POETRY

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POETRY

• PART 1

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Poetry and music

• In the beginning, poetry was recited or sung
  while strumming a lyre
• A lyre was an instrument like a small harp that a
  person could hold in their arms.
• Reciting poetry to music helped poets memorize
  epic (long) poems

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Alkman
Alkman lived in the Greek city-state of Sparta
in the 7th century. His is the first known
poetry to be written down apart from music
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Alkman
Alkmans poetry is full of nature imagery and
specific detail Often dealt with military
courage and graphic depictions of war.
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Alkman
Asleep in the mountains are the peaks and
gullies, the slopes and ravines. Asleep the
crawling creatures of dark earth,
mountain-laired beasts, the tribe of bees, and
the monsters in the depths of the purple sea.
Asleep the flocks of broad-winged birds.
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Other early poets

• Sappho
• born between 630 and 612 BCE
• most poems centered on passion and love
• exiled to Sicily
• clarity of language and simplicity of
  thought characterized her poetry
• Homer
• lived in the 7th or 8th century BCE
• greatest of Greek epic poets
• authored The Illiad and The Odyssey

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Samples
Homer The Odyssey
Sappho Hymn to Aphrodite

• Iridescent-throned Aphrodite, deathless
• Child of Zeus, wile-weaver, I now implore you,
• Don't--I beg you, Lady--with pains and torments
• Crush down my spirit,
• But before if ever you've heard my pleadings
• Then return, as once when you left your father's
• Golden house you yoked to your shining car your
• Wing-whirring sparrows
• Skimming down the paths of the sky's bright
  ether
• On they brought you over the earth's black
  bosom,
• Swiftly--then you stood with a sudden
  brilliance,
• Goddess, before me

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who
travelled far and wide after he had sacked the
famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit,
and many were the nations with whose manners and
customs he was acquainted moreover he suffered
much by sea while trying to save his own life and
bring his men safely home but do what he might
he could not save his men, for they perished
through their own sheer folly in eating the
cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion so the god
prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me,
too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove,
from whatsoever source you may know them.
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Terms

• stanza a grouping of two or more lines of verse
  (like a paragraph in prose writing)
• rhyme the repetition of the same sound
• imagery a mental picture
• symbol a word or image that stands for or
  represents something else
• refrain repetition of one or more phrases or
  lines in a poem

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Other terms

• metaphor a comparison of usually unlike objects
• EX Melba is a frantic poodle when she
• dances.
• simile a comparison of usually unlike objects
  using like or as to say something is similar
• EX Melba danced like a frantic poodle.
• cliché an overused, worn out word or phrase
• EX He was barking up the wrong tree.
• Mr. Peel is such an awesome teacher.

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Techniques Alliterationrepetition of the first
letter or sound in two or more words

• Lenny licked the lollipop
• Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
• Peels purgative pupillary policies

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Techniques Assonancethe repetition of vowel
sounds

• They eat beans mostly, this old yellow
  pair.Dinner is a casual affair.Plain chipware
  on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware.Two
  who are Mostly Good.Two who have lived their
  day,But keep on putting on their clothesAnd
  putting things away.And remembering . .
  .Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,As
  they lean over the beans in their rented back
  room thatis full of beads and receipts and dolls
  and cloths,tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
• Gwendolyn Brooks

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Techniques Internal Rhymerhyming that occurs
inside of a single line

• I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
• From the seas and the streams
• I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
• In their noon-day dreams.
• From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
• The sweet buds every one,
• When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
• As she dances about the Sun.
• I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
• And whiten the green plains under,
• And then again I dissolve it in rain,
• And laugh as I pass in thunder.
• Percy B. Shelley The Cloud

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Ways to keep the music in the words meter

• syllables exhaled breaths of sound
• stressed (strong) syllables syllables that are
  emphasized by a heightening of the voice
• unstressed (weak) syllables syllables that are
  not emphasized, or that remain flat.
• ba NA na BASE ball

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Ways to keep the music in the words meter

• meter the arrangement of syllables in a
  noticeable pattern to give rhythm to the lines
• Just SIT right BACK and HEAR a TALE, a TALE of a
  FATEful TRIP
• That STARTed FROM this TROPic PORT aBOARD this
  TIny SHIP

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Iambic pentameter

• iambic meter a pattern of weak syllables
  followed by strong ones
• weak STRONG weak STRONG weak STRONG
• poetic foot a unit of measurement one poetic
  foot is a weak syllable paired with a strong one
• iambic pentameter a meter (or rhythm) that is
  iambic and has five poetic feet per line

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Rhyme scheme

• The dog was blue A
• The cloud was red B
• The old man Stu A
• Bumped his head B
• The clown is strange C
• Home on the range C

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Assignment

• Your task
• Write six lines of perfect iambic pentameter
• Be prepared to read one line to the class