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Poetry Handbook


Bacchius
Two long syllables preceded by a short syllable in a metric foot; mostly used in ancient poetry.

Ballad
A short narrative poem that usually represents a romantic theme, is imperonsally treated, or characterized by the simplicity of language.

Ballad Meter
Alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with the last words of the second and fourth lines rhyming.

Ballad Stanza
Four lines rhymed a b c d , with 8, 6, 8, 6, syllables respectfully.

Ballad-Broadside
In the late 16th and early 17th century historical or current events were written in a ballad in doggerel on a single piece of paper and included the name of a tune to which they were to be sung. These ballads sometimes conveyed moral or religious ideas or propaganda and were sold for a penny or two on street corners in England.

Ballads-Child
Ballads contained in Francis J. Child’s work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ( 1882-1898 ). Authentic creations of illiterate or semiliterate people whom preserved the ballads orally.

Ballad-Folk
A folk ballad is usually composed to be sung and was often altered as it was repeated from generation to generation.

Ballade
1. A poem composed of three stanzas and an envoy. The last line of the opening stanza is used as a refrain. The same rhymes, strictly limited in number, reoccur throughout the ballade.

2. A fixed form with three; seven or eight-line stanzas, with no more than three recurrent rhymes. An identical refrain follows each stanza and a closing envoi repeats the rhymes of the last four lines of the stanza. Often used in French poetry.

Ballade-Double
Six octaves, or ten-line stanzas, built on three and four rhymes respectively with refrain, but rarely the envoy.

Bard
A person whose gifts and long training fitted him to compose and recite poems.

Blank Verse
Simply defined as unryhmed verse or unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Bouts-Rimes
A game in which on of the players offers a set of rhyme-words to the other players. The players would then compete in producing an acceptable poem built on the given rhymes using them in their original order. .

Bucolic
A poem dealing with a pastoral subject.

Burden
Often repeated in the refrain, it is the central topic or idea.

Burlesque
The exaggeration, sometimes grotesquely, of a minor subject intended to ridicule.



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