Poetry Terms and Techniques

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Poetry Terms and Techniques

• Ms. Aixa Rodriguez
• Belmont Preparatory High School
• ESL/ELA

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So.. you think you know

• All about poetry?
• Lets see!
• Yes, you must take notes!
• I am not kidding!

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Types of Poetry

• Narrative Poetry- a narrative poem is one that
  tells a story. Types of narrative poetry include
  ballads and epics.
• Lyric Poetry- a highly musical verse that
  expresses the emotions of the speaker. Common
  types are sonnets, odes, free verse and elegies.
• Dramatic poetry- a dramatic poem is a verse that
  relies heavily on dramatic elements such as
  monologue, or dialogue. Two types of dramatic
  poetry are dramatic monologue and soliloquy.

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Whats a Ballad?

• Come on I know you can guess

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Ballad a narrative poem, sometimes sung, that
tells a dramatic story.
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What about.

• An acrostic poem?
• Whats that?

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Acrostic poem The first letters of the lines in
an spell a word, often the subject of the poem.

• Another very incredibly
• Intelligent and intuitive
• Xena type warrior princess teacher with
• An attitude.

Domo arigato gozaimashita
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Ok hotshots!

• Whats an epic poem?

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Epic a long narrative poem centering on a
heroic figure who represents the fate of a nation.

• Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of
  anonymous authorship. In the poem, Beowulf, a
  hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists
  Grendel, Grendel's mother and, later in life
  after becoming a king, an unnamed dragon.

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AhObi-wan has taught you well. The force is
with you young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi
yet. - Darth Vader

• Define concrete poem.

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Concrete poem is written in a shape that adds
meaning to the poem.
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A little too easy- Darth Vader

• Define free verse..

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Free verse poetry with no set rhythm or rhyme.
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Ha! Impressive most impressive..- Darth Vader

• A challenge you say!
• Here you are! Define blank verse!

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• Blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameter.

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A bit of tutoring you need hmmm..- Yoda

• And if a person is to become one with the
  force.what type of poem shall we write for them
  hmmmm?

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Elegy or Elegiac poem a meditative poem
mourning the death of an individual.
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Whats a

• Dramatic Monologue?
• Soliloquy

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Dramatic monologue a poem in which a character
addresses an audience.

• A fictional character, at a critical or dramatic
  point in life, addresses a particular audience,
  which his identifiable but silent. In the course
  of the monologue, we learn a great deal, often
  ironically, about the character who is speaking
  and the circumstance that have led to the speech.

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Soliloquy

• A form of monologue found most often in drama. It
  differs from a dramatic monologue in that the
  speaker is alone, revealing thoughts and feelings
  to or for oneself that are intentionally unheard
  by other characters in Shakespeares plays for
  example the principal characters reflections on
  how to act or questions of conscience are
  revealed in their soliloquies. To be or not to
  be (Shakespeares Hamlet)

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See if you can get this clue

• The next poem rhymes with the last word in the
  above sentence. It originated in an archipelago
  famous for natural disasters, especially
  tsunamis and earthquakes.

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Haiku a three-line poem usually about nature,
with this syllable pattern 5,7,5. This style
originated in Japan.

• The old bicycleleaning against the lamp
  postWill it fall over?

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Alright poetic geniuses

• What is another poem similar to haiku but longer?

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Tanka a five-line poem usually about emotions
with this syllable pattern 5,7,5,7,7.

• The tanka poem is very similar to haiku but tanka
  poems have more syllables and it uses simile,
  metaphor and personification.
• There are five lines in a Tanka poem.
• Line one - 5 syllables Beautiful mountains
• Line two - 7 syllables Rivers with cold, cold
  water.
• Line three - 5 syllable White cold snow on
  rocks.
• Line four - 7 syllables Trees over the place
  with frost.
• Line five - 7 syllables White sparkly snow
  everywhere.
• Tanka poems are written about nature, seasons,
  love, sadness and other strong emotions. This
  form of poetry dates back almost 1200 years.

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Ok champs.. Lets see you get this one

• ??? a meditation or celebration of a specific
  subject.

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Ode a meditation or celebration of a specific
subject.

• Excerpt from
• ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
• By John Keats
• What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
  Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or
  the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these?
  What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What
  struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels?
  What wild ecstasy?

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Lets see if you get this one.

• ___________ a poem of fourteen lines in iambic
  pentameter.

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Sonnet a poem of fourteen lines in iambic
pentameter.
The New ColossusNot like the brazen giant of
Greek fame, (a) With
conquering limbs astride from land to land (b)
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall
stand (b) A mighty woman with a
torch, whose flame (a) Is
the imprisoned lightning, and her name (a)
Mother of Exiles. From her
beacon-hand (b) Glows
world-wide welcome her mild eyes command (b)
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
(a) "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"
cries she (c) With silent lips. "Give me
your tired, your poor, (d)Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free, (c)
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. (d)
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
(c) I lift my lamp beside the
golden door!" (d) Emma Lazarus, 1883

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Shakespeares Sonnet 116

• Let me not to the marriage of true minds
  (a)Admit impediments. Love is not love (b)Which
  alters when it alteration finds, (a)Or bends
  with the remover to remove. (b)O no, it is an
  ever fixed mark (c)That looks on tempests and is
  never shaken (d)It is the star to every
  wand'ring barque, (c)Whose worth's unknown
  although his height be taken. (d)Love's not
  time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
  (e)Within his bending sickle's compass come
  (f)Love alters not with his brief hours and
  weeks, (e)But bears it out even to the edge of
  doom. (f)If this be error and upon me proved,
  (g)I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)

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A quick quiz Do you know

• Stanza_________________
• Rhyme ________________
• Rhyme scheme ______________

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• Stanza grouping of lines within a poem.
• Rhyme repetition of the same sound.
• Rhyme scheme a regular pattern of end rhyme in a
  poem.

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Ok, so lets now go over common

• FORMS OF STANZA!

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Whats a couplet?

• Whats a couplet?

Je nais se pas!
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Couplet two lines of poetry that usually rhyme.

• Avocado Girl
• By Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez
• I am an ahuacatl of ancient days,
• Of both past and present ways.
• I am an aguacate of a familiar green,
• A nuyorbronxrican Queen.
• I am an avocado with rough Bronx skin,
• both Latina and American.

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Not bad.. Not bad..

• How about a tercet? Or triplet?

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Triplet or tercet any three lines of poetry,
whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or
unrhymed, metered or unmetered.

I am a yellow dog who wishes he was a
purple-spotted frog.
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You are getting it!

• And now.. a quatrain?

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Quatrain four lines of poetry that usually have
a rhyme scheme.

• A quatrain is a poem, or a stanza within a poem,
  that consists always of four lines. It is the
  most common of all stanza forms in European
  poetry. The rhyming patterns include aabb, abab,
  abba, abcb.
• Example aabb (from William Blake, "The Tyger")
• Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests
  of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could
  frame thy fearful symmetry?

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A cinquain? A quintain? Its driving me insane!

• You can do it!
• USE THE FORCE!

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Cinquain a five-line poem

• In summertime on Bredon
• The bells they sound so clear
• Round both the shires they ring them In
  steeples far and near,
• A happy noise to hear.
• -A.E. Houseman, Bredon Hill

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Does it ever end?

• Sestet six lines
• O, young Lochnivar is come out of the west,
• Through all the wide Border his steed was the
  best
• And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
• He rode all unarmd, and he rode all alone.
• So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war.
• There never was knight like the young Lochnivar.
• - Sir Walter Scott, Lochnivar

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Nope.

• Heptastich seven lines
• The flower that smiles today
• Tomorrow dies
• All that we wish to stay
• Tempts and then flies
• What is this worlds delight?
• Lightning, that mocks the night,
• Brief even as bright.
• - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mutability

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Last one! I promise!

• Octave eight lines
• Labor is blossoming or dancing where
• The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
• Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
• Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
• O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,
• Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?
• O body swayed to the music, O brightening glance,
• How can we know the dancer from the dance?
• - William Butler Yeats, Among School Children

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Quick quiz

• Sestet _________________________
• Heptastich ______________________
• Octave _________________________

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Ok.. now Rhythm and Rhyme!

• Techniques of Poetry Sound

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Rhyme

• End Rhyme- the use of rhyming words at the ends
  of lines.
• Internal rhyme use of rhyming words within lines
• Slant Rhyme- use of rhyming sounds that are
  similar but not identical, as in rave and rove or
  rot and rock. (consonance is a type of slant
  rhyme).

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Ok, ok how about

• Alliteration and consonance?

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Alliteration repetition of initial consonant
sounds.

• Sometimes some students decide to stand instead
  of sitting, to speak when someone is speaking and
  simply act silly.

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Consonance same consonant sound

• Avocado Girl
• By Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez
• I am an ahuacatl of ancient days,
• Of both past and present ways.
• I am an aguacate of a familiar green,
• A nuyorbronxrican Queen.
• I am an avocado with rough Bronx skin,
• both Latina and American.

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Ok keep it clean

• What is assonance?

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Assonance repetition of vowel sounds among
words that begin or end with different consonants.

• "Do you like blue?".
• How now brown cow
• Hear the mellow wedding bells.
• Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells"

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Meter and rhythm movement and pattern in a poem.

• Metrical verse follows a set rhythmical pattern.
  Free verse or vers libre, does not.
• The meter of a poem is its rhythmical pattern.
• English verse is made of rhythmical units called
  feet. A foot is made up of weakly stressed (?)
  and strongly stressed (/) syllables.

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Poetry has feet?
Type of Foot Pattern Example
Iamb, or iambic foot ? / afraid
Trochee, or trochaic foot / ? freedom
Anapest, or anapestic foot ? ?/ in a flash
Dactyl, or dactylic foot / ? ? feverish
Spondee, or spondaic foot / / baseball
Pyrrhee or pyrrhic foot ? ? unbelievable
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How many feet does your poem have?
Term Number of feet Example
monometer one foot And I Shall fly away
dimeter two feet After autumn Comes the winter
trimeter three feet In the midst of mourning
tetrameter four feet O saddle up my milk white steed
pentameter five feet That time of year thou mayst in me behold
hexameter six feet A perfect knight he was, that all could plainly see.
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Iambic pentameter ten syllables with 2nd, 4th
6th, 8th, 10th syllables accented.

• Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter.

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Techniques of Poetry Meaning

• Image- language that creates a concrete
  representation of an object or an experience.
• Objective correlative- group of images that
  together create a given emotion in a reader or
  listener.
• Figure of speech or trope is an expression that
  has more than a literal meaning.
• Hyperbole- an exaggeration made for rhetorical
  effect.
• Metaphor- figure of speech in which one t thing
  is spoken or written about as if it were another.
  
• Tenor of the metaphor is the writers actual
  subject.
• The vehicle of the metaphor is the other thing to
  which the subject is compared or likened.
• Personification and similes are types of metaphor.

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Techniques of Poetry Meaning contd

• Metonymy- the naming of an object associated with
  a thing instead of the name of the thing itself.
  Ex The White House for the President, or The
  Crown for the King.
• Simile- a comparison using like or as.
• Synaesthesia- a figure of speech that combines in
  a single expression images related to two or more
  different senses. Ex. Singing light.
• Synecdoche- a figure of speech in which the name
  of a part of something is used in place of the
  name of the whole or vice versa. Ex. Hired hands
  laborers

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Rhetorical techniques

• Rhetorical techniques are extraordinary but
  literal use of language to achieve a particular
  effect.
• Antithesis- a rhetorical technique in which
  words, phrases or ideas are strongly contrasted
  often by repeating a grammatical structure. Ex
  to err is human, to forgive divine.
• Apostrophe- rhetorical technique in which an
  object or person is directly addressed.
• Catalog- a list of people or things
• Chiasmus- a rhetorical technique in which the
  order of occurrence of words or phrases is
  reversed. Ex. we can weather changes but we
  cant change the weather.
• Parallelism- a rhetorical technique in which a
  writer emphasizes the equal value or weight of
  two or more ideas by expressing them in the same
  grammatical form, as in the phrase with hope,
  with joy, and with love.
• Repetition- writers conscious reuse of a sound, a
  word, phrase sentence or other element.
• Rhetorical question a question asked for effect
  but not meant to be answered because the answer
  is clear from the context.

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Structure and Language in Poetry

• Allegory- a narrative in prose or verse, in which
  abstract ideas, principles human values or states
  d of mind are personified. The purpose of the
  allegory is to illustrate the significance of the
  ideas by dramatizing them. Parable and fable are
  kinds of allegory in which a moral I illustrated
  in the form of a story.

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Allusion

• A reference to a historical event, to Biblical,
  mythological or literary characters and incidents
  with which the reader is assumed to be familiar.
  Allusion may , with few words, enrich or extend
  the meaning of a phrase or idea or image,
  Allusion may also be used for ironic effect. In
  his poem Out Rober frost expects the reader to
  recall from Macbeths final soliloquy the line
  Out out brief candle Such expressions as a
  Herculean task or Achilles heel are also forms
  of allusion.

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Ambiguity

• Denotes uncertainty of meaning. In literature and
  especially poetry, we speak of intentional
  ambiguity, the use of language and images to
  suggest more than one meaning at the same time.

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Connotation

• The feelings attitudes images and associations of
  a word or expression. Connotations are usually
  said to be positive or negative

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Denotation

• That which a word actually names, identifies, or
  points to Denotation is sometimes referred to
  as the dictionary definition of a work.

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Figurative Language

• The intentional and imaginative use of words and
  comparisons that are not literal but that create
  original, vivid, and often unexpected images and
  associations .

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Hyperbole

• An exaggerated expression also called
  overstatement, for a particular effect, which may
  be humorous, satirical, or intensely emotional.
  Hyperbole is the expression of folktales and
  legends.
• Ex. I have mountains of work to do.

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Irony

• In general a tone or figure of speech in which
  there is a discrepancy a striking difference or
  contradiction between what is expressed and what
  is meant or expected. Irony maybe used to achieve
  a powerful effect indir4ectly. In satire, for
  example it may be used to ridicule or criticize.

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Metaphor

• Form of analogy or comparison where the author
  finds and expresses similarity between dissimilar
  things.

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Onomatopoeia

• The use of words or phrases that sound like the
  things to which they refer. Examples include the
  words meow, clink, boom, and mumble.

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Oxymoron

• Related to paradox, oxymoron is a figure of
  speech in which two contradictory or sharply
  contrasting terms are paired fro emphasis or
  ironic effect. Students favorite examples include
  jumbo shrimp and army Intelligence. Poets
  have written of the wise fool Joyful
  sadness or and eloquent silence.

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Paradox

• An expression concept of situation whose literal
  statement is contradictory , yet which makes a
  truthful and meaningful observation. Less is
  more

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Satire

• A form or style that uses elements of irony,
  ridicule, exaggeration , understatement, sarcasm,
  humor or absurdity to criticize human behavior or
  a society.

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Simile

• An expression that is a direct comparison of two
  things using words as like a s as if seems and
  appears.
• I wandered lonely as a cloud (William
  Wordsworth

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Speaker

• The narrative voice in a poem. Also the character
  who speaks in a dramatic monologue

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Symbol

• Anything that stands for or suggests something
  else.

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Understatement

• Expression in which something is presented as
  less important or significant than it really is.
  Understatement is often used for humorous,
  satiric or ironic effect.
• He was not without imagination (Mark Twain)

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Unit Quiz

1. Stanza grouping of lines within a poem.
2. Rhyme repetition of the same sound.
3. Rhyme scheme a regular pattern of end rhyme in a
   poem.
4. Meter and rhythm movement and pattern in a poem
5. Iambic pentameter ten syllables with 2nd, 4th
   6th, 8th, 10th syllables accented.
6. Blank verse unrhymed iambic pentameter.
7. Acrostic poem The first letters of the lines in
   an spell a word, often the subject of the poem.
8. Free verse poetry with no set rhythm or rhyme.
9. Alliteration repetition of initial consonant
   sounds.
10. Consonance same consonant sound

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Quiz contd

1. Assonance repetition of vowel sounds among words
   that begin or end with different consonants.
2. Internal rhyme pattern where words within a line
   rhyme with the one that ends it.
3. Couplet two lines of poetry that usually rhyme.
4. Triplet or tercet any three lines of poetry,
   whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or
   unrhymed, metered or unmetered.
5. Quatrain four lines of poetry that usually have
   a rhyme scheme.
6. Cinquain a five-line poem, with this syllable
   pattern 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.
7. Ballad a narrative poem, sometimes sung, that
   tells a dramatic story.
8. Epic a long narrative poem centering on a
   heroic figure who represents the fate of a
   nation.
9. Concrete poem is written in a shape that adds
   meaning to the poem.
10. Elegy a meditative poem mourning the death of an
    individual.
11. Dramatic monologue a poem in which a character
    addresses an audience.
12. Haiku a three-line poem usually about nature,
    with this syllable pattern 5,7,5. This style
    originated in Japan.
13. Tanka a five-line poem usually about emotions
    with this syllable pattern 5,7,5,7,7.
14. Lyric poems that are brief and express a
    powerful emotion Ode a meditation or celebration
    of a specific subject.