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Lament poem

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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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

A poem expressing deep sorrow, typically for the dead or for a lost cause

Detailed Definition
A Lament poem expresses profound sorrow, typically for the dead or for irrevocable loss, using plaintive diction, repetitive structures, and emotive appeals; it may include invocations, curses, or pleas to deities, and often moves through stages of grief toward a fragile acceptance or unresolved mourning, as in ancient Hebrew psalms or Irish keening traditions.
Example
Example in poetry:
W.H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” (“Stop all the clocks”) is a modern lament poem; Dylan Thomas’s “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London” laments with ritual intensity; Seamus Heaney’s “Clearances” elegizes his mother with intimate grief; Christina Rossetti’s “Remember” offers a tender lament with restrained emotion.
Additional Notes
A Lament poem expresses deep sorrow, often for the dead, with ritualized language and emotional intensity; differs from elegy by its raw, less structured grief; may include apostrophe, repetition, and communal voice.
Also Known As
Dirge threnody keening poem sorrow song Mourning poem Mourning verse Sorrowful poem
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