Unit 5 · Poetry II

Closed form ● (core concept) — Poems that keep to set, repeating blueprints for line, stanza, meter, and rhyme — blueprints that shape how the poem's ideas connect. NOTE: the CED states the AP Exam will not require students to label or identify specific rhyme schemes, metrical patterns, or poetic forms.

Open form ● (core concept) — Poems that skip the set blueprints for line and stanza — while still using structure to relate ideas to one another.

Meter ● (core concept) — The rhythmic pattern of a poem's lines — one of the structural elements the CED names for closed forms. (The exam does not require identifying specific metrical patterns.)

Rhyme ● (core concept) — The repetition of similar sounds, especially at the ends of lines — one of the structural elements the CED names for closed forms. (The exam does not require identifying specific rhyme schemes.)

Connotation ● (core concept) — The associations, emotions, or secondary meanings a word carries beyond its plain dictionary sense. Words with multiple meanings or connotations add nuance and complexity that can shape how a text is interpreted.

Hyperbole ● (core concept) — Overstatement on purpose: inflating some feature of a thing to spotlight that feature and show the speaker's attitude toward it.

Understatement ● (core concept) — Deliberate downplaying: shrinking some feature of a thing to spotlight that feature and show the speaker's attitude toward it.

Image ● (core concept) — One concrete, sense-based picture in a text — either literal, or a comparison that stands in for something else through sensory association.

Imagery ● (core concept) — A text's stock of images — especially sensory ones built from descriptive adjectives and adverbs — working together to underscore ideas in a passage or across the whole work.

Extended metaphor ● (core concept) — A single metaphor carried through part or all of a text: the main-subject/comparison-subject pairing keeps going and gathers further details, similes, and images along the way. What it transfers can depend on context.

Personification ● (core concept) — A kind of comparison in which something nonhuman — an object, entity, or idea — is given a human trait or quality, which characterizes it.

Allusion ● (core concept) — A passing reference to something beyond the text — an earlier work (myths and sacred texts count), a painting or song, a historical person, place, or happening — that borrows meaning from what readers already know.

Transitional elements ● (core concept) — Any link — a word, phrase, clause, sentence, or even a whole paragraph — that holds writing together by making the relationship between ideas visible.