eng181_ the elements of poetry

8/3/2019 ENG181_ the Elements of Poetry

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The Elements of

Poetry


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What is poetry?

How do we know?


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What do poets have to say

about poetry?

Poetry by Eleanor Farjeon

A Word by Emily Dickinson


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Poetry

by Eleanor Farjeon

What is Poetry? Who knows?

Not a rose, but the scent of the rose;

Not the sky, but the light in 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 me

See, hear, and feel something that proseCannot: and what it is, who knows?


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A Word

By Emily Dickinson

A word is dead

When it is said,Some say.

I say it justBegins to live

that day.


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Poetry is hard to define. Even poets argue amongthemselves about what makes a poem a poem.

Generally, Poetry is a type of literature in which thesound and meaning of language are combined tocreate ideas andfeelings.

However, There are some common characteristics,however, that we can use to help us differentiatebetween poetry and prose.

So, What is Poetry?


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These Characteristics are:

(1)It should looklike a poem, meaning that lines dont run to themargins. Some lines are not even sentences.

(2)There are usually some musical devices that give the poem a

song-like, lyrical quality.

(3)Images are conveyed through sensory details and figurative

language.

(4)The poem has some form to hold it together. Some poems

actually have a prescribed form like haikus and sonnets.

(5) The poem has some meaning, image or emotion it wants to

share with the reader. These three things are shown by the

above four. That makes a poem!


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There are three broad

categories of poetry:

1. Narrative2. Dramatic

3. Lyric


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Lyricpoems paint a picture and includemost short poems.

Narrativepoems tell a story. Epics (longpoems) and ballads are two types of

narrative poetry.

In dramaticpoetry the storys characters

act out the story. Many plays are written asdramatic poetry.


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NOTE:

To critically analyze a poem, we must lookat its elements and see what they are

doing to the poem. Then we can infer ameaning to it.


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Imagery

Imagery is the senses the poem evokes in thereader. Imagery puts the reader in the poem.It helps the reader to see the poem.

The tools of imagery are1. Senses : sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, and

emotion.

2. Figurative language : metaphor, simile,

personification, hyperbole, etc.3. Contrast


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1- Sensory details

Sensory details touch the five senses. Theymake the poem vivid to the reader.

Lets look at the sensory details in the poem

Those Winter Sundays.


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Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

Id wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, hed call,and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the coldand polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of loves austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden


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2- Figurative Language

Figurative language is words not meant tobe taken literally. The words are symbolic.We know these images as metaphor,

simile, personification, hyperbole, andothers.

Because the poet is comparing a lessfamiliar object to a common one, thecomparison makes the familiar imagestronger.


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A- Metaphor/Simile

Metaphors and similes compare somethingin the poem to something familiar outsidethe poem. Making the connection requiresbackground knowledge for the

metaphor/simile to be meaningful to thereader.

Metaphor: The man is a horse.Simile: After the fast run, she was as limp as

a rag doll.


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Metaphors and similes, along with idioms,are called figures of speech. In a figure ofspeech, the meaning is different from theliteral meaning of the words.

idiom: she has a skeleton in the closet


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B- Personification

When an author uses personification, he giveshuman characteristics to a non-human object.

The trees whispered their secrets to the wind.

Look at the human characteristics used by Howard

Nemerov in his poem The Vacuum. Alsonotice how personification reveals the speakers

attitude toward housekeeping.


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The Vacuum

The house is quiet now

The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,

Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth

Grinning into the floor, maybe at my

Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.

Ive lived this way long enough,

But when my old woman died her soul

Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I cant bear

To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust

And the woolen mice, and begin to howl

Because there is old filth everywhere

She used to crawl, in corner and under the stair.

I know now how life is cheap as dirt,

And still the hungry, angry heart

Hangs on and howls, biting at air.


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C- Hyperbole/ Exaggeration

To make a point a poet may exaggerate.When this exaggeration is beyond belief itis called hyperbole.

The poet uses hyperbole to overstatesomething to reveal the truth.


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3- Contrast

Poets use contrast to further show images. Antithesisstrengthens the differences of the image.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I've tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

Robert Frost


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Music

The poet uses musical devices to make thepoem song-like. In fact, some poemsare/were songs.

The musical devices we will discuss, and beresponsible for, are onomatopoeia,rhythm, rhyme, letters, repetition, pause,and others.


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1- Onomatopoeia

We are familiar with onomatopoeia even if wedont understand the word. When two cars

collide, what sound do they make? Crash! That

is onomatopoeia words that make the soundthey are imitating.

The buzz of a bee.

The cat meows.


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2- Rhythm

Rhythm in poetry means the flow of sound.

This pattern of rhythm in a poem is called

meter.

Rhythm is the beat of a poem. It is the pattern

of stressed and unstressed syllables.

It is the control of sounds in a poem.


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3- Rhyme

Exact rhyme are words that have the exact same-

sounding ending, like cat and hat

Slant rhymewords sound similar, but arent exact,

like one and down.

A rhymescheme is the pattern of rhyming words.


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Rhythm and Rhyme in an excerpt fromALICE by Shel Silverstein

She drank from a bottle called DRINK ME

And up she grew so tall,She ate from a plate called TASTE ME

And down she shrank so small.

And so she changed, while other folksNever tried nothin at all.


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Free verse doesnt rhyme

or necessarily have rhythm.

Zebra

By Judith Thurman

white sunblack

fire escape

morninggrazing like a zebra

outside my window.


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4- Letters

Poets also achieve effects by using words that havesimilar sounds but do not rhyme.

Repetitive initial consonant sounds in a poem arecalled alliteration.

Repetition of other consonant sounds is calledconsonance.

Repetitive vowel sounds are called assonance.


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Four SeasonsAnonymous

Spring is showery, flowery, bowery,

Summer: hoppy, choppy, poppy.Autumn: wheesy, sneezy, freezy.

Winter: slippy, drippy, nippy.


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5- Repetition

Poems also create music through therepetition of words and lines.

Look at the poem One Perfect Rose by

Dorothy Parker. One line is repeatedthree times. Notice how the meaning ofthe line changes by the third repetition.


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One Perfect Roseby Dorothy Parker

A single flowr he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure with scented dew still wet

One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the flowerlet;

My fragile leaves, it said, his heart enclose.

Love long has taken for his amulet

One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet

One perfect limousine, do you suppose?

Ah no, its always just my luck to get

One perfect rose.


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6- Pause

When we read poetry, we must be careful

to read it with the punctuation the authorprovided. Our tendency is to pause at theend of each line when we should pause atthe punctuation marks.


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We Real Coolby Gwendolyn Brooks

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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Meaning

Poets can deliver meaning through by using:

1. Allegory: a descriptive story that has a

second meaning beneath the surfaceone.

The characters in the story are takenfrom another story at a different level ofmeaning; e.g. Adam & Eve.


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2. connotation: overtones or suggestions of

additional meaning of a word.

e.g. The word fire could suggest the

meaning of war and hatred.

3. Denotation: the dictionary meaning of a

word.


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Form

Form is the structure of the poem. Anytype of writing must have something tohold it together.

The structure can be created throughmany means: meter, stanza, rhyme

scheme, or set patterns of poetry.


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1.Meter is the set pattern of stressed and

unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.

2.A stanza in poetry is like a paragraph in

prose. The author divides the poem by

grouping words into stanzas. We can often

see the structure of the poem by the authorsuse of stanza. (e.g. each two lines form a

Couplet, whereas four lines form a

Quatrain)3. rhyme scheme: having a certain rhyme

scheme also is a way to give structure to

poetry.


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4- Pattern

Some poems are written in a set form likesonnets, haikus, pantoums, limericks,concrete, etc.

These patterns sometimes require aregular rhyme scheme or meter; ornumber of syllables or lines.

Other poems sometimes have a free verseform. They do not rhyme or necessarily haverhythm.


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Making Meaning

Consider:1. Point of viewthe speaker- (the narrative

perspective; who is telling the story or

expressing the feeling)2. Voice(authors style or expression of self)

3. Mood or Tone(authors attitude toward the

subject)4. Theme: the central idea expressed in the

poem.

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