POETRY

POETRY
A type of literature

that expresses
ideas, feelings, or
tells a story in a
specific form
(usually using lines
and stanzas)

POINT OF VIEW IN POETRY

POET
The poet is the author

of the poem.

SPEAKER
The speaker of the

poem is the narrator

of the poem.

POETRY FORM
FORM - the

A word is dead

appearance of the
words on the page
LINE - a group of
words together on one
line of the poem

When it is said,

STANZA - a group of

lines arranged together

Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

KINDS OF STANZAS
Couplet =
Triplet (Tercet)
Quatrain =
Quintet =
Sestet (Sextet)
Septet
=
Octave
=

a two line stanza

=
a three line stanza
a four line stanza
a five line stanza
=
a six line stanza
a seven line stanza
an eight line stanza

SOUND EFFECTS

RHYTHM
The beat created by

the sounds of the

words in a poem
Rhythm can be created

by meter, rhyme,
alliteration and refrain.

METER
A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Meter occurs when the stressed and unstressed

syllables of the words in a poem 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 they repeat the
pattern throughout the poem.

METER cont.
FOOT - unit of meter.
A foot can have two or

three syllables.
Usually consists of
one stressed and one
or more unstressed
syllables.

TYPES OF FEET

The types of feet are

determined by the
arrangement of
stressed and
unstressed syllables.
(cont.)

METER cont.
TYPES OF FEET (cont.)

Iambic - unstressed, stressed

Trochaic - stressed, unstressed
Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed, stressed
Dactylic - stressed, unstressed, unstressed

Rhythm and Meter in English

Poetry
English poetry employs five basic rhythms
of varying stressed (/) and unstressed (x)
syllables. The meters are iambs, trochees,
spondees, anapests and dactyls. In this
document the stressed syllables are marked
in boldface type rather than the tradition al
"/" and "x." Each unit of rhythm is called a
"foot" of poetry.

 The meters with two-syllable feet are

IAMBIC (x /) : That time of year thou mayst

in me behold
TROCHAIC (/ x): Tell me not in mournful

numbers

 SPONDAIC (/ /): Break, break, break/

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

Meters with three-syllable feet are

ANAPESTIC (x x /): And the sound of a

voice that is still

 DACTYLIC (/ x x): This is the forest

primeval, the murmuring pines and the

hemlock (a trochee replaces the final
dactyl)

Example of Iambic Pentameter ( / x)

From A Midsummer Night's Dream:
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the
deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost
sleep;
(Act 3, Scene 1)

Example of Trochaic (/ x)
Tell me | not in / mournful / numbers
By the | shores of | Gitche | Gumee,
By the | shining | Big-Sea-|Water
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellows Song of
Hiawatha

Example of Dactylic (/ x x)
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
- Alfred Lord Tennysons The Charge of
the Light Brigade

Example of Anapestic (x x /)
In the midst of the word he was trying to
say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away

For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

- Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

Example of Spondaic ( / / )
Tennyson often made use of spondaic and

pyrrhic substitutions in his work. Here are

some examples:
This is my son, mine own Telemachus
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.
-from Ulysses
Spondees above are "Well-loved," "This la-,"
"slow pru-," and "make mild."

METER cont.
Kinds of Metrical Lines
monometer
dimeter

=
trimeter =
tetrameter =
pentameter
hexameter=
heptameter
octometer =

=
one foot on a line
two feet on a line
three feet on a line
four feet on a line
=
five feet on a line
six feet on a line
=
seven feet on a line
eight feet on a line

FREE VERSE POETRY

Unlike metered poetry,

free verse poetry does

NOT have any
repeating patterns of
stressed and
unstressed syllables.
Does NOT have
rhyme.

Free verse poetry is

very conversational sounds like someone

talking with you.
A more modern type

of poetry.

BLANK VERSE POETRY

from Julius Ceasar

Written in lines of

iambic pentameter, but

does NOT use end
rhyme.

Cowards die many times before their

deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but
once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have
heard,
It seems to me most strange that men
should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

RHYME
Words sound alike

because they share the

same ending vowel
and consonant sounds.

(A word always

rhymes with itself.)

LAMP
STAMP
Share the short a

vowel sound
Share the combined
mp consonant sound

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.

INTERNAL RHYME
A word inside a line rhymes 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

NEAR RHYME
a.k.a imperfect

rhyme, close rhyme

The words share

EITHER the same

vowel or consonant
sound BUT NOT
BOTH

ROSE
LOSE
Different vowel

sounds (long o and

oo sound)
Share the same
consonant sound

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.)

Common Rhyme Scheme

1. Petrarchan sonnet: "ABBA ABBA CDE CDE"
or "ABBA ABBA CDC DCD"
2. Shakespearean sonnet: "ABAB CDCD EFEF
GG"
3. Spenserian sonnet: "ABAB BCBC CDCD EE"

SAMPLE RHYME SCHEME

The Germ by Ogden Nash
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

a
a
b
b
c
c
a
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.)
Lake

Fate
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, phrase

Quoth the raven,

or line repeated
regularly in a poem.

Nevermore.

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
Five Syllables
Seven Syllables
Five Syllables

An old silent pond . . .

A frog jumps into the pond.
Splash! Silence again.

CINQUAIN
A five line poem
containing 22 syllables
Two Syllables
Four Syllables
Six Syllables
Eight Syllables
Two Syllables

How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs
Autumnal, evanescent, wan
The moon.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET
A fourteen line poem with
a specific rhyme scheme.
The poem is written in
three quatrains and ends
with a couplet.
The rhyme scheme is

abab cdcd efef gg

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summers 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,
By chance or natures changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owst;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growst
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

NARRATIVE POEMS
A poem that tells a

story.
Generally longer than
the lyric styles of
poetry b/c the poet
needs to establish
characters and a plot.

Examples of Narrative
Poems
The Raven
The Highwayman
Casey at the Bat
The Walrus and the
Carpenter

CONCRETE POEMS
In concrete poems, the

words are arranged to

create a picture that
relates to the content
of the poem.

Poetry
Is like
Flames,
Which are
Swift and elusive
Dodging realization
Sparks, like words on the
Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
Tongues, formless and shifting
Shapes, tease the imiagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their minds
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 worlds a stage, and we are merely

players.
- William Shakespeare

EXTENDED METAPHOR
A metaphor that goes several lines or

possible 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.

Ex. 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. Its raining cats and dogs.

PERSONIFICATION
An animal

given humanlike qualities

or an object
given life-like
qualities.

from Ninki
by Shirley Jackson
Ninki was by this time irritated
beyond belief by the general air of
incompetence exhibited in the
kitchen, and she went into the living
room and got Shax, who is
extraordinarily lazy and never catches
his own chipmunks, but 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 event that has

meaning in itself also
represents, or stands
for, something else.

= Innocence

America

Peace

Allusion
Allusion comes from

the verb allude

which means to refer
to
An allusion is a
reference to something
famous.

A tunnel walled and overlaid

With dazzling crystal: we had
read
Of rare Aladdins wondrous
cave,
And to our own his name 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
A literary or artistic work that uses

imitation, as of the characteristic style of an

author or a work, for comic effect or
ridicule.

Shakespeare wrote Sonnet 13 in parody of

traditional love poems common in his day. He
presents an anti-love poem theme in a manner of a
love poem mocking the exaggerated comparisons
they made:
My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

 For another example, please go to desktop.