Home › Glossary › Letter C

concise lyric

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A brief, tightly crafted lyric poem expressing a single emotion or idea

Detailed Definition
A concise lyric is a short, tightly crafted poem that expresses a single, intense emotion or perception with precision and economy; it avoids digression, relying on vivid imagery, controlled meter, and resonant diction to achieve emotional depth within minimal space, exemplified in haiku or the epigrammatic work of Emily Dickinson.
Example
Example in poetry:
Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers” captures a complex idea in three short stanzas; Bashō’s haiku “An old silent pond / A frog jumps into the pond— / Splash! Silence again” exemplifies concise lyricism; William Blake’s “The Sick Rose” condenses decay and desire into two quatrains; Sappho’s Fragment 31 (“He seems to me equal to the gods...”) expresses intense emotion in minimal lines.
Additional Notes
A concise lyric expresses a single emotion, observation, or idea with minimal words and maximum resonance; haiku, epigrams, and Dickinson’s quatrains are models; precision and imagery trump elaboration.
Also Known As
Epigrammatic lyric distilled lyric pithy lyric essential lyric Brief verse Epigrammatic poetry Short verse
Skip to main content