Poetry
Reviewing Types of Meter
 Iambic
(iamb)
 Trochaic (trochee)
 Anapestic (anapest)
 Dactylic (dactyl)
 Spondaic (spondee)
 Write
u/
/u
uu/
/uu
//
at least two examples of words that
use each meter type.
Symbols vs Character Traits
 Write
two examples of SYMBOLS
 Write
two examples of CHARACTER TRAITS
 From
the Canterbury Tales…


The ulcer on the Cook’s knee is a SYMBOL.
The fact that he cooks very well is a CHARACTER TRAIT.
Paradox vs. Oxymoron


A paradox is a statement that both makes sense and
defies logic. It is a sentence.
An oxymoron is a group of words (not a sentence) that
contradicts itself.
"What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young." George Bernard Shaw
jumbo shrimp
Be cruel to be kind.
If you didn't get this message, call me.
ice water
Poetic Forms
Examples from Brit Lit
Ballads
Get Up and Bar the Door
Guiding Questions
1) Why does the goodwife refuse to bar the door when
her husband first asks?
2) What agreement do the husband and wife reach
about barring the door?
3) To whom does the word one refer in line 29?
4) What do the two strangers plan to do to the goodman
and what do they plan to do to his wife?
5) Who eventually wins the contest? Why?
6) Why does the goodman want the door barred?
7) When do the goodman and his wife first become
aware of the presence of the strangers?
8) In lines 25-29, the goodwife is thinking about what?
9) What do you think the stranger means when he
suggests taking "aff the auld man's beard"?
10) What serious point does this humorous ballad make?
The Passionate
Shepherd to His
Love
Christopher Marlowe
LYRIC
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lines slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
 What
is your
opinion of the gifts
that the shepherd
offers to his
beloved?
 How serious or
realistic do you
think the
shepherd’s offer is?
 Why do you think
Marlowe chose the
setting described in
the poem?
The Nymph’s
Reply to the
Shepherd
Sir Walter Raleigh
LYRIC
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
Thy gowns, they shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten –
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in my no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
 How
would you
describe the
nymph’s attitude
toward life?
 On the basis of the
first and last
stanzas, what do
you think might
convince the
nymph to accept
the shepherd’s
offer?
Sonnets
Spenser and Shakespeare
Spenser: Guiding Questions
 Sonnet


Summarize the two questions in quatrains 1 and 2.
What answer does the couplet give?
Why does Spenser use the images of fire and ice?
 Sonnet


30:
75:
What message does this sonnet give to us? How is it
different from the previous poem?
What images does Spenser use here?
Edmund Spenser – Sonnet 30
My love is like to ice, and I to fire;
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not delayed by her heart-frozen cold:
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told
That fire which all things melts, should harden ice:
And ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device.
Such is the pow’r of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.
Edmund Spenser – Sonnet 75
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washéd it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize.
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wipéd out likewise.”
“Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize
And in the heavens write your glorious name,
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
Shakespeare: Guiding Questions
 Sonnet


Summarize, line by line, the thought process the
poem’s speaker goes through.
Where does the speaker’s ideas change? How does
this fit with the form/structure of the poem?
 Sonnet


116:
Do you think this speaker’s concept of love is realistic?
Would he/she agree more with Marlowe (“Passionate
Shepherd”) or Raleigh (“Nymph’s Reply”)?
 Sonnet

29:
130:
What does the speaker seem to say about typical love
comparisons?
What do you think was Shakespeare’s purpose in
writing this sonnet?
Shakespeare – Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate,
For thy sweet love remb’red such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Shakespeare – Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixéd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Shakespeare – Sonnet 130
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 damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never aw a goddess go,
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Compare the Two: Rhyme Scheme
Spenser
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize.
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”
“Not so,” quod I, “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name,
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Now write one of your own!
Free VS Blank
Important differences to note
Free Verse
 Does
not require any set rhyme scheme
 Does not have a rigid meter
 Example:
“Solar,” by Philip Larkin, 1964
Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.
The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.
Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.
Blank Verse
 No
rhyme scheme
 Always in iambic pentameter

u/ u/ u/ u/ u/
 Frequently
used in translations of
epic/narrative poetry
 Example:
from Paradise Lost, by John Milton
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the Heavens and the Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
Haiku
Japanese verse with a
specific number of syllables
in each line (5-7-5), often
discussing nature.
Haiku
 Rhythm


and Rhyme aren’t important
Syllable structure guides the form
Usually about nature
ARCHING INTO THE SKY
THE WAVE LEAVES
MORE BLUE
This is a haiku
They are fun to write sometimes
But not so easy
Limerick
Traditional Irish verse with a
specific meter and rhyme
scheme, often with a
humorous message.
Limerick
 There
was an Old Man of Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
His daughter, called Nan,
Ran away with a man,
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
 The
limerick packs laughs anatomical
In space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.