Glossary of Poetic Terms
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Pun
- Wordplay that uses homonyms (two different words that are spelled identically) to deliver two or more meanings at the same time. Harryette Mullen riffs on the multiple meanings of “slip” in [Of a girl, in white]. “Ah, nothing more obscure than Browning / Save blacking,” writes Ambrose Bierce in “With a Book,” making a pun on the name of poet Robert Browning and the color brown.
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