Poetry

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Poetry Making Rhyme Meter
By Mrs. W. Warren
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Literary Devices of Poetry
Before we talk about scansion and rhyme schemes,
lets review some basic poetry terms.

• Alliteration the repetition of the same
  consonant sounds in a sequence of words, usually
  at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable.
  Example descending dewdrops luscious
  lemons. Alliteration is based on the sounds of
  letters, rather than the spelling. Example keen
  car.
• Allusion a brief reference to a person, place,
  thing, event, or idea in history or literature.
  Allusions conjure up biblical authority, scenes
  from Shakespeares plays, historic figures, wars,
  great love stories, etc. Allusions imply cultural
  and reading ties between the writer and reader.
• Archetype universal symbols that evoke deep and
  sometimes unconscious response in a reader. In
  literature, characters, images, and themes that
  symbolically embody universal meanings and basic
  human experiences regardless of when or where
  they live are considered archetypes. Examples
  stories of quests, initiations, scapegoats,
  descents to the underworld and ascents to heaven.
• Assonance the repetition of internal vowel
  sounds in nearby words that do not end the same.
  Assonance is a way to emphasize important words
  in a line.
• Ballad traditionally, a ballad is a song passed
  down orally from generation to generation that
  tells a story and that eventually is written
  down. They cant be traced (usually) to a
  particular author or group of authors. Ballads
  are usually dramatic, condensed and impersonal
  narratives.

• Blank verse unrhymed poetry written with an
  alternating pattern of stressed and unstressed
  syllables. It resembles the natural rhythm of
  spoken English.
• Cacophony a discordant and meaningless mixture
  of sounds.
• Classicism the principles or styles
  characteristic of the literature and art of
  ancient Greece and Rome.
• Cliché an idea or expression that has become
  tired and trite from overuse, its freshness and
  clarity having worn off. They are usually a sign
  of weak writing.
• Coherence logical interconnection.
• Conceit an elaborate or fanciful metaphor,
  especially of a strained or far-fetched nature.
• Couplet two consecutive lines of poetry that
  usually rhyme and have the same meter. A heroic
  couplet is a couplet written in rhymed iambic
  pentameter..
• Diction a writers choice of words, phrases,
  sentence structures and figurative language which
  combine to help create meaning.
• Dirge a funeral song or tune, or one expressing
  mourning in commemoration of the dead.

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More Devices

• Dramatic monologue a type of lyric poem in which
  a character (the speaker) addresses a distinct
  but silent audience imagined to be present in the
  poem in such a way as to reveal a dramatic
  situation and, often unintentionally, some aspect
  of his/her temperament or personality.
• Elegy a mournful, contemplative lyric poem
  written to commemorate someone who is dead, often
  ending in a consolation. Also, a serious
  meditative poem produced to express the speakers
  melancholy thoughts.
• Epic a long, narrative poem that tells the
  adventures of a hero whose actions help decide
  the fate of a nation or of a group of people. The
  style of an epic poem is formal and grand.
• Epigram a brief, pointed and witty poem that
  usually makes a satiric or humorous point.
  Epigrams are often written in couplets, but take
  no prescribed form.
• Expressionism nonrealistic drama which uses
  symbolism and unnatural, unrealistic settings. It
  creates its own world that is somewhat
  dream-like.
• Narrative a recounting of a series of actual or
  fictional events in which some connection between
  the events is established or implied. A narrative
  is anything that tells a story. Types of
  narratives includeepics, ballads, and narrative
  poems
• Narrator the teller of a story or other
  narrative. A narrator may be the author speaking
  in his or her own voice, or a character or
  persona created by the author to tell the story.
  A narrator may stand inside the story, telling
  events from a first-person point of view, or
  outside the story, telling the events from the
  third-person point of view.

• Naturalism a literary movement that arose during
  the late 1800s and early 1900s that emphasizes
  biological and socioeconomic determinism in
  fiction and drama. It portrays human beings as
  higher animals lacking free will, their lives
  determined by natural forces of heredity and
  environment and by basic drives over which they
  have no control and which they do not fully
  comprehend.
• Nom de plume a fictitious name used by a writer
  who wishes to remain anonymous or who chooses
  not to use his or her real name professionally
  also, a pen name.
• Octameter a poetic line containing eight
  metrical feet. A long line that tends to break
  into two four-foot lines, the octameter is rare
  in English poetry.
• Octave the first eight lines, or octet, of the
  Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet. Usually the
  octave asks a question or states a generalization
  that is answered or resolved in the last six
  lines, the sestet, of the poem. An octave is also
  a stanza of eight lines.
• Ode a long and elaborate LYRIC poem, usually
  dignified or exalted in TONE and often written to
  praise someone or something or to mark an
  important occasion.
• Onomatopoeia the use of words whose sound
  imitates the sound of the thing being named.
  Examples hum, buzz, clang, boom, hiss, crack,
  and twitter.
• .
• Oxymoron a figure of speech in which two
  contradictory words or phrases are combined in a
  single expression, giving the effect of a
  condensed paradox. Examples wise fool, living
  death, cruel kindness, eloquent silence, and
  loving hate..
• Parallelism the technique of showing that words,
  phrases, clauses, or larger structures are
  comparable in content and importance by placing
  them side by side and making them similar in
  form. Parallelism is a common unifying device in
  poetry, especially in ancient poetry growing out
  of the oral tradition.

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More Devices

• Pentameter a five-foot line of poetry. The most
  common pentameter line, iambic pentameter, is the
  basis of blank verse, the sonnet, and the heroic
  couplet, and is the most widely used line in
  English poetic verse. The following couplet, by
  Alexander Pope, is in iambic pentameter
• True ease in writ ing comes from art, not
  chance,
• As those move eas iest who have learned
• To dance.
• Paean a song or hymn of praise, thanksgiving, or
  triumph.
• Poetry a genre of literature in its most
  intense, most imaginative, and most rhythmic
  forms. Poetry differs from prose most basically
  in being written in lines of arbitrary lengths
  (stanzas) instead of in paragraphs. Poetrys
  richness in imagery, particularly in metaphor,
  results in a far greater concentration of
  meaning than is ordinarily found in prose.
• Pseudonym a false name or pen name used by a
  writer rather than his or her real name. Example
  Saki is a pseudonym for H.H. Munro.
• Pun a form of wit, not necessarily
  funny,involving a play on a word with two or more
  meanings.
• Quatrain A stanza of four lines, rhyme or
  unrhymed also, a poem consisting of four lines
  only.The quatrain is the most common stanza form
  in English.

• Requiem a chant, dirge, or poem for the dead
  from the Roman Catholic mass for the dead.
• Rhyme the similarity of sound between two words
  ( cold/old)When the sounds of their accented
  syllables and all succeeding sounds are
  identical, words rhyme. The most common form of
  rhyme is rhyme at the end of lines of poetry,
  which is called end rhyme. The rhyming of two or
  more words in the same line of poetry is called
  internal rhyme, which most often occurs in the
  middle and at the end of the same line also
  called middle rhyme and leonine rhyme.
• Rhythm the patterned flow of sound in poetry and
  prose. In traditional English poetry, rhythm is
  based on the combination of accent and numbers of
  syllables, known as meter. Whether words are
  made up of harsh sounds or soft sounds also
  affects the rhythm of a line of poetry
• Scansion Analyzing meter in lines of poetry by
  counting and marking the accented and unaccented
  syllables, dividing the lines into metrical feet,
  and showing the major pauses, if any, within the
  line.
• Simile a figure of speech that uses like, as, or
  as if to compare two essentially different
  objects, actions, or attributes that share some
  aspect of similarity. In contrast to a metaphor,
  in which a comparison is implied, a simile
  expresses a comparison directly.
• Sonnet a fourteen-line poem in iambic
  pentameter. The two most important type of
  sonnets are the Italian (Petrarchan) and the
  Shakespearean (English). The Italian sonnet is
  organized into two parts an octave, consisting
  of the first eight lines and rhyming abbba, abba
  and a sestet, the remaining six lines, which
  usually rhyme cde, cde. The octave establishes
  the Theme or poses a problem that is developed or
  resolved by the sestet. The rhyme scheme of the
  Shakespearean sonnet, abab, cdcd, efef, gg, is
  looser than that of the Italian sonnet, allowing
  for seven different rhymes instead of five.
• Stanza a section or division of a poem
  specifically, a grouping of lines into a
  recurring pattern determined by the number of
  lines, the meter of the lines, and the rhyme
  scheme.

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Stanza Types
Remember that a stanza is like a paragraph of
poetry.

• Here are some of the terms we use to describe
  types of stanzas by number of lines
• couplet two lines in a stanza
• triplet three lines in a stanza
• quatrain four lines in a stanza
• quintet five lines in a stanza
• sestet six lines in a stanza
• septet seven lines in a stanza
• octave eight lines in a stanza

• Here are some other ways to describe stanza
  types
• heroic couplet two successive rhyming verses
  completing a thought
• terza rima three-line stanza with interwoven
  rhyme scheme of iambic pentameter
• limerick five lines, rhyme scheme of A A B B A
• ballad stanza four lines, rhyme scheme of A B C
  B
• royal rime seven lines in iambic pentameter A B
  A BB CC
• ottava rima Italian stanza, iambic pentameter
• A B A B A B CC
• Spenserian stanza nine lines, eight in iambic
  pentameter, one alexandrine a line of iambic
  hexameter A B A BB C B CC
• sonnet fourteen-line stanza form in iambic
  pentameter
• Italian or Petrarchan sonnet fourteen-line
  stanza with rhyme scheme of A B B A A B B A C D E
  C D E (CD CD CD)
• Shakespearean sonnet fourteen-line quatrains and
  a couplet with rhyme scheme A B A B C D C D E F E
  F GG

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Meter and Metrical Feet
Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables in a line of poetry. The stressed
syllable is accented and the unstressed syllable
is unaccented. An easy way to find the stressed
syllable is to hold your chin. When you feel your
chin move and and become tighter, then that
syllable of the word is stressed. You mark a
stressed syllable with / over it you mark an
unstressed syllable with an u over it.
Basic types of Metrical Feet

• iamb unstressed stressed
• trochee stressed unstressed
• anapest unstressed unstressed stressed
• dactyl stressed unstressed unstressed
• spondee stressed stressed
• pyrrhic unstressed unstressed (this is very
  rare)

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Examples of Meter
It is hard to find poems in iambic monometer.
"Upon His Departure Hence" / Thus I
Pass by And die, As one Unknown, And gone
I'm made A shade, And laid I'th grave, There
have My cave. Where tell I dwell, Farewell. -
Robert Herrick
John Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes" is in iambic
pentameter / / /
/ / A casement high and
triple-arch'd there was, / /
/ / /All garlanded with carven
imag'ries
Note Ive marked each unstressed syllable with
an asterisk ()
William Blake's poem below is an example of
trochaic dimeter with an instance of catalexis,
which is what occurs in most trochaic lines where
the last unstressed syllable is cut off. Here it
would be diagrammed as / / (). / /
() Little boy, / / () Full of joy
/ / () Little girl, /
/ () Sweet and small
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Examples of Meter
Lord Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib is
an example of anapestic tetrameter /
/ /
/ For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the
blast, / /
/ /And breathed in the face of the
foe as he passed
Gwendolyn Brookss poem We Real Cool is an
example of spondee / / / / We
real cool. We / / / left
school. We / / Lurk late...
Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light
Brigade" contains dactylic dimeter with catalexis
/ / Cannon to right of
them, / / Cannon to left
of them, / / Cannon in
front of them / /
() Volleyed and thundered
The Pyrrhic For the pyrrhic, the pattern is / U
U /--as in the "to the" in the following phrase
Today we went to the mountains-- /
/ / to DAY / we
WENT / to the / / MOUN tains /
IMPORTANT NOTE Spondees and pyrrhics are used
exclusively as substitutes foriambics and
trochees within individual lines it is
impossible to have a meter that is
purelycomposed of spondees or pyrrhic