Welcome to the World of Poetry!

Poetry

PoetryWhat is poetry? Who knows?Not a rose but the scent of a rose;Not the sky but the light of the sky;Not the fly but the gleam of the fly;Not the sea but the sound of the sea;Not myself but what makes meSee, hear, and feel something that proseCannot, and what it is, who knows?

Eleanor Farjeon, “Poetry”, 1968

What can poetry do for you?Poetry helps you to identify with people and situations: Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Frost Shel Silverstein Langston Hughes

Poetry grantsinsights into yourself and others, developing sensitivity to universal needs and feelings.

Poetry expresses moods.

What Is Poetry?

Poetry is not easily defined, nor is it easily measured or classified.

There is no single definition of poetry. Some definitions specify the characteristics of poetry,

including the poetic elements and the functions of words.

Other definitions emphasize its emotional impact.

Elements of PoetryPoets use everyday language in different ways to encourage readers: to see familiar things in a

new light to draw on their senses to fantasize

Poets also use certain devices to create: medleys of sounds suggest visual

interpretations communicate messages

The criteria for selecting poetry: rhythm rhyme and other sound

patterns repetition imagery shape in the creation of

poetry

Elements of PoetryRhythm The word rhythm is derived from the Greek rhythmos,

meaning to flow. In poetry, this flowing quality refers to the movement of words in the poem.

Stress, the number of syllables, and the pattern of the syllables direct the feelings expressed in a poem.

Many poems have a definite repetitive cadence, or meter, with certain lines containing a certain number of pronounced beats.

Poets use rhythm to create dramatic effects and to suggest moods.

Repetition Poets frequently use repetition to enrich or emphasize

words, phrases, lines, or even whole verses in poems.

Elements of Poetry – Sound Devices

Rhyme & Other Sound Patterns: Sound is an important part of the pleasure of poetry. One of the ways in which poets can emphasize sound is rhyming. Rhyming may occur at the end of lines and within lines.

Alliteration – the repetition of initial consonants or groups of consonants to create sound patterns.

Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds to create interesting and unusual sound patterns.

Onomatopoeia – words that imitate the actions or sounds with which they are associated – such as plop, jounce, beat, creak, swish, clink, hiss.

Rhyme

I heard a horsemanRide over the hill;

The moon shone clear,The night was still;His helm was silver,

And pale was he;And the horse he rode

Was of ivory.

Walter de la Mare, “The Horseman” 1923.

Assonance(Repetition of vowel sounds)

He clasps the crag with crooked hands

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands . . .

Alfred Tennyson, “The Eagle” 1851

Onomatopoeia Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells”

(Stanza 1)

Hear the sledges with the bells - Silver bells!What a world of merriment their melody foretells!How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,In the icy air of night!While the stars that oversprinkleAll the heavens seem to twinkleWith a crystalline delight;Keeping time, time, time,In a sort of Runic rhyme,To the tintinnabulation that so musically wellsFrom the bells, bells, bells, bells,Bells, bells, bells - From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Alliteration(Repetition of consonant sounds)

Dinogar’s speckled petticoat

was made of skins and speckled stoat;

whip whip whipalong

eight times we sing the song.

Gwyn Williams, “The Rattle Bag” 1982

Elements of Poetry

Imagery Imagery is a primary element in poetry. It encourages

you to see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and touch the worlds created by poets.

Figurative Language Poets use figurative language (language with nonliteral

meaning) to create imagery in their poetry. This helps to clarify, add vividness, and encourage readers to experience things in a new way.

Metaphors, Similes, Personification, and Hyperbole are all examples of figurative language.

Elements of Poetry:Figurative Language

Metaphors – implied comparisons between things that have something in common but are essentially different. Metaphors highlight certain qualities in things to make readers see them in new ways.

Similes – direct comparisons between things that have something in common but are essentially different. The comparisons made by similes are considered direct because the words like or as are included in the comparisons.

Personification – allows poets to give human emotions and characteristics to inanimate objects, abstract ideas, and nonhuman living things.

Hyperbole – exaggeration that creates special effects.

Metaphors

The dinosaurs are not all dead.I saw one raise its iron headTo watch me walking down the roadBeyond our house today.Its jaws were dripping with a loadOf earth and grass that it had croppedIt must have heard me where I stopped,Snorted white steam my way,And stretched its long neck out to see,And chewed, and finned quite amiably.

Charles Malam, “Steam Shovel” 1958

Allusion

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Similes

The moon this night is like a silver sickleMowing a field of stars.It has spread a golden runnerOver the rippling waves.With its winking shimmerThis magic carpet lures meTo fly to the moon on it.

Inna Miller, “The Path on the Sea” 1972

PersonificationThe leaves are gone,The world is old,I hear a whisper from the sky – The dark is long,The ground’s grown cold,I hear the snow’s white lullaby.She breathes it softlyThrough the air,While with her gown of flakes she sweepsThe sky, the trees, the ground grown cold,Singing hushNow hush.

Now hush,Hush Sleep.

Deborah Chandra, “Snowfall” 1990.

Parallelism (Parallel Structure)

Parallelism is a type of repetition. A writer presents a series of sentences or sentence elements, all written in a similar style or manner. Sometimes words are repeated, but sometimes the repetition is only a similarity.

Example of Parallel Structure

“I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quite earth.”

–Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

*note how the subject “I” does four things, all of similar grammatical structures: lingered…, watched…, listened…., wondered….

Another Example of Parallel Structure

“In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over the land and the sea.”

–Sir Winston Churchill

*Note how the writer addresses time in a similar, or parallel, manner. "In the past...in the present...in the future...." Each element begins with a parallel prepositional phrase.

Anaphora Anaphora: Repetition of the same word or group of

words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise,This fortress built by Nature for herselfAgainst infection and the hand of war,This happy breed of men, this little world,This precious stone set in the silver sea,Which serves it in the office of a wall,Or as [a] moat defensive to a house,Against the envy of less happier lands;

Forms of Poetry

Lyric Poetry A lyric poem is a poem that is brief and discontinuous,

emphasizing sound and picture imagery rather than narrative or dramatic movement.

The epic poems of the Greeks were narratives emphasizing heroic deeds. Now, as in the past, lyric poems emphasize musical, pictorial, and emotional qualities.

Narrative Poetry Poets may be expert storytellers. A poem that tells a

story is narrative poetry. With rapid action and typically chronological order, story

poems have long been favorites of children.

Lyric Poem

Whenever the moon and stars are set,Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,And ships are tossed at sea,

By, on the highway, low and loud,By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and thenBy he comes back at the gallop again.

Robert Louis Stevenson, “Windy Nights”

Emphasizes sound and picture imagery

Narrative Poem

There are strange things done in the midnight sunBy the men who moil for gold;The artic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;The Northern Lights

have seen queer sights,But the queerest they ever did seeWas the night on the marge of Lake LebargeI cremated Sam McGee.

Ted Harrison, “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” 1986

Tells a story

Forms of Poetry

Ballads The ballad is a form of narrative folk song developed in

Europe during the Middle Ages. Minstrels and bards (a bard is the Welsh word for poet)

sang the tales of legend or history, while accompanying themselves on stringed instruments.

Modern poets have used the ballad form for poems to be read rather than sung.

Example: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel T. Coleridge, 1798

We will read at a later time…

Forms of PoetryHaiku A very old form of Japanese poetry. A haiku has three lines. The first line has five syllables, the

second line has seven syllables, and the final line has five. Haiku poetry is often associated with nature and seasons.

Over the wintry (5) forest, winds howl in a rage

(7)with no leaves to blow. (5)

by Soseki (1275-1351)

Sonnet – Shakespearian and Petrarchian (Italian)

14 line poem written in iambic pentameter (5 unaccented syllables each followed by an accented one)

Shakespearian Sonnet contains 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end (rhyme scheme = ABAB CDCD EFEF GG)

Petrarchian Sonnet contains one stanza (rhyme scheme = ABBAABBACDCDCD)

Shakespearian SonnetShall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day

By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (A)Thou art more lovely and more temperate. (B)

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (A)And summer's lease hath all too short a date. (B)

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (C)And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;(D)

And every fair from fair sometime declines, (C)By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;(D)

But thy eternal summer shall not fade (E) Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;(F)

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, (E)When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st (F)

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,(G) So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.(G)

Petrarchian Sonnet How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)   by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. (A)I love thee to the depth and breadth and height (B)My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight (B)For the ends of being and ideal grace. (A)I love thee to the level of every day's (A)Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. (B)I love thee freely, as men strive for right. (B)I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. (A)I love thee with the passion put to use (C)In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. (D)I love thee with a love I seemed to lose (C)With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath, (D)Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, (C) I shall but love thee better after death. (D)

Ode

On My First Son by Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, could I lose all father now! For whyWill man lament the state he should envy?To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,And if no other misery, yet age!

Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, Here doth lieBen Jonson his best piece of poetry.For whose sake henceforth all his vows be suchAs what he loves may never like too much.

An Ode is a poem praising and glorifying a person, place or thing.

Forms of PoetryCinquain Poems A five line poem containing 22

syllables A 2-4-6-4-2 syllable pattern Usually describes something but can

tell a story

Form:Line 1: A single word for a titleLine 2: Two words to describe the titleLine 3: Three words to express actionLine 4: Four words to express feelingLine 5: The title again or a word like the

title

WrestlingHeavy muscles

Coaching, slamming,

pinningTry hard to win

Wrestling

A Bio-Poem

A Bio-poem tells about a person, real or fictitious, using the following format:Line 1: First nameLine 2: TitleLine 3: Four words that describe that personLine 4: Lover of (three or more things or ideas)Line 5: Who believed (one or more ideas)Line 6: Who wanted (three things or methods)Line 7: Who used (three things or methods)Line 8: Who gave (three things)Line 9: Who said (a quote)Line 10: Last name

Where do you start?

We will start with a strategy called

the POETRY PYRAMID. The poetry pyramid will help you analyze poetry, identify the tone, themes, and purpose. Poet’s often build a poem, starting with the foundation. When we analyze, we work from the top down and poet’s work from the bottom up.

Title: Examine the title before reading the poem.  Consider the various connotations of this title.  Anticipate the meaning.  Ask questions.

PARAPHRASE:  Translate the poem into your own words stanza by stanza (literal/denotation).  Resist the urge to jump to interpretation.  A failure to understand what happens literally, inevitably leads to an interpretive misunderstanding.  What is it about?  Write in one to three sentences.

At the end of the unit…

You will be able to analyze a poem on your own and discover how the poet’s choices in diction, detail, and syntax convey meaning

You will be able to identify and use elements of poetry in your own writing

Resources

http://americanrhetoric.com/ http://changingminds.org/techniques/langu

age/syntax/syntax.htm http://changingminds.org/techniques/langu

age/syntax/phrase.htm http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/phras

eformulas.html