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R
Realism
The endeavor to portray an accurate representation of nature and real
life without idealization.
Refrain
A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem,
usually after every stanza.
Renga
Japanese form comprising half-tanka written by different poets.
Repetend
The irregular repetition of a word, phrase, or line in a poem. It is a type
of refrain, but differs in that it can appear at various places in the poem
and may be only a partial repetition.
Repetition
A basic artistic device, fundamental to any conception of poetry. It is a
highly effective unifying force; the repetition of sound, syllables, words,
syntactic elements, lines, stanzaic forms, and metrical patterns
establishes cycles of expectation which are reinforced with each
successive fulfillment.
Resonance
The quality of richness or variety of sounds in poetic texture.
Responsion
When stanzas are of the same meter, the same rhyme scheme and
same number of lines they are 'in responsion'.
Reverdie
A medieval song celebrating the coming of spring, such as "Sumer is
icumen in" and "Lenten ys Come with Loue to Toune," modernized in
poems such as the opening of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.
Reverse Sonnet
A comic form invented in Wilfred Owens' sonnet "Hand trembling
towards hand," which starts with the couplet rather than ending with it.
Rhapsody
The recitation of a short epic poem or a longer epic abridged for
recitation.
Rhetoric
The art of speaking or writing effectively; skill in the eloquent use of
language.
Rhetorical Question
The poet asks a question without expecting to learn anything from the
response, or to pose any difficulty for the reader, the answer being
something that the poet already implies and the reader infers.
Rhopalic
Having each succeeding unit in a poetic structure longer than the
preceding one. Applied to a line, it means that each successive word is
a syllable longer that its predecessor. Applied to a stanza, each
successive line is longer by either a syllable or a metrical foot. Rhopalic
verse is also called wedge verse.
Rhopalic Verse
Poems whose lines start short and get longer and longer.
Rhyme
The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or
more words. When the rhyme occurs in a final stressed syllable, it is
said to be masculine: cat/hat, behave/shave, observe/deserve. When
the rhyme ends with one or more unstressed syllables, it is said to be
feminine: vacation/sensation, reliable/viable. The pattern of rhyme in a
stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for each
final sound. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second,
and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in
another.
Rhyme Royal, Rime Royale
A stanza of seven ten-syllable lines, rhyming ababbcc, popularized by
Geoffrey Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde and The Parliament of Fowls,
and termed "royal" because his imitator, James I of Scotland, employed
it in The Kingis Quair. The stanza can be described as overlapping an
interlaced quatrain (abab) with a double-couplet quatrain (bbcc), or as
linking a tercet with a pair of couplets. Later examples are Sir Thomas
Wyatt's "They flee from me" William Shakespeare's "The Rape of
Lucrece" and "A Lover's Complaint" (in his volume of sonnets), John
Milton's "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," and William
Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence."
Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. Rhyme
schemes are denoted by representative letters to show which lines
rhyme. For example, abab could denote a quatrain's rhyme scheme.
Rhymester
An inferior poet.
Rhyming Slang
A slang popular in Great Britain in the early part of the 20th century, in
which a word was replaced by a word or phrase that rhymed with it, as
loaf of bread for head. When the rhyme was a compound word or part
of a phrase, the rhyming part was often dropped, so in the foregoing
example, loaf would come to stand for head.
Rhythm
Rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry. Thus, the
meter of a line may be described as being "iambic", but a full description
of the rhythm would require the pattern analysis of the language to
include tempo changes and how the meter interacts with other
elements of the vocabulary. In English, metrical rhythm is generally
used. It involves exact patterns of stresses or syllables in repeated
patterns within a line called "feet." Rhythm based on meter in English
usually concerns the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Rich Rhyme
Rhymes identical in sound (or spelling) but semantically different, e.g.,
"Felicity was present | To pick up her present."
Ricochet Words
Hyphenated words, usually formed by reduplicating a word with a
change in the radical vowel or the initial consonant sound, such as
pitter-patter, chit-chat, riff-raff, wishy-washy, hob-nob, roly-poly, pell-
mell, razzle-dazzle, etc.
Riding Rhyme
An early form of heroic verse, so named for its use by Chaucer to
describe the riding of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales.
Rime Couée
Tail rhyme, a stanza in which a usually closing short line rhymes with a
previous short line and is separated from it by longer lines.
Rising Meter
Meter containing metrical feet that move from unstressed to stressed
syllables
Romance
Long narrative poems in French about courtly culture and secret love
that triumphed in English with poems such as Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight and Chaucer's The Knight's Tale and Troilus and Criseyde.
Romanticism
The principles and ideals of the Romantic movement in literature and
the arts during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romanticism,
which was a reaction to the classicism of the early 18th century,
favored feeling over reason and placed great emphasis on the
subjective, or personal, experience of the individual. Nature was also a
major theme. The great English Romantic poets include Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
Rondeau
A mainly octosyllabic poem consisting of between ten and fifteen lines,
having only two rhymes and with the opening words used twice as an
unrhyming refrain at the end of the second and third stanzas. The ten-
line version rhymes abbaabC abbaC (where the capital C stands for the
refrain). The fifteen-line version often rhymes aabba aabC aabbaC.
Chaucer's "Now welcome, summer" at the close of The Parliament of
Fowls is an example of a thirteen-line rondeau.
Rondeau Redoublé
Five quatrains and a closing quintain, using two rhymes. The first
quatrain consists of four refrain lines that are used, in sequence, as the
last lines of the next four quatrains; and the last line of the closing
quintain is a phrase from the first refrain. Dorothy Parker has a
delightful poem entitled after the form itself, and keeping strictly to its
very taxing rules.
Rondel, Roundel
Poetic forms of 11-14 lines where the first two lines are repeated in the
middle and at the end, and that have only two rhymes. Algernon
Charles Swinburne's "The Roundel" consists of eleven lines, two
stanzas, where the first two lines are repeated, the second time at the
poem's end.
Rondelet
The rondelet is a brief form of French poetry. It consists of one seven-
line stanza and a refrain with a strict rhyme scheme and a distinct
meter pattern. The refrain should contain the same words, but changes
to punctuation are acceptable. Line 1 four syllables (a) Line 2 eight
syllables (b) Line 3 (repeat of line 1) Line 4 eight syllables (a) Line 5
eight syllables (b) Line 6 eight syllables (b) Line 7 (repeat of line 1).
Roundelay
A lyric poems with a refrain.
Rubaiyat
The rubaiyat is an Arabic poem; it is the Persian word for quatrain. The
rhyme scheme is aaba. The convention for expanded rubaiyat allows
the unrhymed line to become the rhymed line in the following stanzas.
If it continues to the z for the rhyme scheme, the unrhymed line would
rhyme with the first (a).
Rune
A Finnish or Old Norse poem.
Run-on Couplet
See Open Couplet
Run-on Lines
Lines in which the thought continues into the next line, as opposed to
end-stopped.
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