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L
Lai
A medieval narrative or lyric poem which flourished in 12th century
France, consisting of couplets of five-syllabled lines separated by single
lines of two syllables. The number of lines and stanzas was not fixed
and each stanza had only two rhymes, one rhyme for the couplets and
the other for the two-syllabled lines. Succeeding stanzas formed their
own rhymes.
Lament
A poem that expresses grief, not necessarily about death.
Lampoon
A bitter, abusive satire in prose or verse attacking an individual.
Motivated by malice, it is intended solely to reproach and distress.
Language-centered Poetry
Where the forms of the words themselves are more significant than the
sense or meanings of the words.
Lay
A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval
minstrels called trouvères. The Lais of Marie de France are lays.
Leonine Verse
Named for a 12th century poet, Leonius, who first composed such
verse, it consists of hexameters or of hexameters and pentameters in
which the final syllable rhymes with one preceding the caesura, in the
middle of the line.
Light Verse
Whimsical, amusing poems such as limericks, nonsense poems, and
double dactyls, practised by such as Robert Herrick, Tom Hood, Charles
Stuart Calverley, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Gelett Burgess, Frederick
Locker-Lampman, Dorothy Parker, Eugene O'Neill, Odgen Nash, T. S.
Eliot, John Betjeman, John Hollander, and Wendy Cope.
Limerick
A fixed verse form appearing first in The History of Sixteen Wonderful
Old Women (1820), popularized by Edward Lear, and rhyming aabba,
where a-lines have five feet and the b-lines three feet, and where the
first and last lines end with the same word (a practice dropped in the
20th century). A limerick has been defined as "A comic poem consisting
of one couplet of accentual Poulter's Measure with fixed (internal)
rhyme: 3aa2bb3a" (Malof, 204). Lear fused the third and fourth lines
into a single line with internal rhyme. See examples authored by such
as Gelett Burgess and A. H. Reginald Buller.
Line
The line is the smallest section of a poem; it is one line of text.
Line Break
A line break is where one line ends and another begins.
List Poem
See Catalog Verse
Literal Meaning
Limited to the simplest, ordinary, most obvious meaning.
Litotes
A figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating its opposite.
Some examples of litotes: no small victory, not a bad idea, not
unhappy. Litotes, which is a form of understatement, is the opposite of
hyperbole.
Little Willy
A comic verse form, often a quatrain rhyming aabb but really identified
by its content, the gruesome fate of "Little Willy" or a comparable figure.
Liverpool Poets
A 1960s group of popular writers from the west-England city of
Liverpool, including Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten.
Luc-Bat
A Vietnamese poetic form of syllablic couplets, alternating six and eight
syllables, where the first eight-syllable line rhymes with the next six-
syllable line, and so on.
Lyric
A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and
feelings of the poet. A lyric poem may resemble a song in form or style.
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