English Literature and Composition AP
Elements of Poetic Style
 Diction: selection of words
 Syntax: order of words
 Imagery: details of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch
 Figurative Language: non literal ways of expressing one thing in terms of
another
 Symbolism
 Metaphor
 Sound Effects

Rhyme

Assonance

Consonance

Alliteration

Meter

Structure
Parts of a Poem
 Stanza: any unit of recurring meter and rhyme – or
variations of them – used in an established pattern of
repetition an separation in a single poem.
 Lines can be the same length or different lengths.
 Meter: Greek word for “measure.” Lines of a poem.
 Three meters most commonly used in English
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
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Accentual meter (accents are counted)
Syllabic meter (syllables are counted)
Accentual-Syllabic meter (both are counted)
Accentual-Syllabic Meter
 Dominates English poetry.
 Is measured in “feet”
 Feet: patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Where the force and power of meter occurs.
Common “Feet”
 Iamb: the most common foot, a short stress followed
by a long one.
 About. A (short) Bout (long)
 Trochee: less common, long stress followed by a short
one.
 This is. This (long) is (short)
 Dactyl: a long stress followed by two short ones.
 Happily. Hap (long) i (short) ly (short)
 Anapest: two short stresses followed by a long one
 In a tree. In (short) a (short) tree (long)
 Spondee: two long stresses
 Humdrum. Hum (long) drum (long)
Check For Understanding
 Write an example of an iamb.
 What is a pentameter?
 What is a dactylic tetrameter?
 Write an example of a spondee.
Verse Forms
 Verse forms do not define poetic form: they simply
express it.
 Variations in poems do not make them abstract, but
human.
 Forms can express feeling as well as historical context.
Villanelle
 Villanelle: 19 lines, 5 stanzas. Rhyme scheme is aba.
Alternates in repeating the first and last lines of the
first stanza at the end of every following stanza. They
then repeat together in the last stanza.
 Absence of narrative possibility.
 Mood, emotion, and memory
 Does not progress forward.
Under the Hill
Daryl Hine
The gates fly open with a pretty sound,
No offer opposition to the knight.
A sensual world, remote, extinct is found.
In Venus’ clutches, under Venus’ mound,
He whiles away the long venereal night.
A sensual world, remote, extinct, is found.
In walls that like luxurious thorns surround
The exquisite lewdness of the sybarite,
The gates fly open with a pretty sound.
The single function on which Venus frowned
Was birth; and, maybe life has proved her right.
The gates fly open with a pretty sound.
A sensual world, remote, extinct, is found.
Where venery goes hunting like a hound,
And all the many mouths of pleasure bite,
A sensual world, remote, extinct, is found.
A passionate pilgrim stayed beneath the ground
Meets only death, until, to his delight,
The gates fly open with a pretty sound
Sestina
 Sestina: 39 lines, 6 stanzas of 6 lines. The same six end
words must repeat but in changing order. Does not
rhyme.
 Purpose was to entertain.
 Fashion forward.
 Troubadours: court poets.
Ye Wasteful woodes, bear witness to my woe The Shepheardes Calendar(August,
lines 151-162)
Edmund Spencer
Ye wasteful woodes bear witness of my woe,
Wherein my plaints did oftentimes resound:
Ye carelesse byrds are privie to my cries,
Which in your songs were wont to make a part:
Thou pleasaunt spring hast luld me oft to sleep,
Whose streames my tricklinge tears did oft augment.
Resort of people oft my greefs augment,
The walled townes do worke my greater woe:
The forest wide is fitter to resound
The hollow echo of my cries,
I hate the house, since thence my love did part,
Whose watleful want debarres mine eyes from sleep.
Pantoum
 Pantoum: Unspecified length, first and last line must
be the same, second and fourth lines of the first
quatrain become the first and third lines of the next
and so on, rhyme scheme is abab, final quatrain
changes this pattern.
 evokes a past time.
 Not a straight forward narrative.
Grandmothers’s Song
Nellie Wong
Grandmothers sing their song
Blinded by the suns’ rays
Grandchildren for whom they long
For pomelo-golden days
To dance in fields of mud
Or peel shrimp for pennies a day
Proud as if of royal blood
Coins and jade to put away
Blinded by the sun’s rays
Gold bracelets, opal rings
For pomelo-golden days
Tiny fingers, ancient things
Or peel shrimp for pennies a day
Seaweed washes up the shore
Coins and jade to put away
A camphor chest is home no more
Gold bracelets, opal rings
Sprinkled with Peking dust
Tiny fingers, ancient things
So young they’ll never rust
Seaweed washes up the shore
Bound feet struggle to loosen free
A camphor chest is home no more
A foreign tongue is learned at three
Sprinkled with Peking dust
To dance in fields of mud
So young they’ll never rust
Proud as if of royal blood
Bound feet struggle to loosen free
Grandchildren for whom they long
A foreign tongue is learned at three
Grandmothers sing their song
Sonnet
 Sonnet: 14 lines, usually iambic
 Two forms of sonnet
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
Petrarchan: Italian, octave 8 lines and a sestet of 6, rhyme
scheme of the octave is ababcdcd, of the sestet cdecde.
Shakespearean: English, rhyme scheme is. ababcdcdefefgg.
No octave/sestet structure to it.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare
Shall I compare the to summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath too short a date;
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And very 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 ow’st;
Nor shall breath brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou gow’st;
So long as men can breath, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and gives life to thee.
Ballad
 Ballad: usually 4 line stanzas, alternates between
iambic tetrameter (lines 1 &3) and iambic trimeter
(lines 2&4), a short narrative, rhyme scheme is abab or
abcb.
 Always stories of lost love, supernatural happenings, or
recent events.
 Uses local speech.
Real Cool
Thee Pool Players
Gwendolyn Brooks
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Blank Verse
 Blank Verse: iambic line with ten stresses and five
beats, unrhymed.
 Associated with dramatic speech and epic poetry.
 Often identified as the poetic form closest to human
speech.
From The Prelude (Book Thirteenth, 1805, 10-25)
William Wordsworth
It was a summer’s night, a close warm night,
Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping mist
Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky,
Half threatening storm and rain; but on we went
Unchecked, being full of heart and having faith
In our tried pilot. Little could we see,
Hemmed round on every side with fog and damp,
An, after ordinary travelers' chat
With our conductor, silently we sunk
Each into commerce with his private thoughts.
Was nothing either seen or heard the while
Which took me from my musings, save that once
The shepherd's cur did to his own great joy
Unearth the hedgehog in the mountain-crags,
Round which he made a barking turbulent.
Heroic Couplet
 Heroic Couplet: A rhyming pair of lines, usually
iambic pentameter or tetrameter, rhyme scheme is
aabbcc.
 Involved high subject matter.
 Was often the form Greek and Latin epic poetry was
translated into.
From An Essay on Criticism (lines 201-214)
Alexander Pope
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing voice of fools.
Whatever Nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits swelled with wind:
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defense,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself: but your defects to know,
Make use of every friend – and every foe.
Identify the type of poem, meter, any figurative language, and
historical context.
Analyze the content.
Bright Star
John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendor hung aloft in the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Ermite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever – or else swoon to death.