Poetry

Two Questions: Why Do We Care About Poetry? Why

Does Poetry Exist?

First Question

Why Do We Care About Poetry?Read This Out loud

“Listen, I’m down on my luck. I can’t get a good job and I have a wife that doesn’t love me and a kid I can’t take care of as well as I want to. I have bills I can’t pay and all I want is to escape, but I know, no matter how hard I try, I will always be in debt, unloved, and hurt. I’m not the only one who feels this way. A lot of people, due to their economic situation are in this position.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoLxuyV9qz8

“Guarantees” by Atmosphere

Poetry is Music and Music is Poetry

How Effective would this have been to read instead?

These warehouse wagesKill the ends introductionman I should have schooled it upWhen I was younger should have stuck to planAlways had the dreams of being more self assertiveAnd my kids a teenager now he needs the health insuranceSo break my bodyBreak break my soul downJust another zombie walking blindly through your ghost townPull up to the bar to politic and tap the powerAint nobody really all that jolly at your happy hourBut I dont want to go home yetSo Im gonna talk to my cigaretteAnd that television setIt doesnt matter what brand or stationAnything to take away from the current situationNo overtime pay no holidayMonths behind on everything but the lotteryWinter around the corner guaranteeing that my car diesWifey having trouble trying to juggle both the part timesMy cup aint close to filled upWe trying to build up so we can have enoughAnd when I finally get the colorThere wont be nothing left to paint onA friend of mine tried to kill himself to the same songMy better half is mad at making magic out of canned goods

My tax bracket status got her questioning my man hoodMy shorty got caught smoking weed at a concertAnd if I smack em everybody treats me like a monsterMy neighbors aint doing much betterAnd we making competition instead of sticking togetherCant save no nest egg in fact this nest is rentedIn fact that rent is late, waitThe money aint here the raise aint comingJust me and my son and that crazy womanAnd those bartenders this whole fucking countryGot everybody swallowing that lunch meatMaybe we can speed up the processKill me in my thirties in the name of progressPut me in the dirt and then change the topicSome time it seems like the only way to stop itContemplate my departure dateDoesnt take a lot to get a lot of us to talk this wayTake a shot at me that's all i'm obligated forApparently my only guarantee is a walk awayThe only guarantee in life is a life worth dying forThe only guarantee in life is a life worth dying forCause death dont wait for no oneSitting on your front doorThe only guarantee in life is a life worth dying forCause death dont wait for no one

What About Other Forms of Poetry

http://agent-odd.tumblr.com/post/6850587115/ocd-by-neil-hilborn

Versus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnKZ4pdSU-s

How are these two versions different?

How do those differences inform the poem?

To Further Consider Form

http://www.litkicks.com/Texts/Bomb.html

Based on the Three Videos We Just Viewed:Why Do We Care About Poetry? Why Does Poetry Exist?

Discussion

AllegoryA symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities.

AlliterationThe repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood."

AssonanceThe repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe."

CaesuraA strong pause within a line of verse.

ConnotationThe associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation

CoupletA pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem.

Figurative languageA form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.

ForeshadowingHints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story.

ImageryThe pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work.

MetaphorA comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose,"

MeterThe measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems.

OnomatopoeiaThe use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic

PersonificationThe endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification.

RhymeThe matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words.

SimileA figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose."

SymbolAn object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself.

ThemeThe idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. See discussion of Dickinson's "Crumbling is not an instant's Act."

ToneThe implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example, Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony.

A Sonnet is a poem consisting of 14 lines (iambic pentameter) with a particular rhyming scheme.

Examples of a rhyming scheme:#1) abab cdcd efef gg#2) abba cddc effe gg#3) abba abba cdcd cd

Example:Sonnet of Demeter--Italian SonnetOh the pirate stars, they have no mercy!Masquerading as hope they tell their lies;Only the young can hear their lullabies.But I am barren and I am thirstySince she has gone. No hope is there for me.I will roam and curse this earth and these skies--Death from life which Zeus sovereign denies.My heart's ill shall the whole world's illness be

Till she is returned-- my daughter, my blood--From the dark hand of Hades to my care.With my tears these mortals shall know a floodTo show Poseidon's realm desert and bare.No myrtle shall flower, no cypress budTill the gods release her...and my despair.

Haiku (also called nature or seasonal haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Haiku is usually written in the present tense and focuses on nature (seasons).

Example:Come on let us seeAll the real flowers of thisSorrowful world

~Basho 1644-1694

An Epic is a long narrative poem celebrating the adventures and achievements of a hero...epics deal with the traditions, mythical or historical, of a nation.

Examples: Beowulf, The Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Gilgamesh

Free Verse is an irregular form of poetry in which the content free of traditional rules of versification, (freedom from fixed meter or rhyme).

In moving from line to line, the poet's main consideration is where to insert line breaks. Some ways of doing this include breaking the line where there is a natural pause or at a point of suspense for the reader.

Authors: Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, T.S. Elliot

Example:“I celebrate myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

~Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

A Limerick is a rhymed humorous, and or nonsense poem of five lines. With a rhyming scheme of: a-a-b-b-a.

Example:I love ta see the morning sunthat's how I tell the days begun.Birds all singing a happy songit tis the place where I belong.Far from school without the nun

A poem in which all the lines have the same end rhyme.

Example:

I was sitting in my chair

wanting to become a millionaire

It won't happen I'm well aware

but I still think its very unfair

I have even said a little prayer

but I don't have that special flair

And my bodies in great despair

I think I look more like a pear

But at least I still have my hair

and a table to play solitaire

A poem consisting of four lines of verse with a specific rhyming scheme.

Quatrain rhyming scheme’s:#1) abab#2) abba -- envelope rhyme#3) aabb#4) aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd -- chain rhyme