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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
Language that evokes specific, sensory, and tangible experiences—such as “apple,” “rain,” or “silk”—as opposed to abstract concepts.
Explore this topic in depth (5)
Carpe Diem: Poetry and the Urgency of the Present
— Carpe diem poetry asks what we should do with a life that will not last forever. Explore its classical origins, its images of fleeting beauty, and the ways poets make urgency both appealing and open to question.
Imagery in Poetry
— Imagery is the sensory language that helps a poem be felt as well as understood. This guide explains how to recognise different kinds of imagery and explore what they do without rushing past the words into interpretation.
How to Annotate a Poem
— Annotating a poem means recording what you notice and what you are still working out. This guide offers a staged method for moving from first impressions to evidence-based interpretation without turning the page into a checklist.
Victorian Poetry
— Victorian poetry developed during a period of rapid social, scientific and industrial change. It includes intimate lyrics, public arguments, narrative poems and unsettling dramatic speakers, rather than a single uniform style.
Death and Mortality in Poetry
— Poetry has long given people ways to face death: with sorrow, prayer, anger, wit, tenderness and attention to the living world. This guide explores mortality as a broad theme, from elegy and remembrance to ageing, doubt and the music of silence.
Detailed Definition
Concrete language in poetry consists of words that denote specific, perceptible objects, actions, or sensations—such as “apple,” “shatter,” or “cinnamon”—as opposed to abstract terms like “freedom” or “beauty”; this linguistic precision grounds the poem in sensory reality, enabling readers to experience the poem viscerally and infer thematic depth through implication rather than exposition, a cornerstone of modernist and imagist practice.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy” (Roethke) uses tangible, sensory words; “Blackberry juice staining my fingers purple” conveys taste and touch directly; “Rusted nails in a weathered fence” names specific, observable details; “Steam rising from hot pavement after rain” avoids metaphor for literal description.
Additional Notes
Concrete language uses specific, sensory-rich words that evoke tangible experiences (e.g., “cracked leather,” “sizzling bacon”) rather than abstract concepts (e.g., “beauty,” “freedom”); essential for vivid poetic imagery.