INTRODUCTION TO POETRY
One of oldest forms. Drama beats out but early drama in lyric form
What makes a poem a poem? How differ from fiction?
Why write a poem instead of a story?
Appeals to mind and arouses feelings. How?
Sound
Images—a picture that appeals to any senses. Concrete description of something. Can be visual, aural,
tactile, olfactory.
Symbol—meaning beyond the concrete. An abstraction. (An image can become a symbol of something)
Language
Tone
Setting and situation
Voice
Speaker—persona
Explication— makes explicit what hidden
analysis, interpretation
Types of poetry
Lyric—usually short poems expressing thoughts and feelings of a single speaker (who may or may not be
in poem)
Narrative—tells story
Dramatic monologue—imaginary character’s voice/persona
Didactic—teaches lessons
Picture poem—form on page makes picture, image
Elegy—lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead
Ode—no formal patter but serious topic and formal tone
Parody
Overall form
Closed form—traditional verse techniques
Open form, free verse.
(Prose poem)
Sonnet
Italian (Petrachan) abbaabba and cdecde or cdcdcd or cdccdc
English (Shakespearean) abab cdcd efef gg
Epigram—brief, pointed, witty. Usually couplet but doesn’t have to be
Limerick—light and humorous aabba
Haiku—seventeen syllables organized into three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables. Can be
slightly different in English cause language difference. Usually express intense emotion or vid image of
nature
Villanelle
Sestina
Rhymes
Meter—rhyme scheme
Scansion, art of reading meter. Stressed and unstressed syllables (which syllable accent on)
Foot-the basic unit of measurement
Iambic pentameter—5 iambic feet per line. Iamb= one unstressed syllable followed by stressed. Kind of
natural to English. Ex. I didn’t want the boy to hit the dog. Or, Dead set against the plan, he went away.
Couplet-two rhyming lines
Terza rima—three lines interlocking rhymes (aba, bcb)
Quatrain—stanza of four lines
Regular/irregular
Perfect rhyme (exact rhyme)—June, moon. Usually at the end of the line but can come internally.
Slant—also called near, off, approximate. Seal, sail; ball, bell
Eye rhyme—spelling similar but pronunciation not (bough, cough)
Masculine—rhyming single syllable words (shade, glade)
Feminine—rhymed stressed syllable followed by one or more unrhymed stressed syllables (butter, clutter,
gratitude, attitude)
Cesura—pause within line
End stop line—meaning of line comes to a definite end at the end of the line.
Run-on line, enjambed line—continues to the next line.
Diction—type of words/language used.
(Poetic diction ie elevated language for poetry, popular in peaked in 18th cen)
word order=syntax
concrete/abstract
Formal
Middle
Informal
Colloquial
Dialect
Jargon
Tone—writer’s attitude
Serious
Playful/humorous
Sarcastic
Ambiguous
Paradoxical
Ironic—Contrast
Verbal
Situational
Dramatic—audience knows more than character
Tragic
Cosmic—god, destiny, fate dashing hopes of making
Bathos—ludicrous attempt to display pathos (pity, sorrow)
Burlesque—taking serious and treating lightly. Take high and make low
Mock heroic—take low and make high.
Sound
Cacophony—dissonant
Euphony—harmonious
Alliteration—repetition of consonant sound
Assonance—repetition of vowel sound (haunt, awesome)
Onomatopoeia—sound close to meaning (crunch, woof)
Consonance—chitter chatter (type of slant rhyme)
Repetition
Figures of speech
Allusion
Metaphor (mixed metaphor, extended metaphor, controlling metaphor)
Conceit—extreme metaphor
Simile
Pun
Personification—bestows human characteristics on anything nonhuman: ex. the pig talks
Pathetic fallacy—attributing human emotions to inanimate objects—narrower than personification: ex.
the sky is crying
Apostrophe—addressing what not usually spoken to
Metonymy—name of thing substituting to something closely associated with it. Ex—The White House
said for the President said
Synecdoche—substituting part for the whole. Ex. The flag for the country
Hyperbole—overstatement
Understatement
Oxymoron—condensed paradox—only two words—hot ice