/her by some personal characteristic; as, for example, if
a very thing man were named “Jones,” we might substitute B for the J and call
him Bones.
62.
Synechdoche:
describes by substituting a part for the whole, as in “He was the King’s legs”
rather than, He
was the King’s messenger.
Repetitional Schemas:
63.
Anadiplosis:
is the linking of two consecutive verses or stanzas by a repetition of words
(“I saw her hair, / Her dark hair was windblown”).
64.
Anaphora;
is the parallel repetition of a beginning word or phrase in the beginning of
succeeding lines of verse.
65.
Antanaclasis:
is the witty repetition of a word in an amplified or changed sense—pun. (“Your
argument is sound,
nothing but sound”).
66.
Antimetabole:
is the repetition of two beginning words, in reverse order, later in a verse
or sentence (“To kiss her is to love her
kiss”).
67.
Antistrophe:
repeats a single word throughout a poem—particularly as the end-words, as in the French
sestina.
68.
Emphasis:
reinforces a word. It may be done
in several ways—by repetition (“He was dumb, dumb, dumb”); by using different
typeface such as italics (“He was dumb”); by building up of synonyms (“He was dumb—I mean, he
was ignorant, stupid, and otherwise thick”); and so forth.
69.
Epanalepsis:
is the repetition of a word, for clarity or for emphasis, after the intervention
of a word, phrase, or clause; specifically, in verse, to end a line, stanza,
or peon with the same word or words with which it began. The Welsh bards called this dunadh,
and certain forms, such as the rondeau and the roundel, require this kind of
repetition.
70.
Epimone:
is the term that covers the use of repeated lines used at intervals within a
poem: repeton,
repetend,
refrain,
incremental
refrain, burden,
and chorus.
71.
Epiphora:
is the repetition of end-words or end-phrases specifically.
72.
Epizeuxis:
repeats a word without any pause between.
73.
Hypozeuxis:
is the repetition of words in parallel constructions.
The repeated words govern the sense of the clause or clauses of which
they are a part (“Up to the
door I’ll go, and at the
door I’ll rap / Whether or not the man I see is lying in his nap”).
74.
Ploce:
is the repetition of words or phrases at irregular intervals throughout a stanza,
poem, or long passage.
75.
Polyptoton:
is the repeating of words derived from the same root (“He ran, will run,
and is running
now”).
76.
Polysyndeton:
is the repetition of conjunctions—the opposite of asyndeton, and to be distinguished
from anaphora.
77.
Sympolce:
is a combination of anaphora or antistrophe, and epiphora.
Source: Turco, Lewis.
Poetry: An Introduction Through Writing.
Reston, VA: Reston Publishing Company, Inc., 1973.