Elements of Poetry

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Elements of Poetry

• http//homepage.mac.com/rush723/school/Elements20
  of20Poetry.htm
• http//www.buzzle.com/articles/basic-elements-of-p
  oetry.htmll
• http//www.dscc.edu/weeks/elements_of_poetry.htm
• WRITING AND GRAMMAR Prentice Hall 2001

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Suggestions for Reading Poetry

• Read the poem more than once
• Look up unfamiliar words
• Listen for patterns of sound in the poem
• Pay attention don't "drift off"
• Read the poem aloud to hear it

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Look For These Points in the Poems

• Who is the speaker?
• What is the occasion?
• What is the point of the poem?

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ALLITERATION

• Alliteration occurs when the initial sounds of a
  word, beginning either with a consonant or a
  vowel, are repeated in close succession. Examples
  Athena and Apollo Nate never knows People
  who pen poetry

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ALLUSION

• An indirect reference to a well-known person,
  place, event, literary work, or work of art.
• ie In Ode on a Grecian Urn,the pictures on the
  face of the urn might appear to be simple
  artwork, but they allude to episodes in the poem.

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ASSONANCE

• Assonance occurs when the vowel sound within a
  word matches the same sound in a nearby word, but
  the surrounding consonant sounds are different.
• "Tune" and "June" are rhymes
• but
• "tune" and "food" are assonant
• (the rhyme is in the vowel sounds only)

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DENOTATION

• Denotation is the objective meaning of a word.
• Denotation can best be remembered as the literal,
  dictionary meaning of a word.

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CONNOTATION

• The connotative meaning of a word is based on
  implication, or shared emotional association with
  a word.
• Connotation is best defined as the emotional
  feeling one gets from a wordnegative or
  positive.
• Think of how you connect with a word you read in
  a poem is the feeling positive or negative?

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DICTION

• Diction refers to both the choice and the order
  of words.
• Elevated diction is the use of larger, more
  meaningful words.
• Low diction is the use of more common words.

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IMAGE

• As one reads a poem, the mind's eye begins to
  paint a picture. This image is what helps one to
  recall the details of the poem.
• Poetic imagery alters or shapes the way we see
  what the poem is describing.

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IMAGERY

• The use of descriptive language in poetry to
  appeal to the reader's senses and emotions.

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IRONY

• Irony refers to a difference between the way
  something appears and what is actually true.
• Irony refers to a surprising, amusing, or
  interesting contradiction.
• The key to irony is often the tone, which is
  sometimes harder to detect in poetry than in
  speech.

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METAPHOR

• Metaphors immediately identify one object or idea
  with another, in one or more aspects.
• Metaphors compare two or more items without using
  like or as to relate them.
• "He's such a pig!"
• "She's a real goat!"

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METER

• Meter is the rhythm established by a poem, and it
  is usually dependent not only on the number of
  syllables in a line but also on the way those
  syllables are accented (stressed and unstressed.)
  
• The rhythmic unit is often described as a foot
  patterns of feet can be identified and labeled. A
  foot may be iambic, which follows a beat pattern
  of unstressed and stressed syllables.
• ( / ) stressed ( ? )unstressed

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example of Meter

• For example, read aloud "The DOG went WALKing
  DOWN the ROAD and BARKED." Look at the
  capitalized words. They carry a loud beat. The
  beats will tell you how many iambs there are in
  this foot. Because there are five iambs, this
  line follows the conventions of iambic pentameter
  (pent five), the common form in Shakespeare's
  time.
• The loud parts are stressed syllables and are
  labeled with a "/" slash mark above and
  unstressed syllables with a "U" mark above.

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Example of how to label the meter of a line...

• U / U / U /
  U /
• The DOG went WALKing DOWN the ROAD
• U /
• and BARKED.

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RHYME RHYTHM

• The basic definition of rhyme is two words that
  sound alike.
• There are varieties of rhyme internal rhyme
  functions within a line of poetry.
• The more common end rhyme occurs at the end of
  the line and at the end of some other line,
  usually within the same stanza.

• The pattern of words that accent or form beats at
  fixed intervals in the poem.

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SIMILE STANZA

• A comparison of two or more unrelated things
  using like or as.

• A group of lines in a poem, seen as a unit, much
  like a paragraph.

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SYMBOL

• A symbol works two ways It has a literal
  meaning, and it also suggests something deeper.
• It is crucial to distinguish a symbol from a
  metaphor Metaphors are comparisons between two
  seemingly dissimilar things symbols associate
  two things, but their meaning is both literal and
  figurative.
• Apple pie literally, a dessert /
  symbolically, it
• represents innocence or homespun values.
• Raven literally, a black bird /
  symbolically, it
  represents death.

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TONE

• The tone of a poem is roughly equivalent to the
  mood it creates in the reader. Think of an actor
  reading a line such as "I could kill you." He can
  read it in a few different ways If he thinks the
  proper tone is murderous anger, he might scream
  the line and cause the veins to bulge in his
  neck. He might assume the tone of cool power and
  murmur the line in a low, even voice. Perhaps he
  does not mean the words at all and laughs as he
  says them. Much depends on interpretation.
• The poet will convey his attitude toward the
  subject of the poem in the tone of the wording or
  language he/she uses. It might be happy, sad,
  anxious, remorseful, etc.

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WORD ORDER

• Word order matterssometimes for clarity of
  meaning (a solo guitar isn't the same as a guitar
  solo) and sometimes for effect ("a dying man" is
  roughly the same as "a man, dying," but the
  effect of the word order matters).

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POETRY TERMINOLOGY