Transcript The Elements of Poetry

The Elements of Poetry
Poetry is hard to define. Even poets argue among themselves about
what makes a poem a poem. There are some common
characteristics, however, that we can use to help us differentiate
between poetry and prose. (1) It should look like a poem, meaning
that lines don’t run to the margins. 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. That
makes a poem!
To critically analyze a poem, we must look at its elements and see
what they are doing to the poem. Then we can infer a meaning to it.
The following slides will take us through the elements so that we
can recognize them, and then we will try to put it all together and
analyze the meaning of the poem.
Imagery
• Imagery is the senses the poem evokes in
the reader. Imagery puts the reader in the
poem. It helps the reader to “see” the
poem.
• The tools of imagery are
– Senses : sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, and
emotion.
– Figurative language : metaphor, simile,
personification, hyperbole, etc.
Sensory details
Sensory details touch the five senses. They
make the poem vivid to the reader.
Let’s look at the sensory details in the poem
“Those Winter Sundays.”
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.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Robert Hayden
In “Those Winter Sundays” Hayden has caused us to experience
several senses. “…[B]lueblack cold” certainly makes us feel how
cold it was. When the father’s hands are described as “cracked
hands that ached” we can feel the roughness. He describes the cold
“splintering and breaking.” We can hear the trees and ice crack.
And then the rooms “were warm” when the boy got up. We know
how that feels on a cold day. When the boy fears “the chronic
angers of that house” and when he speaks “indifferently to him” we
know what emotions the boy is feeling.
Hayden has caused us to feel cold, cracked hands and warm rooms.
We hear splintering and breaking and feel anger and indifference.
These sensory details make the poem come alive to us and help us to
feel what the boy felt on those winter Sundays.
Figurative Language
• Figurative language is words not meant to be
taken literally. The words are symbolic. We know
these images as metaphor, simile,
personification, hyperbole, and others. Because
the poet is comparing a less familiar object to a
common one, the comparison makes the familiar
image stronger.
• The next slides will give examples of each type
of image.
Metaphor
Metaphor is a figure of speech that
makes a comparison between two
unlike things, in which one thing
becomes another without the use
of the words like, as, than, or
resembles.
Example:
Love is a rose.
Simile
Simile is a figure of speech that
makes a comparison between two
unlike things, using words such as
like, as, than, or resembles.
Example:
My love is like a red, red rose.
- Robert Burns
Metaphor/Simile
Metaphors and similes compare something
in the poem to something familiar outside
the poem. Making the connection requires
background knowledge for the
metaphor/simile to be meaningful to the
reader.
Look at the metaphors in the poem, “Frost.”
Frost
How does
The plain
Transparency
Of water
Sprout these
Lacy fronds
And plumes
And tendrils?
And where,
Before windowPanes, did
They root
Their lush forests,
Their cold
Silver jungles?
The author of this poem compared the frost on a window to the
lacy fronds, plumes, and tendrils of a fern. In the last stanza she
has expanded the comparison to “crystal forests” and “silver
jungles.” Let us picture that in our minds. Can we “see” the frost
on the window?
Personification
Personification is a special kind of
metaphor in which a nonhuman
thing is talked about as if it was
human (given human
characteristics).
Example:
This poetry gets bored of being alone,
It wants to go outdoors to chew on
the wings,
To fill its commas with the keels of
rowboats….
-Hugo Margenat, from”Living Poetry”
Personification
When an author uses personification, he gives
human characteristics to a non-human object.
Look at the human characteristics used by Howard
Nemerov in his poem “The Vacuum.” Also
notice how personification reveals the speaker’s
attitude toward housekeeping.
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.
I’ve lived this way long enough,
But when my old woman died her soul
Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t 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.
Hyperbole/ Exaggeration
The poet uses hyperbole to overstate
something to reveal the truth.
In a poem called “Sow” Sylvia Plath
describes how much the sow eats. She
writes, “Of kitchen slops and, stomaching
no constraint,/ Proceeded to swill/ The
seven seas and every earthquaking
continent.”
How much did the sow eat?
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the use of
a word or words whose
sound imitates its meaning.
Examples:
crackle, pop, fizz, click, chirp
Onomatopoeia
We are familiar with onomatopoeia even if we
don’t understand the word. When two cars
collide, what sound do they make? Crash! That
is onomatopoeia – words that make the sound
they are imitating.
Here is a poem by Eve Merriam appropriately titled
“Onomatopoeia.” See how many sounds are
heard.
Onomatopoeia
The rusty spigot
sputter,
utters
a sputter,
spatters a smattering of drops,
gashes wider;
slash,
splatters,
scatters,
spurts,
finally stops sputtering
and plash!
gushes rushes splashes
clear water dashes.
Symbolism
Symbolism is when a person, place,
thing or idea stands for itself and
for something else.
Example:
Use of the bald eagle to represent the
United States.
Understatement
• Understatement - basically the opposite of
hyperbole. Often it is ironic.
• Ex. Calling a slow moving person
“Speedy”
• Ex. Yao Ming is slightly taller than Ms.
Marinucci.
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.
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 Aladdin’s wondrous
cave,
And to our own his name we
gave.
From “Snowbound”
John Greenleaf Whittier
Alliteration
Alliteration is the use of
similar sounds at the
beginning of a word.
Music
The poet uses musical devices to make the
poem song-like. In fact, some poems
are/were songs.
The musical devices we will discuss, and be
responsible for, are assonance (which is
similar to alliteration), onomatopoeia,
rhythm, rhyme, repetition, and pause.
Assonance Assonance is the use of
similar vowel sounds
within a word.
Rhythm
Rhythm is the beat of a poem. It is the
pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables. There are several rhythm
patterns in poetry which we will not go into
in this presentation which will be shown
later.
Let’s look at the following poem and see if
we can identify the pattern of stressed and
unstressed beats.
Counting-Out Rhyme
Silver bark of beech , and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.
Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apples,
Bark of popple.
Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and bran-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.
Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Rhyme
Exact rhyme are words that have the exact
same-sounding ending, like cat and hat
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming
words.
Look at the following poem and identify the
rhyme scheme.
Reapers
Jean Toomer
Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground, I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.
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
ROSE
LOSE
• The words share
EITHER the same
vowel or consonant
sound BUT NOT
BOTH
Different vowel
sounds (long “o” and
“oo” sound)
Share the same
consonant sound
Rhyme Scheme
• Having a certain rhyme scheme also is a
way to give structure to poetry.
• Look at the example first and letter it
• Look at the rhyme scheme in the poem
“Cross” by Langston Hughes. See how it
holds the poem together. Also notice the
use of stanzas. Why did Hughes put
these words in the stanza?
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
Cross
Langston Hughes
My old man’s a white old man
And my old mother’s black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I’m sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I’m gonna die
Being neither white or black?
Letters
Repetitive initial consonant sounds in a poem are
called alliteration.
Repetition of other consonant sounds is called
consonance.
Repetitive vowel sounds are called assonance.
The following poem has many examples of each.
See how many you can find. Also notice what
other element of poetry you can find.
Fueled by Marcie Hans
Fueled
by a million
man-made
wings of fire –
the rocket tore a tunnel
through the sky –
and everybody cheered,
Fueled
only by a thought from God –
the seedling
urged its way
through the thickness of black –
and as it pierced
the ceiling of the soil –
and launched itself
up into outer space –
no
one
even
clapped.
Repetition
• Poems also create music through the
repetition of words and lines.
• Look at the poem “One Perfect Rose” by
Dorothy Parker. One line is repeated
three times. Notice how the meaning of
the line changes by the third repetition.
One Perfect Rose
by Dorothy Parker
A single flow’r 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, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
Form
• Form is the structure of the poem. Any
type of writing must have something to
hold it together.
The structure can be created through
many means: meter, stanza, rhyme
scheme, or set patterns of poetry like
sonnet, haiku , concrete, and others.
Iambic Foot
An iambic foot is an
unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed
syllable .
Example:
We could write the rhythm like
this:
da DUM
Meter
Meter is the pattern of
rhythm established for a
verse.
Rhythm
Rhythm is the actual
sound that results from a
line of poetry.
Iambic Pentameter
Iambic Pentameter is a
line of poetry with five
iambic feet in a row This
is the most common
meter in English poetry.
Example:
We could write the rhythm like this:
da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM
We can notate this with a ˘ mark
representing an unstressed syllable
and a '/' mark representing a stressed
syllable
Example Continued:
The following line from John Keats' Ode to
Autumn is a straightforward example:
˘
/
˘
/
˘
/
˘
/
˘
To swell the gourd, and plump the ha - zel
/
shells
Stanza
• 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
author’s use of stanza.
Stanza
Stanzas are groups of lines in a poem
which are named by the number of
lines included.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Two lines is a couplet.
Three lines is a triplet or tercet.
Four lines is a quatrain.
Five lines is a quintain or cinquain.
Six lines is a sestet.
Eight lines is an octet.
Pattern
• Some poems are written in a set form like
sonnets, haikus, limericks, concrete, etc.
These patterns sometimes require a
regular rhyme scheme or meter; or
number of syllables or lines.
Look at the following examples:
Acrostic poetry
Acrostic poems use letter
patterns to create multiple
messages
Example:
When the first letters of lines
read downward form a separate
phrase or word.
Example
Energetic
Rowdy
Impressive
Creative
Sonnet
• The sonnet is the requirement of every
experienced poet.
• It is fourteen lines of rhymed iambic
pentameter.
• The first 12 lines pose a problem, ask a
question, or set up a situation.
• The couplet at the end solves the problem,
answers the question or settles the
situation.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s
Day? – William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
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 sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe, or eye can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
a
b
a
b
c
d
c
d
e
f
e
f
g
g
The previous sonnet is a famous one by
William Shakespeare. It follows exactly the
sonnet pattern. Iambic pentameter means that
it has five feet of iamb meter (U/). The rhyme
scheme is called Shakespearen because
Shakespeare used it in all his sonnets.
Look back at the poem and notice the
rhyme and meter. Then see what the first four
lines are talking about and how the couplet at
the end completes it.
Haiku
Haiku is a popular form of
traditional Japanese poetry
consists of 17-syllables
comprising three metrical lines
of 5, 7, and 5 syllables.
Example
(5) Tree grow-ing old-er
(7) An-cient el-der shad-ing me
(5) Calm, cool, peace-ful day
- Mrs. Chi, 2/08
Haiku
Haiku is an ancient Japanese pattern. It
is three lines of seventeen syllables
separated into 5 syllables in the first line, 7
syllables in the second, and 5 in the last.
But a haiku is much more than that. Look
at the following haiku written by Mike
Reiss.
Haiku
Any moron can
Write haikus. Just stop at the
Seventeenth syllab
I think he was trying to be funny. Did you laugh?
Real haiku also have other characteristics besides
syllables.
1. Haiku depend on imagery.
2. Haiku are condensed; the poet leaves out all
unnecessary words.
3. Haiku are concerned with emotions; nature reflects
these emotions.
4. Haiku rely heavily on the power of suggestion or
connotation.
Here is a real Japanese haiku written by Japanese
writer Kobayashi Issa.
A gentle spring rain
Look, a rat is lapping
Sumida River.
Here is one by American author Richard Wright.
Over spring mountains
A star ends the paragraph
Of a thunderstorm.
Finally, one by a former student, Jonathan Martin.
Praying like a priest
Then snapping with God’s power,
The mantis chews love.
Limerick
• The limerick has a strict pattern of five
lines in an anapestic meter with a rhyme
scheme of aa, bb, a. The limerick is
almost always a light, humorous poem.
Here is an example:
I sat next the Duchess at tea.
It was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were simply abominable
And everyone thought they were me!
-Anonymous
Concrete poetry
Some poetry takes the shape of what the poem is about. Here is
one called Poem by Philip G. Tannenbaum:
Ido
Ntl
Ike
Tel
Eph
One
Boo
ths
Can you figure out what this is about?
Example
From Wright Flyer Online
Putting it all Together
or how to analyze a poem
• Now that we have discussed the poetic
tools, let’s apply them in the discussion of
a poem. The main tools the poet uses are
imagery, music and form. Look for these
elements in the last poem of the
presentation. Discuss how the poet
creates and effect by the use of these
tools.
Barter
Sara Teasdale
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And children’s faces looking up
And for a breath of ecstasy
Holding wonder like a cup.
Give all you have been, or could be.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thought that star the night.