Poetry

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Poetry

• Nature
• Wordsworth, Frost
• Love
• Donne, Browning
• Death
• Keats, Dickinson
• Anguish
• Keats, Shelley
• Mysticism
• Blake, Whitman

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Poetry

• Supernatural
• Coleridge
• Animal
• Ted Hughes
• Myth and folklore
• W. B. Yeats
• Routine/Nothingness
• Larkin, Auden, Eliot, Post Modernists

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Poetry

• Foremost uses
• To pay homage to the gods
• To recount the history of specific groups
• Initially poetry either sung or narrated
• Chaucer (1340-1400) first poet (England)
• Must explore the felicities of language
• Not opposed to prose but to science and prose to
  meter
• Always changing, challenging the reader to get
  the essence of it

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• Nothing about a poem is as important as the way
  it makes the readers feel
• Not profound meaning but imagination and
  invention the most imp. gift of the poet
• Evolved from the confinement of rigid
  structures/content
• Freed from the old rules cadence introduced,
  sometimes stuttering kind of rhythm relied
  heavily on imagery
• Visions of human experience in verse
• In its final analysis life distilled

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Theme

• A general statement the poet wants to make about
  a specific subject
• It provides delight and wisdom Robert Frost
• Any subject may inspire a poet
• Love, death, nature, religion, war, etc.
• It is much complex, intense, and condensed of
  literary forms
• Until modern period fairly uniform and
  conventional - now a shift
• A statement in words about a human experience, or
  some aspect of experience

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• Purpose might be to offer definition, to express
  an emotion, to describe something objectively, to
  reveal something about nature, or to project an
  idea or attitude
• By establishing the central purpose of the poem,
  we move closer to understanding its meaning, or
  theme
• Also larger philosophical intentions to convey
• Lang, declared Shelley is given to us to
  express our ideas.
• First paraphrase, look for poetic techniques

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• Both help us detecting meaning and aid us in our
  appreciation of the poem and the poets craft
• We seek in a poem the illumination of experience
  and revelations about it
• Poems contain a vision of life that contains the
  power to offer with delight and wisdom (enlighten
  and entertain)

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Diction

• Poetry teaches us the enormous force of the few
  words
• 
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The careful selection, compression, arrangement
  of language by the artist gives poetry the power
  to project experience vividly and memorably for
  the reader
• Poets generally dont want to use language to
  convey information , argue issues or engage in
  conventional form of discourse though it might
  infiltrate or even dominate individual poems
• Instead, they use the force of language to
  heighten our perception of some aspect of
  experience to reader that experience as
  precisely, brilliantly and originally as possible

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• Poets manipulate and control language using a
  wide range of strategies
• They know that words appeal to the instincts,
  emotions, senses, intelligence and biases of
  readers
• They must select and position words effectively
  in a poem in order to obtain the desired effect
• Dual commitment to select and place
• Word power
• Denotative
• Largely independent of peoples emotions and
  personal responses to the word
• Connotative
• Refers to the shades of meanings and suggestive
  possibilities of words

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• Poets, seeking the richest possibilities of
  language might be plain or ornamental, direct or
  indirect, witty or serious, in style and tone
• Regardless of these stylistic strategies, they
  must always start with the denotative and
  connotative power of words to convey experience
  and meaning
• Poets, the supreme craftsman, invariably move
  beyond base, denotative values of words to mine
  the rich suggestions and associations that words
  hold

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• They work magic with the core of the meaning
  inherent in words, transforming plain metal into
  a rare alloy that shimmers with emotional
  implication and possibility
• Emotional effect appeals to the experience of
  readers
• Urgency and power of words varieties of
  experience that poets express with it

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Tone

• Tone is writers attitude towards the subject
• Serious, playful, modest, arrogant, irreverent,
  devout
• May be consistent or shifting
• In tone we trace the speaker's unique emotional
  and intellectual appeal to the subject
• Sometimes easy, sometimes hard to gauze the voice
  that illuminates the emotional context, the
  situation, the mood and speakers frame of mind
• A poems tone include
• Word choice, selection of details, connotations,
  figures of speech, imagery, rhythm, phrasing and
  construction of lines and sentences, irony,
  satire and other conventions

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Imagery

• Poetry helps us to visualize and experience the
  world by offering images or descriptive details
  that appeal to our senses
• Collection of individual images in a poem is
  termed imagery
• The verbal representation of the sensory
  experience
• Poet concentrates on visual impressions
  something that we see through our minds eyes
• Forms of imagery could be through
• Sound, taste, touch, smell

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• Imagery can involve internal physical (pain)
  sensations as well as broad range of mental and
  emotional state
• Imagery is the pictorial power of language to
  capture the world of sensory impressions
• Sequences of images used to heightened the ideas
  posited in any poem
• A good poet invents imagery that arouses
  sensations in readers, thereby bringing them into
  intimate contact with the experience of the poem
  and perhaps enabling them to understand that
  experience better

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• Imagery conveys an understanding of things
  whether that imagery is literal or figurative,
  denotative or connotative
• Even when the poem relies heavily on imagery to
  project a direct impression of things, there is
  often a clear line of meaning traced through the
  images
• Imagery is not a sure means to illustrate/limn a
  definable human mood or a readily comprehensible
  statement about experience

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• If the imagery is too literal and too denotative,
  means exactly what is states, it offers us a
  mental picture of a scene but nothing more
• We must probe the imagery to discover meaning
  while various interpretations might develop
• Poets want us to sense vividly, to perceive the
  world through their images, often arranged in a
  pattern, but they also tend to call attention to
  the significance of the imagery

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• More significantly, we discover through the
  imagery and the sensory experience the sights,
  sounds and other sensations evoked a carefully
  arranged world of meaning and value

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Symbolism

• A symbol may be defined as something that stands
  for other than what it is
• Symbolism in poetry radiates beyond the thing
  toward other level and varieties of meaning
• Often a symbol readily understood because it has
  become a part of common culture knowledge

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Prasad Birjadish. A Background of the Study of
the English Literature. 1950. Third Edition.
Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, London MacMillan and
Company Limited, 1965.
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Epic

• Of mans first disobedience, and the fruit
• Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
• Brought Death into the world, and all our woe,
• With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
• Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
• Sing, Heavenly Muse
• 
  Milton

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To Blossoms - Herrick

• Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
  Subject
• Why do ye fall so fast?
• Your date is not so past,
• But you may stay yet here awhile
• To blush and gently smile,
  
• And go at last.
  
• 
  Thoughts suggested
• What, were ye born to be
  by the emotion
• An hour or halfs delight,
• And so to bid good night?
• T was pity Nature brought ye forth
• Merely to show your worth
• And lose you quite.
• 
  

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• But you are lovely leaves, where we
• May read how soon things have
  an intellectual
• Their end, though neer so brave
  reaction to the
• And after they have shown their pride
  earlier emotional
• Like you awhile, they glide
  disturbance
• Into the grave.

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Lyric

• Greek origin
• Melic or Lyric
• An expression of a single emotion
• A musical composition
• Singing to the accompaniment of instrumental
  music
• Music
• Harp or lyre
• Subject matter of little importance if in voice
  right emotional effect
• Rhythmic possibility of words
• Lyric became independent of words
• Keats, Shelley, Tennyson

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Lyric/Ballad

• O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
• And thinner, clearer, farther going!
• O Sweet and far from cliff and scar
• The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
• r, n, s, f, l Tennyson
  (lyric)
• The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
• The furrow followed free
• We were the first that ever burst
• Into that silent sea.
• f, b, t, s, r Coleridge (ballad)

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Subject matter

• Expression to a single emotion or feeling
• Appeals more to the heart than to the intellect/
  appeal to the intellect through the heart
• As a rule quite brief
• Subjective poem
• Expresses the poets emotions,
• Cannot help being intense personal
• A well knit poem, possessing a definite structure
• Some lyrics have no intellectual conclusion
• Poets emotion a law into itself

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Structure

• Three distinct parts
• First part states the emotion
• Second part consists of the thoughts suggested
  by the emotion
• Third part tends to be intellectual in
  character, often a judgment, a pointed summary,
  and ending with a parting smile or sigh

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Remembrance

• When to the sessions of sweet, silent thought,
  a
• I summon up remembrance of things past,
  b
• I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
  a
• And with old woes new wail my dear times waste.
  b
• Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
  c
• For precious friends hid in deaths dateless
  night, d
• And weep afresh loves long-since-cancelled woe,
  c
• And moan the expense of many a vanishd sight
  d

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• Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, e
• And heavily from woe to woe tell oer
  f
• The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, e
• Which I new pay as if not paid before
  f
• But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
  g
• All losses are restored, and sorrows end. g
• Lack of many a thing he sought
• Precious friends hid in deaths dateless night
• Grievances forgone
• All loses made up by the mere remembrance of a
  living friend, whom he loves

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Sonnet

• Sicily and Provence Italy 13th cent.
• Petrarch - Classical
• Octave (quatrains), sestet (tercet) (abba,
  cde/cdc)
• Octave makes a statement, Volta illustrates it
• Caesura Volta (turn in the thought) a new
  application to the thought (not always)
• A short poem of fourteen lines
• Expresses one single thought or feeling

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English Sonnet

• First half of the 16th cent.
• Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard - Earl of Surrey
• Three quatrains (abab, cdcd, efef, gg) later Sh.
• No set range of subjects
• Sh. theme limited to love Connected chain
  dedicated MR. W. H. Dark Lady Ear of
  Southampton
• Milton scope greatly widened almost
  everything within the range of human feeling and
  experience

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Marvells Upon Cromwells Return from Ireland

• He nothing common did or mean
• Upon that memorable scene,
• But with his keener eye
• The axes edge did try
• Nor calld the Gods, with vulgar spite,
• To vindicate his helpless right
• But bowd his comely head
• Down, as upon a bed.
• Charles Is conduct
  on the scaffold

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Ode

• Like its parent lyric, Ode is of Greek origin
• Serious and dignified composition
• Almost always in rhyme and longer than lyric
  proper
• Often in the form of an address
• Sometimes used to commemorate an important public
  occasion

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Features

• Exalted in subject matter
• Elevated in style and tone
• Neither the theme nor the treatment can be
  trivial or undignified
• Serious both in choice of the subject and the
  matter
• Height of the power
• Longer than lyric as it admits of development
• Expression is expected to be much more
  consciously elaborate, impressive and diffuse

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• Often directly addressed to the being or object
  it treats of
• Opening lines sometimes contain an apostrophe or
  appeal
• The mode is maintained throughout the poem
• Sometimes an important public event like a
  national jubilee the death of a distinguished
  personage, the commemoration of the founding of a
  great university
• Marvels Upon Cromwells Return from Ireland
• Tennysons Ode on the Death of the Duke of
  Wellington

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Dorian/ Pindaric Ode

• Dorian district and dialect it arose
• Pindar Greek poet Pindaric Ode
• Choric sung to the accompaniment to dance
• Structure borrowed from the movement of the
  dancers
• Three parts/ Stanzas (repeated accordingly)
• Strophe dancers make a turn from the right to
  the left
• Anti strophe from the right to the left
• Epode different dancers stand still

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Lesbian ? Horatian Ode

• Lesbian island of Lesbos
• Simpler in form than Pindaric Ode
• Short stanzas similar in length and arrangement
• Treatment direct and dignified thought
  clearly developed
• In Latin popularized by Horace and Catullus
• Style sober and stately
• A course of its own
• Subject-matter, style, treatment and outlook
• Not strictly bound by classical traditions
• Regular Keats, Shelley
• Irregular Wordsworth