Poetry

= = = = toc = **A GUIDE TO POETRY** =

**Parts of a Poem**
**Scansion** - The process of analyzing the meter in lines of poetry by marking accented and unaccented syllables, dividing lines of poetry into metrical feet, and showing the major pauses, if any, within the line.

**Closed couplet** - A pair of rhymed lines of poetry in which thought and grammatical structure are complete; called a heroic couplet when the lines are in iambic pentameter.


 * End-Stopped Lines-** Lines of poetry in which the grammatical structure, the sense, and the meter are completed at the end of each line. The completion may be signaled by a pause or by a complete stop.


 * Foot / feet** - A group of syllables serving as a unit of meter in verse. A foot has a specified placement of the stressed syllable or syllables.


 * Meter**- The fixed (or nearly fixed) pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in the lines of a poem that produces its pervasive rhythm. Rhythm and verse measured by a given pattern of syllables.


 * Run-on Lines**- Verse in which the thought of one lines runs into the next line with no punctuation of grammatical break.

**Stanza**- A group of lines in a poem much like a paragraph in prose

**Rhythm**- an ordered recurrent alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in speech.

**Rhyme**-The repetition of the accented vowel sounds and all succeeding sounds.

**Suggestions for Approaching Poetry**
1. Assume that it will be necessary to read a poem more than once. Give yourself a chance to become familiar with what the poem has to offer.

2. Pay attention to the title; it will often provide a helpful context for the poem and serve as an introduction to it.

3. As you read the poem for the first time, avoid becoming entangled in words or lines that you don’t understand. Instead, give yourself a chance to take in the entire poem before attempting to resolve problems encountered along the way.

4. On a second reading, identify words or passages that you don’t understand. Look up words you don’t know; these might include names, places, historical and mythical references, or anything else that is unfamiliar to you.

5. Read the poem aloud. You’ll probably discover that some puzzling passages suddenly fall into place when you hear them. You’ll find that nothing helps, though, if the poem is read in an artificial, exaggerated manner.

6. Read the poem closely, creating an annotation (notes in the margins) Interpretations Reader-Response Questions Line by line, word by word

7. Read the punctuation. Be especially careful not to assume that the end of a line marks the end of a sentence.

8. Paraphrase the poem to determine whether you understand what happens in it.

9. Try to get a sense of who is speaking and what the setting or situation is. Don’t assume that the speaker is the author.

10. Assume that each element in the poem has a purpose. Try to explain how the elements of the poem work together.

11. Don’t expect to produce a definite reading. Most poems do not resolve all of the ideas, issues, or tensions in them, and so it is not always possible to drive their meaning into an absolute corner.

= = = **__ ANALYZING POETRY __** =

After annotating a poem, use these notes and your annotation to write an analysis.

__Questions to ask:__

 * What do my interpretive annotations pieces together express?
 * What emotions/feelings are expressed in the poem?
 * What are my attempted answers to my question annotations?
 * What is the tone of voice? And how does that play into the meaning?
 * Does a paraphrase reveal the basic purpose of the poem?
 * What does the title emphasize?
 * Is the theme presented directly or indirectly?
 * How does the diction reveal meaning? Are any words repeated? Do any carry evocative connotative meanings?
 * Are figures of speech used? How does the figurative language contribute to the poems vividness and meaning?

__Include in Analysis:__

 * Brief Paraphrase
 * //Feelings/Tone//
 * **Theme**
 * __Language__ or Figure of Speech or Rhythm or Rhyme

Sample Poetry Analysis
In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Lament,” the speaker, a mother whose husband has just passed away, must face both her //grief// and the continued daily needs of her children: clothing, medicine, food. The children learn of their father’s death in no euphemistic terms as their mother tells them, “Listen, children: Your father is dead.” Rather than immediately becoming emotional, she focuses on the //practical// needs of her children, telling them that she’ll make them pants and jackets from his old clothing. She repeatedly declares, “__Life must go on__,” and “the dead must be forgotten,” //stoically// facing a bleak future. Her __repetitional c__ry of life must go on emphasizes the cruelty of death on the living: daily life continues. The poem’s only overt emotional reference comes when the speaker repeats, “Life must go on,” and adds, “I forget just why.” This last line is a clear indication of the //hopelessness// and //emptiness// that the speaker feels now that her loved one is gone, a common expression of //frustration// with the absurdity of death. Though haunted by memories, the living face life alone. A point highlighted by the assonantal echoing rhymes, which sound like the haunting of a ghost. Although all individuals grieve differently, this poem represents a universal expression: that **life must go on even when we feel like it cannot.**

= ** TYPES OF POETRY ** =

Sonnet
14 rhyming line according to one of several pattern.

Petrarchia (Italian sonnet) abbaabba–for the octave several choices for the sestet (a) cdecde (b) cdcdcd (c) cdcdee (d) cdedce

Shakespeare (English Sonnet) ababcdcdefefgg

Example: 1. Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a) 2. Admit impediments. Love is not love (b) 3. Which alters when it alteration finds, (a) 4. Or bends with the remover to remove: (b) 5. O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, (c) 6. That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d) 7. It is the star to every wandering bark, (c) 8. Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.(d) 9. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e) 10. Within his bending sickle's compass come; (f) 11. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e) 12. But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (f) 13. If this be error and upon me proved, (g) 14. I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)

Haiku
A very short poem that can communicate the essence of a sudden and intense moment. Many haiku contain such elements as brining together seemingly unrelated images in a surprising w, involving more than one of the sense, and containing a sequence of events in a very condensed form. These poems are often about nature.

Created by three lines that do not rhyme. 1st line has 5 syllables. 2nd line has 7, and last has 5. Gentle falling snow Leaving a quiet blanket Silence covers all.

Limerick
Limericks are meant to be funny, even foolish. Writers use limericks to poke fun at human weaknesses and silly behavior. Often the humor in a limerick comes in the last line and is a comical twist.

A limerick has five lines, with three metrical feet in the first, second and fifth lines and two metrical feet in the third and fourth lines. A variety of types of metrical foot can be used, but the most typical are the amphibrach (a stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables) and the anapaest (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable). The rhyme scheme is usually AABBA.

The limerick packs laughs anatomical Into space that is quite economical,

But the good ones I've seen So seldom are clean,

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Epic
A LONG, LONG narrative poem, sometimes developed orally, that celebrates the deeds of a legendary or heroic figure. Typically, an epic is presented in a serious manner, often through the use of elevated language. The hero of an epic battles the forces of evil and represents the forces of evil and represent widespread national, cultural, or religious values.

Example–The Odyssey

Dramatic Monologue
Everyone agrees that to be a dramatic monologue a poem must have a speaker and an implied auditor, and that the reader often perceives a gap between what that speaker says and what he or she actually reveals

Example– My last Duchess

Concrete Poetry
Is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry. These poems use words in an unusual order and employ white pace freely.

Blank Verse
A type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter.

You stars that reign'd at my nativity, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell, Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds, That when they vomit forth into the air, My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths, So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven

Free Verse
A term describing various styles of poetry that are not written using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are recognizable as 'poetry' by virtue of complex patterns.

But patience is more oft the exercise Of Saints, the trial of thir fortitude, Making them each his own Deliver, And Victor over all That tyranny or fortune can inflict.