The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics: Fourth Edition

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

Fourth Edition

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Roland Greene

Stanford University

GENERAL EDITOR

Stephen Cushman

University of Virginia

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Clare Cavanagh

Northwestern University

Jahan Ramazani

University of Virginia

Paul Rouzer

University of Minnesota

ASSISTANT EDITORS

Harris Feinsod

Northwestern University

David Marno

University of California, Berkeley

Alexandra Slessarev

Stanford University

Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

All Rights Reserved

Based on the original edition. Alex Preminger, editor, Frank J. Warnke and O. B. Hardison, Jr., associate editors.

Cover art: Jiri Kolar, Love Poem, 1964, collage. Photo: Jiri Lammel. Courtesy of the Museum Kampa / The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation Collection

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics / Roland Greene, editor in chief; Stephen Cushman, general editor; Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, Paul Rouzer, associate editors; Harris Feinsod, David Marno, Alexandra Slessarev, assistant editors.—4th ed.

              p. cm.

   Rev. ed. of: The Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics / Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan, co-editors; Frank J. Warnke, O.B. Hardison, Jr., and Earl Miner, associate editors. 1993.

   Includes bibliographical references and index.

   ISBN 978-0-691-13334-8 (cloth: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-691-15491-6 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Poetry—Dictionaries. 2. Poetics—Dictionaries. 3. Poetry—History and criticism. I. Greene, Roland Arthur. II. Cushman, Stephen, 1956- III. Cavanagh, Clare. IV. Ramazani, Jahan, 1960– V. Rouzer, Paul F. VI. Feinsod, Harris. VII. Marno, David. VIII. Slessarev, Alexandra. IX. Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics.

   PN1021.N39 2012

808.1'03—dc23 2012005602

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Adobe Garamond Pro with Myriad Display

Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

press.princeton.edu

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Topical List of Entries

Bibliographical Abbreviations

General Abbreviations

Contributors

Entries A to Z

Index

Preface

Poetics, the theoretical and practical study of poetry, is among the oldest disciplines in the West, one of those founded by Aristotle along with ethics, logic, and political science. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is the comprehensive guide to this rich field. This edition of the Encyclopedia significantly develops the past three editions of 1965, 1974, and 1993. Of the more than 1,100 articles, some incorporate and expand their antecedents in those editions, bringing their topics into the present with fresh scholarship and new perspectives. Some 250 entries are entirely new, in response to the changes that poetry and poetics have undergone in the last twenty years. Most articles on major topics have been not only made current but reconceived, in most cases to accommodate a closer attention to poetics. The scope of the Encyclopedia has always been worldwide, concerning (as the original editors put it) the history, theory, technique, and criticism of poetry from earliest times to the present.

The Plan of the Encyclopedia

The solid foundation of the previous editions has offered us the opportunity to enhance coverage without compromising the traditional attention to European and especially English-language poetry and poetics. This edition expands coverage of international poetries, avant-gardes and movements, and the many phenomena, from cognitive poetics to poetry slams to digital poetry that have gained momentum since 1993. Latin America, East and South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe are represented here by an infusion of new entries and specialist contributors who present not only the broad canvas of national and regional literary history but the granular detail of informed scholarship.

For instance, to complement the general article on the poetry of the United States, new entries address such topics as the Black Mountain school, the Fireside poets, confessional poetry, and the San Francisco Renaissance. Spanish America is represented by a general essay on the hemispheric tradition in poetry as well as by discrete entries on the poetries of Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile, and many other countries. And both sets of articles converse with an authoritative new entry on the poetry of the indigenous Americas, which is in turn augmented by pieces on Guaraní, Inuit, and Navajo poetries, among others. Asian poetry and poetics receive substantial new investments in critical discussion, notably in entries concerning the popular poetry of China, Chinese poetic drama, the influential tenth-century Japanese collection known as the Kokinshū, and the poetry of Cambodia, among others. The coverage of India now involves not only a general entry on the poetry of the subcontinent but many more articles on the history and tradition of poetic forms and styles in various languages from Hindi to Gujarati to Sanskrit. Africa and Eastern Europe see a new measure of attention to countries, languages, movements, and styles.

This wave of locality and specificity changes the character of the Encyclopedia, and brings into the book a wide-ranging cast of contributors, new approaches, and topics of different dimensions. It permitted us to reduce the size and scope of many of the larger entries on national poetries. Free of the obligation to define every episode and movement, the authors of articles on topics such as the poetry of England or the poetry of Spain have been encouraged to delineate a literary history in bold strokes; their narratives are complemented by new items on the particular histories of such topics as Georgianism and neo-Gongorism, respectively. The perspectives of omnibus entries on the poetry of Spanish America or of India still have an important place in this edition, offering the reader both a wide view and a close focus.

Moreover, we have challenged the tacit assumption of many handbooks that general poetic terms may be treated through English-language examples only. A large number of general entries here are written by scholars of poetries other than English—a Hispanist on pastoral, a scholar of the French Renaissance on epideixis, a Persianist on panegyric.

The Encyclopedia includes five kinds of entries: terms and concepts; genres and forms; periods, schools, and movements; the poetries of nations, regions, and languages; and poetry in relation to other cultural forms, disciplines, and social practices such as linguistics, religion, and science. It does not contain entries on poets or works, but discusses these in the context of the larger topics to which they are related. While the A-to-Z format tends to obscure the integrity of these five categories, each one entails certain obligations and challenges.

Terminology makes for one of the most technically exacting aspects of the project. The Encyclopedia remains the authoritative source for brief definitions of particular terms or expansive treatments of broad topics, such as the exhaustive treatment of rhyme. Entries on concepts such as structuralism or speech act theory are designed to engage with poetry over other kinds of literature or writing. This category is home to transhistorical terms such as cento, eclogue, and gai saber; fundamental topics in the history of criticism such as emotion and imagination; and critical concepts of wide application such as ethnopoetics and organicism. From its entries one could assemble a history of ideas in and about poetry.

The rubrics of genre and form often shade into one another, but at the same time they tend to follow complementary logics of openness and limitation, respectively. Most entries on genres, such as those on the alba and the paraclausithyron, follow the evolution of their objects to the present day, while many entries on forms locate them in their original settings of language, epoch, and culture. Nonetheless, the reader will encounter a number of entries that do both, as well as bracing new essays on the concepts of genre and form.

Coverage of periods, schools, and movements has been deepened for this edition, both as a category in itself and within the other categories. For example, postmodern poetry of the United States entails new entries on (among other topics) projective verse, composition by field, Language poetry, and absorption, some contributed by poet-critics in the tradition of William Carlos Williams’s entry on the variable foot for the 1965 edition. Again, the focus is on poetics. Our entry on naturalism, skewed toward the poetic application of that concept, is very different from an article of the same title in a handbook of general literary criticism or theory.

The fourth category, the poetries of nations, regions, and languages, is a customary strength of the Encyclopedia; many readers have found the past editions a reliable source for introductions to unfamiliar literatures. In this edition we have tried to devise topics that accommodate the histories of national poetries while taking account of local or transnational differences, and that follow languages out of national borders. The results for our nomenclature are described below. Multiple language traditions found within a nation or region are treated as much as is practical, though never fully enough to trace the poetic complexity of modern, multicultural societies.

Finally, the articles concerned with poetry in relation to disciplines, culture, and society—for titles, such entries often take the form of religion and poetry or science and poetry—have been focused on the implications for the history of poetry as opposed to history in a more general sense. (Depending on the topic and the contributor’s approach, some conceptual entries draw a relation to poetics rather than to poetry: thus anthropology and poetry but linguistics and poetics.) From these articles, one could build a history of poetry’s relations to the intellectual and cultural world at large.

Of course, these five rubrics are provisional, and many items could move among them. All of the main categories now include entries that reflect on category making, such as colonial poetics and national poetry. A longstanding rubric, Western poetics, has been answered not by a corresponding omnibus entry for the non-Western world but by new articles on Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, and other poetics. Many items are tacitly engaged with one another and might be read in counterpoint (e.g., criticism, interpretation, and hermeneutics, or imitation, mimesis, and representation); some of these, such as the new set called poetry as artifact, poetry as fiction, poetry as information, and poetry as knowledge, make a sweeping overview of complementary approaches. (Several other entries continue that overview under various titles: poetry as commodity in Frankfurt school and as object of faith in belief and poetry, and the several entries on terms such as poem, text, and work.) And many important items, such as politics and poetry, postcolonial poetics, and of course poetry, straddle the divisions of the book.

As every reader will notice, this book has been conceived to enable cross-coverages and contradictions insofar as these facts register the current condition of poetry studies. The significance of Whitman or Ḥāfiẓ, the idea of poetic genius, and the continuing implications of the New Criticism are too multifarious to fit into one or two entries. The reader will find these and many other topics in several articles, often from the perspectives of distinctive fields or interests. An index, the first in the history of the Encyclopedia, makes such collations part of the experience of this book.

As the fourth edition of a book that has been in print since 1965, this project carries its history within itself; many entries include the names of past contributors whose entries have been augmented and brought up to date. Every item in the 1993 edition was evaluated by the team of editors. Some were dropped, while many more were assigned to readers and prospective contributors who were invited to assess the received material. In some cases an old entry stands on its substance while requiring only a new bibliography, which the editors have provided. In others, we publish a collaboration between past and present contributors that could take place only between the covers of this Encyclopedia. The majority of articles, and nearly all of the most prominent ones, have been entirely reconceived by new contributors.

Some six years in the making, this project is also the portrait of a discipline—the worldwide field of poetry studies—in the process of development. It attempts to address the permanent questions in the field, such as the nature of the poetic, while giving some attention to topics that seem to belong to the present and the near future, such as conceptual writing and documentary poetics; it also involves a decided effort on the editors’ part to devote resources to topics, such as exegetical interpretation and archetypal criticism, that are currently unfashionable but seem likely to be revived in new manners. No doubt in twenty years the values of this fourth edition will appear in a historical light, but in any case we have chosen both to acknowledge and to transcend the present moment as far as possible. Finally, however, such a project can be only what its population of authors—a cross-section of scholars of poetry around the world—want it to be.

The Conventions of the Fourth Edition

One of the longstanding strengths of the Encyclopedia is its coverage of the poetries of the world. The present edition attempts to make a distinction between poetries that are based in nations or territories and those that are based in language, international cultures, or diasporas—no doubt sometimes an ambiguous difference, but nonetheless one that seems worth making. The entry on the poetry of France is discrete from those on the various francophone poetries of Africa, Canada, or the Caribbean, while Persian poetry is best approached as a single topic with international ramifications. The poetry of England and the poetry of the United States as topics are preferable to English or American poetry, with their uncertain but expansive outlines. In its coverage of the British Isles, the former entry is complemented by articles on Welsh, Scottish, and Irish poetries, while the latter is cross-referenced to companion pieces on U.S. poetries wholly or partly in other languages that can claim their own fields of study, such as French-language, Chicana/o, and Asian American poetry. An entry such as German poetry takes a linguistic rather than a national approach, but is complemented by entries on Austria, Switzerland, and the Low Countries that follow geopolitical contours and discuss discrete languages within those outlines. In many cases the contributors made the final determination of what to call their entries, which no doubt produces some asymmetries that reflect the differences in the fields represented here.

For example, Walther von der Vogelweide, a poet who wrote in Middle High German, is treated in German poetry as the first important political poet in the language, in poetry of Austria for his residence in Vienna and service to Duke Frederick I, in Minnesang and Spruchdichtung for his generic affiliations, in Meistersinger for his influence—and in biography and poetry as the subject of one of the first biographies of a medieval poet. The result is a comprehensive, multivocal account of many of the signal events in world poetry, from the Occitan troubadours to the modernismo of Rubén Darío to the visual and material poetries of the past fifty years.

Translations are generally given within parentheses, without quotation marks if no other words appear in the parenthetical matter, but set off within quotation marks when some qualification is needed, as in the form of many etymologies: e.g., arsis and thesis (Gr., raising and lowering). Translated titles generally appear in the most comprehensive articles, such as those on national poetries or important developments such as modernism; entries of smaller scope often give original titles without translation, although contributors have the discretion to translate titles where it clarifies the argument to do so. (We tolerate inconsistency that reflects to some degree the field at hand: thus some major entries, such as baroque or Renaissance poetics, do not translate titles at all; others such as love poetry give only translated titles.) Translated titles of books are given in italics when the title refers to an actual English translation: e.g. the Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli’s Vepkhis tqaosani (The Man in the Panther’s Skin). For poems, translated titles are given with quotation marks when the translation has been published under that title, but without quotation marks when the translated title is ad hoc.

This convention sometimes entails reproducing a non-literal rendering that appears in a published translation, such as Boccaccio’s Trattatello in laude di Dante as Life of Dante, or the Guatemalan poet Otto René Castillo’s Vámonos patria a caminar as Let’s Go! We believe that the value of indicating an extant translation outweighs the occasional infelicity. At the same time, it is likely we have overlooked some published translations, and many new ones will appear over the life of this book.

Dates of the lives and works of poets and critics often appear in the most comprehensive entries on a given topic (e.g. a regional entry such as poetry of the Low Countries or a major movement such as poststructuralism), showing up less often as topics become narrower. Dates of works in the age of print refer to publication unless otherwise indicated.

Articles contain two types of cross-references: those that appear within the body of an entry (indicated with asterisks or in parentheses with small capitals), and those that follow an entry, just before the bibliographies. If the former are often topics that extend the fabric of the definition at hand, the latter often indicate adjacent topics of broader interest. Of course, both kinds of cross-reference hold out the danger of infinite connection: nearly every entry could be linked to many others, and the countless usages of terms such as line, metaphor, and poetics cannot all be linked to the entries concerned with those terms. Accordingly we have tried to apply cross-references judiciously, indicating where further reading in a related entry really complements the argument at hand.

The bibliographies are intended as guides to relevant scholarship of the distant and recent past, not only as lists of works cited in the entries. The bibliographies have been lightly standardized, but some entries—say, those that narrate the development of a field—gain from citing works of scholarship in their original iterations (John Crowe Ransom’s essay Criticism, Inc. in its first appearance in the Virginia Quarterly Review of 1937) or in their original languages—while many others choose to cite later editions or translations into English as a convenience for the reader.

The deliberately limited standardization of the volume allows the reader to observe the conditions and assumptions that are native to each national literature, topic, or approach represented: something as fundamental as what classical or hermeticism means, or as technical as where one finds an important essay by Roman Jakobson, may appear differently at several places in the book. One might learn a great deal by noticing these facts—in effect, by interpreting the Encyclopedia itself as a living document of the discipline that unites us across languages, periods, and methods, namely the study of poetry and poetics.

The State of the Field

As a discipline, poetics is undergoing a renewal. In the past it was sometimes conceived as an antiquarian field, a vehicle for broadly theoretical issues in literature, or a name for poets’ reflections on their practice. Recently, however, the discipline has turned more explicitly toward historical and cross-cultural questions. In the United States, research groups on poetics at several universities have contributed to this momentum, as have digital projects that render the materials of historical and international poetries readily available and make new kinds of conversation possible. Ventures such as this Encyclopedia, new and old at once, contribute to this conversation by introducing scholars to one another, by opening local topics to comparative attention, and most of all by providing information and perspective.

For two generations The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has been the common property of the worldwide community of poetry scholars. We are proud to bring it, renewed, to another generation.

Acknowledgments

The fourth edition of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics has been a collective work of the worldwide community of poetry scholars over several years. It began at the instigation of Anne Savarese, executive editor for reference at Princeton University Press, whose judgment and taste have conditioned the project at every stage. At the Press, Claire Tillman-McTigue and Diana Goovaerts kept the assembly of authors in contact with the editors, and the editors in touch with one another. Ellen Foos, production editor for the volume, was unfailingly patient with wayward editors and stretched deadlines. Mary Lou Bertucci copy-edited the text and is responsible for matters of consistency.

The editors gratefully acknowledge the help of the research assistants who have been involved with the Encyclopedia over the years: Sarah Bishop, Lauren Boehm, Maia Draper, Jaime Lynn Farrar, Suzanne Ashley King, Elizabeth Molmen, Frank Rodriguez, Whitney Trump, and Daniel Veraldi. At Stanford University, R. Lucas Coe maintained communications with the Press.

The heart of the book, its 1,100 articles, were conceived, evaluated, and improved by the gathering of contributors, whose names appear elsewhere in the front matter. Many of them read and commented anonymously on the work of others. Some did much more, especially Walter G. Andrews, Yigal Bronner, Marisa Galvez, Joseph Lease, Marjorie Perloff, and Haun Saussy.

The scholars, poets, and others who did not write articles for this edition but nonetheless advised the project are a distinguished roster, and this book belongs to them as well: Txetxu Aguado, Jaime Alazraki, David Atwell, Shahzad Bashir, Stephen C. Berkwitz, Paula Blank, Elisabeth Boyi, Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Marina Brownlee, Ardis Butterfield, Melanie Conroy, Neil Corcoran, Mary Thomas Crane, John Dagenais, Wai Chee Dimock, Craig Dworkin, Lazar Fleishman, Barbara Fuchs, Christina Galvez, Forrest Gander, J. Neil Garcia, Simon Gaunt, Michael Gluzman, Fabian Goppelsröder, Margaret Greer, Timothy Hampton, Benjamin Harshav, Waïl Hassan, Héctor Hoyos, Jasmine Hu, Alex Hunt, Witi Ihimaera, Kate Jenckes, F. Sionil Jose, Smaro Kamboureli, Sarah Kay, Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Seth Kimmel, Paul Kiparsky, Rachel Lee, Seth Lerer, Chris Mann, Annabel Martín, John Maynard, Natalie Melas, Farzaneh Milani, Ignacio Navarrete, Patricia Parker, Michael Predmore, Phoebe Putnam, Margaret Reid, Joan Ramon Resina, Alicia Rios, Hollis Robbins, Janice Ross, David Rubin, Susan Schultz, David Shulman, Richard Sieburth, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Sidonie Smith, Ann Smock, Willard Spiegelman, Susan Stephens, Marlene van Niekerk, Susanne Woods, Kevin Young, Shu Yi Zhou, and Jan Ziolkowski.

Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the following authors, publishers, and agents for granting us permission to use brief selections from the copyrighted material listed below. Great care has been taken to trace all the owners of copyrighted material used in this book. Any inadvertent omissions pointed out to us will be gladly acknowledged in future printings.

Alurista for five lines of his poem Mis ojos hinchados.

Arte Público Press for ten lines of Guitarreros by Américo Paredes, from Between Two Worlds, copyright © 1991 by Arte Público Press; and four lines of Emily Dickinson by Lucha Corpi, from Palabras de Mediodia/Noon Words, copyright © 1980 by Arte Público Press. Both reprinted by permission of Arte Público Press.

Gordon Brotherston for six lines of his translation of Preuss’s musings on the Witoto; six lines of his translation of a traditional Quechua hymn; and twelve lines of his translation from the Nahuatl of an excerpt from Cuauhtitlan Annals.

The University of California Press for five lines of The Box by Robert Creeley, from The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–1960, copyright © 2006 by the Regents of the University of California; and two lines of Two Voices by Khalil Gibran from An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, edited by Hamid Algar and Mounah Khouri, copyright © 1974 by the Regents of the University of California. Both reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.

Cambridge University Press for three lines of Eulogy by al-Mutanabbi, from Poems of al-Mutanabbi, translated by A. J. Arberry, copyright © 1967 by Cambridge University Press; and three lines by al-Khansa, from Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, translated by A. J. Arberry, copyright © 1965 by Cambridge University Press. Both reprinted by the permission of Cambridge University Press.

Coach House Books for four lines from Eunoia, by Christian Bök (Coach House Books, 2001, updated 2009).

Columbia University Press for six lines of Tansim ka, or, Song of a Loyal Heart from Early Korean Literature: Selections and Introductions, by David R. McCann, copyright © 2000 Columbia University Press; twelve lines of Azaleas, six lines of Winter Sky, and eighteen lines of Grasses, each from The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry, edited by David R. McCann, copyright © 2004 Columbia University Press. All reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Jayne Cortez for eight lines of If the Drum Is a Woman, copyright © 2011 by Jayne Cortez.

Faber and Faber Ltd. for two lines of The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright © 1974 by Faber and Faber, Ltd.; three lines of The Fragment by Seamus Heaney, from Electric Light, copyright © 2001 by Seamus Heaney and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.; In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound, from Personae, copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound; and Red Wheel Barrow by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909–1939, copyright © 1938 by William Carlos Williams. All reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

Rafael Jesús González for eleven lines of his poem The Coin (Ars Poetica) from El hacedor de juegos/The Maker of Games (San Francisco: Casa Editorial, 1977; 2nd edition, 1987), copyright © 2012 by Rafael Jesús González. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Graywolf Press for thirteen lines of John Col by Elizabeth Alexander from The Venus Hottentot, copyright © 1990 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia.

Harvard University Press for five lines of Artifice of Absorption from A Poetics by Charles Bernstein, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, copyright © 1992 by Charles Bernstein; four lines of The Kalevala: Or, Poems of the Kalevala District, compiled by Elias Lönnrot, translated by Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, copyright © 1963 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Both reprinted by permission of the publisher.

University of Hertfordshire Press for twelve lines from an untitled poem translated by Iren Kertesz-Wilkinson, published in Romani Culture and Gypsy Identity, edited by T. A. Acton and G. Mundy, University of Hertfordshire Press, 1997; nine lines of O Land, I Am Your Daughter by Bronislawa Wajs and four lines of Roads of the Roma by Leksa Manus, both published in The Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers, copyright © 1998 by PEN American Center, University of Hertfordshire Press.

Henry Holt and Company for two lines of The Gift Outright from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, copyright © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright © 1942 by Robert Frost, copyright © 1970 by Lesley Frost Ballantine. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company for excerpts from The Hollow Men from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright © 1936 by Harcourt, Inc. and renewed by T. S. Eliot; and eight lines of It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers from Selected Poems I, 1965–1975 by Margaret Atwood, copyright © 1976 by Margaret Atwood. Both reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Robert Huey for permission to reprint five lines of his translation of Shinkokinshū by Fujiwara Teika.

Phoebe Larrimore Literary Agency for eight lines of It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers by Margaret Atwood, used by permission of the author. Available in the following collections: In the United States, Selected Poems I, 1965–1975, published by Houghton Mifflin, copyright © Margaret Atwood 1976; in Canada, Selected Poems, 1966–1984, published by McClelland and Stewart, copyright © Margaret Atwood 1990; in the UK, Eating Fire, published by Virago Books, copyright © Margaret Atwood 1998.

Ian Monk for excerpts from his poems A Threnodialist’s Dozen and Elementary Morality.

James T. Monroe for his translation of Envoie to a Love Poem from Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology, published by the University of California Press, 1974.

José Montoya for six lines of his poem El Louie.

New Directions Publishing Corporation for five lines of The Five Day Rain by Denise Levertov, from Collected Earlier Poems 1940–1960, copyright © 1960 by Denise Levertov; four lines of Poems by Dylan Thomas, from Collected Poems, copyright © 1952 by Dylan Thomas; five lines of Epigram (After the Greek) by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), from Collected Poems, 1912–1944, copyright © 1982 by The Estate of Hilda Doolittle; In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound, from Personae, copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound; and Red Wheel Barrow by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909–1939, copyright © 1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. All reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Nightwood Editions for six lines of language (in)habits from Forage by Rita Wong, published by Nightwood Editions, 2007; http://www.nightwoodeditions.com.

Oxford University Press for eight lines of It Is Dangerous to Read Newspapers from Margaret Atwood, The Animals in that Country, copyright © 1969 Oxford University Press Canada. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Burton Raffel for his translation of a pantun, the traditional Malay four-line verse.

Random House for four lines of River Snow from The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry, edited by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, copyright © 2005 by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping. Used by permission of Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Lynne Rienner Publications for five lines of Lazarus 1962 by Khalil Hawi from Naked in Exile: The Threshing Floors of Hunger, translated by Adnan Haydar and Michael Beard, © 1984. Reprinted by permission of Lynne Rienner Publications.

Sonia Sanchez for four lines of her poem a / coltrane / poem.

Maekawa Sajuro for five lines of an untitled poem from Shokubutsusai by Maekawa Samio, translated by Leith Morton.

Simon & Schuster, Inc., for three lines of Leda and the Swan, reprinted by the permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume 1: The Poems, Revised by W. B. Yeats, edited by Richard J. Finneran, copyright © 1928 by the Macmillan Company, renewed 1956 by Georgie Yeats. All rights reserved.

Society of Biblical Literature for six lines of Kirta, from Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, edited by Simon B. Parker, copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Talon Books for twenty-one lines of Naked Poems from Selected Poems: The Vision Tree copyright © 1982 Phyllis Webb, Talon Books, Vancouver, B.C. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

University of Virginia Press for four lines of A Warm Day in Winter by Paul Laurence Dunbar from The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Joanne M. Braxton, copyright © 1993 Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. Reprinted by permission of the University of Virginia Press.

Wesleyan University Press for eight lines of Spring Images by James Wright from Collected Poems, copyright © 1971 by James Wright; eleven lines of Altazor by Vincente Huidobro, translated by Eliot Weinberger, copyright © 2004 by Eliot Weinberger. Both reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Topical List of Entries

Terms and Concepts

Genres and Forms

Periods, Schools, and Movements

National, Regional, and Diasporic Poetries

Poetry in Culture and Society

Terms and Concepts

absorption

accent

accentual-syllabic verse

accentual verse

acephalous

address

adonic

adynaton

aeolic

aestheticism

affect

affective fallacy

afflatus

agudeza

alaṃkāra

alcaic

alcmanic verse

aleatory poetics

alexandrine

allaeostropha

alliteration

allusion

ambiguity

amphibrach

amplification

anaclasis

anacoluthon

anacreontic

anacrusis

anadiplosis

anagram

analogy. See METAPHOR; SIMILE; SYMBOL

anapest

anaphora

anceps

anthimeria

anthology

anticlimax

antimetabole

antispast

antistrophe

antithesis

antonomasia

antropofagia

aphaeresis

apocope

aporia

aposiopesis

apostrophe

appreciation

archaism

archetype

archilochian

argument

arsis and thesis

arte mayor

arte menor

artifice, poetic

Arzamas

asclepiad

assonance

asynarteton

asyndeton

attention

audience. See PERFORMANCE; READER; READER RESPONSE; RHETORIC AND POETRY

aureate diction

autonomy

auto sacramental

autotelic

auxesis

bacchius

ballad meter, hymn meter

bard

barzelletta. See FROTTOLA AND BARZELLETTA

bathos

beat

binary and ternary

bob and wheel

book, poetic

boustrophedon

bouts-rimés

bridge

broken rhyme

burden

Burns stanza

bylina

caccia

cacophony

cadence

caesura

cancionero/cancioneiro

canon

cante jondo

canticum and diverbium

canto

canzone

canzoniere

capitolo

carmen

carmina figurata

carpe diem

catachresis

catalexis

catalog

catharsis

cauda

caudate sonnet

cento

chain rhyme

character, Theophrastan

chastushka

chiasmus

choliambus

choriamb

chorus

Christabel meter

Chuci

classical meters in modern languages

classical poetics

classicism

clavis

cliché

climax

close reading

close rhyme

closure

cobla

codework

cognitive poetics

colon

colonial poetics

commonplace

composition. See ORAL-FORMULAIC THEORY; POET; RHETORIC AND POETRY; VERSIFICATION

composition by field

concatenation

conceit

conceptismo

concision

concrete universal

connotation and denotation

consonance

constraint

conte dévot

contests, poetic. See POETIC CONTESTS; POETRY SLAM

contrafactum

convention

copla

coq-à-l’âne

corona

coronach

correlative verse

cossante

counterpoint

counterpoint rhythm

coupe

couplet

courtly love

cretic

criticism

cross rhyme

cuaderna vía

cueca chilena

cultural criticism

curtal sonnet

cybertext

cynghanedd

cywydd

dactyl

dactylo-epitrite

dansa

dead metaphor

decadence

decasyllable

décima

decir

decorum

defamiliarization

deixis

demotion

descort

dhvani

diaeresis

dialogue

diction

difficulty

dimeter

dindshenchas

dipodism, dipodic verse

discordia concors

dissociation of sensibility

dissonance

distich

dithyramb

ditty

divan

dizer

dochmiac

dol’nik

double dactyl

dozens

duration

dyfalu

eclogue

écriture

eisteddfod

elegiac distich

elegiac stanza

elision

ellipsis

emotion

empathy and sympathy

enargeia

end-stopped

en(h)oplian

enjambment

envelope

envoi

epanalepsis

epenthesis

epiploke

epitrite

epode

equivalence

estilística

estribillo

ethnopoetics

ethos

euphony

evaluation

exegesis

exemplum

exoticism

explication

explication de texte

expression

eye rhyme

fancy

fatras

feigning

figura

figuration

fili

flyting

folia

foot

formalism

formula

fourteener

fractal verse

fragment

Frankfurt school

frottola and barzelletta

furor poeticus

gai saber

gaita gallega

galliamb(us)

generative metrics

generic rhyme

Geneva school

genius

Gesellschaftslied

glosa

glossolalia

glyconic

grammatical rhyme

Greek Anthology

greguería

Guslar

haibun

Hebraism

Hellenism. See GREEK POETRY; HEBRAISM

hemiepes

hemistich

hendecasyllable

hendiadys

heptameter

heptasyllable

hermeneutics

hermeticism

heroic couplet

heterogram

heterometric

heteronym

hexameter

hiatus

hieroglyph

historicism

homodyne and heterodyne

homoeoteleuton

hovering accent

hudibrastic verse

huitain

humors

hypallage

hyperbaton

hyperbole

hypermetric

hypogram

hypometric

hyporchema

hypotaxis and parataxis

hysteron proteron

iambe

iambic

iambic shortening

iconicity

iconology

ictus

identical rhyme

ideogram

idyll

image

imagery

imagination

imitation

incantation

incremental repetition

indeterminacy

influence

in medias res

In Memoriam stanza

inscape and instress

inspiration

intensity

intention

intentional fallacy

internal rhyme

interpretation

intertextuality

intuition

invective

invention

ionic

irony

isochronism or isochrony

isocolon and parison

isometric

ithyphallic

je ne sais quoi

jitanjáfora

jongleur

kenning

kharja

Kokinshū

laisse

lauda

laureate. See POET LAUREATE

leich

leonine rhyme, verse

letrilla

line

lipogram

lira

litotes

logaoedic

mal mariée

Man’yōshū

masculine and feminine

matrix

measure

meiosis

melopoeia, phanopoeia, logopoeia

metalepsis or transumption

metaphor

meter

metonymy

metrici and rhythmici

metron

mime

mimesis

minstrel

molossus

monk’s tale stanza

monody

monometer

monorhyme

monostich

mora

mosaic rhyme

mote

motif

muse

myth

naïve-sentimental

narrator. See PERSONA; VOICE

national poetry

nature

Natureingang

near rhyme

negative capability

neoterics

New Criticism

New Historicism

Nibelungenstrophe

novas (rimadas)

number(s)

numerology

objective correlative

obscurity

octave

octonarius

octosyllable

odl

Omar Khayyám quatrain

Onegin stanza

onomatopoeia

open form

oral-formulaic theory

oral poetry

organicism

originality

ornament

ottava rima

oxymoron

paeon

palindrome

parabasis

paraclausithyron

paradox

paralipsis

parallelism

paraphrase, heresy of

parenthesis

paroemiac

paronomasia

partimen

pathetic fallacy

pathos

patronage

pause

pentameter

penthemimer

performance

period

periphrasis

persona

personification

phalaecean

phonestheme

pie quebrado

pitch

plain style

ploce

plot

poet

poète maudit

poetess

poetic contests

poetic function

poetic license

poetic madness

poetics, Western

poet laureate

poetry reading

poiēsis

point of view. See PERSONA; PLOT; VOICE

polyptoton

polysemy

polysyndeton

postcolonial poetics

poststructuralism

poulter’s measure

préciosité

pregunta

presence

priamel

priapea

proceleusmatic

promotion

pronunciation

prose rhythm

prosimetrum

prosodic feature analysis of verse

prosody

prosopopoeia

pseudo-statement

pun. See PARONOMASIA

punctuation

pure poetry

pyrrhic

pythiambic

a

quantity

quatrain

querelle des anciens et des modernes

quintain

reader

reader response

reception theory. See READER RESPONSE

recitation

refrain

refrán

refrein

rejet

relative stress principle

remate

renga

repetition

representation

resolution

responsion

reversed consonance

reverse rhyme

rhapsode

rhopalic verse

rhyme

rhyme counterpoint

rhyme-prose

rhyme royal

rhyme scheme

rhythm

rhythmic figures

rich rhyme

rime riche. See IDENTICAL RHYME; RHYME; RICH RHYME

rising and falling rhythm

ritornello

rota virgiliana

rune

running rhythm

Saturnian

saudosismo

scansion

scheme

Schüttelreim

scop

seguidilla

senarius

senhal

sensibility

sentimentality

septenarius

septet

serial form

serranilla

sestet

sexain

Shijing

Shinkokinshū

Sicilian octave

sign, signified, signifier

signifying

simile

sincerity

slang. See DICTION

śleṣa

songbook

sound

space, poetic

spatial form

speaker. See PERSONA; VOICE

speech act theory

Spenserian stanza

split lines

spoken word. See PERFORMANCE

spondee

spontaneity

Spruchdichtung

sprung rhythm

stances

stanza

stave

stichomythia

stichos

stock

stornello

strambotto

strophe

structure

style

stylistics

sublime

substitution

syllabic verse

syllable

syllepsis

symbol

synaeresis

synaesthesia

synaloepha

synapheia

syncopation

syncope

synecdoche

system

syzygy

tail rhyme

taste

technopaegnion

telesilleum

tenor and vehicle

tercet

tetrameter

tétramètre

text

textual criticism

textuality

texture

thematics

timbre

tlacuilolli

tmesis

tone

topos

tornada

Tottel’s Miscellany

touchstones

tradition

translation

tribrach

trilogy

trimeter

trimètre

triple rhyme

triplet

trobairitz

trobar clus, trobar leu

trochaic

trope

troubadour

trouvère

typography

unity

upamā