POETRY

What is Poetry?
" Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquility." (William Wordsworth)
"Poetry is the sound of human speech at those times
when it comes closest to the speech of angels and the
speech of animals." (John Wain)
" Poetry: the best words in the best order." (Samuel Taylor
Coleridge)
"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape
from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but
an escape from personality." (T. S. Eliot)
 POETRY
 A type of literature that
expresses ideas,
feelings, or tells a story
in a specific form
(usually using lines and
stanzas)
Elements of poetry
 Point Of View In Poetry
POET SPEAKER
The poet is the Also called the
author of the “narrator” of the
poem. poem.
Can be the
poet/narrator/a
character
 Poetry Form
FORM - appearance of  A word is dead
the words on the page  When it is said,
 Some say.
LINE - a group of
words together on one
 I say it just
line of the poem
 Begins to live
STANZA - a group of  That day.
lines arranged together
 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
SOUND EFFECTS
 1. Rhythm
The beat created by the
sounds of the words in a
poem

Rhythm can be created by

meter, rhyme, alliteration
and refrain (chorus).
 2. Meter
 A pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables.
 Occurs when the stressed and unstressed
syllables of the words 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 repeat the pattern throughout the poem.
 Meter cont.
FOOT - unit of meter. TYPES OF FEET
A foot can have two or The types of feet
three syllables. are determined by the
Usually consists of arrangement of
one stressed and one stressed and
or more unstressed unstressed syllables.
syllables. (cont.)
 Meter cont.
 TYPES OF FEET (cont.)

Iambic - unstressed, stressed

Trochaic - stressed, unstressed
Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed,
stressed
Dactylic - stressed, unstressed,
unstressed
 Free Verse Poetry
 Unlike metered  Free verse poetry is
poetry, free verse very conversational
poetry does NOT - sounds like
have any repeating someone talking
patterns of stressed with you.
and unstressed
syllables.
 Does NOT have  A more modern
rhyme. type of poetry.
 Blank Verse Poetry
from Julius Ceasar
Cowards die many times before
Written in lines of their deaths;
iambic The valiant never taste of death
but once.
pentameter, but
Of all the wonders that I yet
does NOT use have heard,
end rhyme. It seems to me most strange
that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary
end,
Will come when it will come.
 3. Rhyme
Words sound alike  LAMP
because they  STAMP
share the same
Share the short “a”
ending vowel and vowel sound
consonant sounds.
Share the combined
“mp” consonant
(A word always
sound
rhymes with itself.)
 a. 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.
 b. Internal Rhyme
A word inside a line may also rhyme 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
 c. Near Rhyme
 a.k.a Imperfect  ROSE
rhyme or Close  LOSE
rhyme
 Different vowel
 The words share sounds (long “o”
EITHER the same and “oo” sound)
vowel sound or  Share the same
consonant sound consonant sound (-
BUT NOT BOTH se)
 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.)
Sample Rhyme Scheme
 The Germ by Ogden Nash

 A mighty creature is the germ, a

 Though smaller than the pachyderm. a
 His customary dwelling place b
 Is deep within the human race. b
 His childish pride he often pleases c
 By giving people strange diseases. c
 Do you, my poppet, feel infirm? a
 You probably contain a germ. a
 Onomatopoeia
 Words that imitate the sound they are
naming:
BUZZ
 OR sounds that imitate another sound

“The silken, sad, uncertain, rustling of

 each purple curtain . . .”

 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?
 Consonance

 Similar to alliteration EXCEPT . . .

 The repeated consonant sounds can

be anywhere in the words
 “silken, sad, uncertain, rustling . . ”
 Assonance
 Repeated VOWEL sounds in a line or
lines of poetry.
 (Often creates near rhyme.)

 LakeFate Base Fade

 (All share the long “a” sound.)
 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
 Refrain
 A sound, word,  “Quoth the
phrase or line raven,
repeated regularly ‘Nevermore.’
in a poem. ”
 Free Verse Poetry
 NO repeating  Free verse poetry
patterns of stressed is very
and unstressed conversational -
syllables. sounds like
 NO rhyme. someone talking
with you.
 A more modern
type of poetry.
 Blank Verse Poetry
from Julius Ceasar
Cowards die many times before
Written in lines of their deaths;
iambic The valiant never taste of death
but once.
pentameter, but
Of all the wonders that I yet
does NOT use have heard,
end rhyme. It seems to me most strange
that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary
end,
Will come when it will come.
SOME TYPES OF POETRY
WE WILL BE STUDYING
 LYRIC
 A short poem
 Usually written in first person point of view
 Expresses an emotion or an idea or
describes a scene
 Do not tell a story and are often musical
 (Many of the poems we read will be lyrics.)
 Haiku
A Japanese poem
written in three
lines An old silent pond . . .
A frog jumps into the pond.
Five Syllables
Splash! Silence again.
Seven Syllables
Five Syllables
 Cinquain (sin- kain)
How frail
A five line poem
containing 22 Above the bulk
syllables Of crashing water hangs
Two Syllables Autumnal, evanescent, wan
Four Syllables The moon.
Six Syllables
Eight Syllables
Two Syllables
 Shakespearean Sonnet
A fourteen line poem with Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
a specific rhyme Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
scheme. And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
The poem is written in By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
three quatrains and ends But thy eternal summer shall not fade
with a couplet. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
The rhyme scheme is So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

abab cdcd efef gg

 Narrative Poems
 A poem that tells a Examples of Narrative
story. Poems
 Generally longer than
the lyric styles of “The Raven”
poetry b/c the poet “The Highwayman”
needs to establish
“Casey at the Bat”
characters and a plot.
“The Walrus and the
Carpenter”
 Concrete Poems
Poetry
 In concrete poems, Is like
Flames,
the words are Which are
arranged to create a Swift and elusive
Dodging realization
picture that relates to Sparks, like words on the
the content of the Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
poem. Tongues, formless and shifting
Shapes, tease the imagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their mind’s
Eye, they burn
Up the page.
FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
 Simile
 A comparison of two things using
‘like’, ‘as’; ‘than,’ or ‘resembles.’

 “She is as beautiful as a sunrise.”

 Metaphor
 A direct comparison of two unlike
things
 “All the world’s a stage, and we are
merely players.”
- William Shakespeare
 Extended Metaphor
 A metaphor that goes several lines
or possibly the entire length of a
work.
 Implied Metaphor
 The comparison is hinted at but not clearly
stated.
 “The poison sacs of the town began to
manufacture venom, and the town swelled
and puffed with the pressure of it.”
- from The Pearl
- by John Steinbeck
 Hyperbole
 Exaggeration, often used for
emphasis.
 Litotes
 Understatement - basically the opposite
of hyperbole.
 Often it is ironic.
 Example: Calling a slow moving
person “Speedy”
 Idiom
 An expression where the literal
meaning of the words is not the
meaning of the expression. It means
something other than what it actually
says.
 Ex. It’s raining cats and dogs.
 Personification
 An animal from “Ninki”
by Shirley Jackson
given
human-like “Ninki was by this time irritated
beyond belief by the general air
qualities or of incompetence exhibited in
an object the kitchen, and she went into
given life- the living room and got Shax, who
is extraordinarily lazy and never
like catches his own chipmunks, but
qualities. who is, at least, a cat, and
preferable, Ninki saw clearly, to a
man with a gun.
 OTHER
POETIC DEVICES
 Symbolism
 When a person,
place, thing, or = Innocence
event that has
meaning in itself
also represents, or = America
stands for,
something else.
=
Peace
 Allusion
 Allusion comes from A tunnel walled and
the verb “allude” overlaid
which means “to With dazzling crystal: we
had read
refer to”
Of rare Aladdin’s
 An allusion is a
wondrous cave,
reference to And to our own his name
something famous. we gave.

From “Snowbound”
John Greenleaf Whittier
 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.

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather . . .
from “Those Winter Sundays”
 Parody
From the Greek paroidia, It is usually necessary to
meaning a song sung be familiar with the original
alongside another. in order to appreciate the
parody, though some
Parody is the imitation of parodies have become
the style of another work, better known than the
writer or genre, which poems they imitate.
relies on deliberate
exaggeration to achieve
comic or satirical effect.
 What is Poetry?
Mother of the Groom
What she remembers
Is his glistening back
In the bath, his small boots
In the ring of boots at her feet

Hands in her voided lap

She hears a daughter welcomed
It’s as if he kicked when lifted
And slipped her soapy hold

Once soap would ease off

The wedding ring
That’s bedded forever now
In her clapping hand.