POETRY

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POETRY
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POETRY-What is it?

• A type of literature that expresses ideas,
  feelings, or tells a story in a specific form
  (usually using lines and stanzas)

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What is Poetry

• Anything written in meter
• Stressed and unstressed syllables
• Similar to music
• Writing that sounds musical
• If you like music you should enjoy poetry
• Poetry is nothing to be frightened of - we just
  need to learn ways of reading and understanding
  it.

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Look at how the lines break

• Line breaks - where you decide to cut the line,
  on what word
• Sentence - strange things happen to sentences in
  poetry - they can be stretched, cut, interrupted,
  fragmented - delayed resolution
• End-stopped lines
• Enjambment A line which does not end with a
  grammatical break, that is, where the line cannot
  stand alone, cannot make sense without the
  following line

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Reading Poetry
ABC by Robert Pinsky Any body can die,
evidently. Few Go happily, irradiating
joy, Knowledge, love. Many Need oblivion,
painkillers, Quickest respite. Sweet time
unafflicted, Various world X Your zenith.

• Note - when reading a poem out loud or to
  yourself, don't pause at the end of a line if
  there's not punctuation there--read "across the
  line if possible.

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How to Read Poems

• Speaker
• Every lyric poem has a speaker
• Define the speaker as precisely as possible
• Poems usually give you a clue as to who the
  speaker is
• Audience
• The characters whom the speaker is addressing
• Rhetorical Situation
• What is the reason the speaker is addressing the
  audience with these words

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Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem, Too
Who is the speaker? To whom is the speaker
speaking? Why is the speaker speaking?
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POETRY FORM

• FORM/STRUCTURE - the appearance of the words on
  the page
• LINE - a group of words together on one line of
  the poem
• STANZA - a group of lines arranged together

• A word is dead
• When it is said,
• Some say.
• I say it just
• Begins to live
• That day.

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KINDS OF STANZAS

• Couplet a two line stanza
• Triplet (Tercet) a three line stanza
• Quatrain a four line stanza
• Quintet a five line stanza
• Sestet (Sextet) a six line stanza
• Septet a seven line stanza
• Octave an eight line stanza
• bold terms indicate ones you will be tested on

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How to Read Poems

• Paraphrase
• Make sure you understand the basic meaning of the
  speakers words
• Look at the poems diction the choice and order
  of words
• Your paraphrase usually will take more words than
  the poem itself
• Use a dictionary to understand unusual words
• Determine the literal level of the poem

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Diction/Word Choice

• She picked up a fruit from the ground, where it
  lay.
• She pilfered an apple that had fallen from its
  tree.
• The lovely woman stooped and grabbed the fallen
  apple.

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Buffalo Bills by E. E. Cummings page 1173

• Buffalo Bills
• defunct
• who used to
• ride a watersmooth-silver
• 
  stallion
• and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
• 
  Jesus
• he was a handsome man
• and what I
  want to know is
• how do you like your blueeyed boy
• Mister Death

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Dialect

• We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
• The Pool Players
• Seven at the Golden Shovel
• We real cool. We
• Left School. We
• Lurk late. We
• Strike straight. We
• Sing sin. We
• Thin gin. We
• Jazz June. We
• Die soon.

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FIGURATIVELANGUAGE
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SIMILE

• A comparison of two things using like, as than,
  or resembles.
• She is as beautiful as a sunrise.

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METAPHOR

• A direct comparison of two unlike things
• All the worlds a stage, and we are merely
  players.
• - William Shakespeare

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PERSONIFICATION

• Giving human-like qualities to an object.

• April Rain Song Langston Hughes
• Let the rain kiss youLet the rain beat upon your
  head with silver liquid dropsLet the rain sing
  you a lullabyThe rain makes still pools on the
  sidewalkThe rain makes running pools in the
  gutterThe rain plays a little sleep song on our
  roof at nightAnd I love the rain.

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My Father as a Guitar Martin Espada

• Similes?
• Metaphors? (Why metaphors rather than similes?)
• Personification?
• How might speakers dreams be related to fathers
  dreams of own mother?

• Speaker?
• Speakers attitude toward his father?
• How does comparison between speakers father and
  guitar help him express his feelings?

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OTHERPOETIC DEVICES
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Allusion

• Allusion comes from the verb allude which means
  to refer to
• An allusion is a reference to something famous.

• Allusions are commonly made to the Bible, nursery
  rhymes, myths, famous fictional or historical
  characters or events, and Shakespeare

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Allusion, continued

• A tunnel walled and overlaid
• With dazzling crystal we had read
• Of rare Aladdins wondrous cave,
• And to our own his name we gave.
• From Snowbound
• John Greenleaf Whittier

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Allusion, continued

• As the cave's roof collapsed, he was swallowed up
  in the dust like Jonah, and only his frantic
  scrabbling behind a wall of rock indicated that
  there was anyone still alive".
• Christy didn't like to spend money. She was no
  Scrooge, but she seldom purchased anything except
  the bare necessities".

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Allusions, continued

• "Marty's presence at the dance was definitely a
  'Catch 22' situation if he talked to Cindy she'd
  be mad at him, but if he ignored her there'd be
  hell to pay. His anger bubbled to the surface. He
  realized that by coming to the dance he had
  brought his problems with him like a Trojan
  Horse, and he could only hope he would be able to
  keep them bottled up".

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IMAGERY

• Language that appeals to the senses.
• Most images are visual, but they can also appeal
  to the senses of sound, touch, taste, or smell.
• What about the imagery in Harlem?

then with cracked hands that ached from labor in
the weekday weather . . . from Those Winter
Sundays
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Harlem Langston Hughes Page 918

• What happens to a dream deferred?
• Does it dry up
• like a raisin in the sun?
• Or fester like a sore
• And then run?
• Does it stink like rotten meat?
• Or crust and sugar over
• like a syrupy sweet?
• Maybe it just sags
• like a heavy load.
• Or does it explode?

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Other
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How to Read Poems--Other

• Determine the tone of the poem
• It is the same as in speech
• Tones in our voice
• Facial expressions
• Sarcasm
• Images
• Tone in a poem may reveal the true meaning
• It may reverse the literal meaning

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Look at the tone in Harlem

• What is the tone in the poem?

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SOUND EFFECTS
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RHYTHM

• The beat created by the sounds of the words in a
  poem
• Rhythm can be created by meter, rhyme,
  alliteration and refrain.

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SCANSION

• Scansion is the analysis of a line of poetry for
  foot and meter.

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METER

• A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Meter occurs when the stressed and unstressed
  syllables of the words in a poem are arranged in
  a repeating pattern.
• When poets write in meter, they count out the
  number of stressed (strong) syllables and
  unstressed (weak) syllables for each line. They
  they repeat the pattern throughout the poem.

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METER cont.

• FOOT - unit of meter.
• A foot can have two or three syllables.
• Usually consists of one stressed and one or more
  unstressed syllables.

• TYPES OF FEET
• The types of feet are determined by the
  arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• (cont.)

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METER cont.

• TYPES OF FEET (cont.)
• Iambic - unstressed, stressed
• Trochaic (Trochee) - stressed, unstressed

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METER cont.

• TYPES OF FEET (cont.)
• Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed, stressed
• Dactylic - stressed, unstressed, unstressed

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•                                                 
      
• Meter also refers to the number of feet in a
  line

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METER cont.

• Kinds of Metrical Lines
• monometer one foot on a line
• dimeter two feet on a line
• trimeter three feet on a line
• tetrameter four feet on a line
• pentameter five feet on a line
• hexameter six feet on a line
• heptameter seven feet on a line
• octometer eight feet on a line

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FREE VERSE POETRY

• Unlike metered poetry, free verse poetry does NOT
  have any repeating patterns of stressed and
  unstressed syllables.
• Does NOT have rhyme.

• Free verse poetry is very conversational - sounds
  like someone talking with you.
• A more modern type of poetry.
• Remember Sears Life

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"The Red Wheelbarrow"(William Carlos Williams)

•                        so much
  depends                        upon
                        
• a red
  wheel                        barrow
•                         glazed with
  rain                        water
•                         beside the
  white                        chickens.          
               

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BLANK VERSE POETRY

• Written in lines of iambic pentameter, but does
  NOT use end rhyme.

• from Julius Ceasar
• Cowards die many times before their deaths
• The valiant never taste of death but once.
• Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
• It seems to me most strange that men should fear
• Seeing that death, a necessary end,
• Will come when it will come.

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RHYME

• Words sound alike because they share the same
  ending vowel and consonant sounds.
• (A word always rhymes with itself.)

• LAMP
• STAMP
• Share the short a vowel sound
• Share the combined mp consonant sound

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END RHYME

• A word at the end of one line rhymes with a word
  at the end of another line
• Hector the Collector
• Collected bits of string.
• Collected dolls with broken heads
• And rusty bells that would not ring.

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INTERNAL RHYME

• A word inside a line rhymes with another word on
  the same line.
• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered
  weak and weary.
• From The Raven
• by Edgar Allan Poe

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RHYME SCHEME

• A rhyme scheme is a pattern of rhyme (usually end
  rhyme, but not always).
• Use the letters of the alphabet to represent
  sounds to be able to visually see the pattern.
  (See next slide for an example.)

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SAMPLE RHYME SCHEME

• The Germ by Ogden Nash
• A mighty creature is the germ,
• Though smaller than the pachyderm.
• His customary dwelling place
• Is deep within the human race.
• His childish pride he often pleases
• By giving people strange diseases.
• Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
• You probably contain a germ.

a a b b c c a a
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NEAR RHYME (slant rhyme)

• a.k.a imperfect rhyme, close rhyme/ slant rhyme
• or eye rhyme/near rhyme
• The words share EITHER the same vowel or
  consonant sound BUT NOT BOTH

• ROSE
• LOSE
• Different vowel sounds (long o and oo sound)
• Share the same consonant sound

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My Papas Waltz Theodore Roethke

• The whisky on your breath
• Could make a small boy dizzy
• But I hung on like death
• Such waltzing was not easy.
• We romped until the pans
• Slid from the kitchen shelf
• My mothers countenance
• Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one
knuckle At every step you missed My right ear
scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With
a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to
bed Still clinging to your shirt.
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My Papas Waltz

• How does this examination of rhyme change your
  understanding of how the poem works as a whole?

• Find examples of real rhyme
• Find examples of slant rhyme
• How do these rhymes contribute to the meaning of
  the poem?

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ONOMATOPOEIA

• Words that imitate the sound they are naming
• BUZZ
• from Tennyson's Come Down, O Maid The moan of
  doves in immemorial elms,/And murmuring of
  innumerable bees.
• The repeated m/n sounds reinforce the idea of
  murmuring by imitating the hum of insects on a
  warm summer day.

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ALLITERATION

• Consonant sounds repeated at the beginnings of
  words
• If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
  how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

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Henry W. Longfellow, "The Wreck of Hesperus"

• Then up and spake an old sailor,  Had sailed to
  the Spanish Main,"I pray thee, put into yonder
  port,  For I fear a hurricane."

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CONSONANCE

• Similar to alliteration EXCEPT . . .
• The repeated consonant sounds can be anywhere in
  the words
• silken, sad, uncertain, rustling . .

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ASSONANCE

• Repeated VOWEL sounds in a line or lines of
  poetry.
• (Often creates near rhyme.)
• Lake Fate Base Fade
• (All share the long a sound.)

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ASSONANCE cont.

• Examples of ASSONANCE
• Slow the low gradual moan came in the snowing.
• John Masefield
• Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep.
• William Shakespeare
• Look at The Fish

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TYPES OF POETRY
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SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

• A fourteen line poem with a specific rhyme
  scheme.
• The poem is written in three quatrains and ends
  with a couplet.
• The rhyme scheme is
• abab cdcd efef gg

• When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
     I all alone between my outcast state, And
  trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
     And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
  Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
     Featur'd like him, like him with friends
  possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that
  man's scope,    With what I most enjoy contented
  least Yet in these thoughts myself almost
  despising,    Haply I think on thee,--and then
  my state (Like to the lark at break of day
  arising    From sullen earth) sings hymns at
  heaven's gate For thy sweet love remember'd
  such wealth brings    That then I scorn to
  change my state with kings'.

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Source

• Jeter, Ann