Poetry Part Three
A Unit on Types of Poetry and
Literary Terms
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 (ex: because)
Trochaic - stressed, unstressed (ex: breakfast)
Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed, stressed
(ex: as a rule)
Dactylic - stressed, unstressed, unstressed
(ex: in-between)
Be the First to Identify the Meter
Birdhouse
Blood creeps
Low light
Venom
Suggest
Garbage
Decay
Happy Birthday
I saw you everyday and all the while
My head was hot
Eyebrow
Tunnel
A violet by a mossy stone
On the faraway island of Sal-a-ma-Sond
Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.
Whose woods these are, I think I know
from “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
When the voices of children are heard on the green.
Examples of Meter
“You blocks! You stones! You worse than senseless things!”
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
____________________________
The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that
cold, cold wet day.
_____________________________ from Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat
Come live with me and be my love.
from Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
He ordered nine turtles to swim to his stone.
from Dr. Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle
____________________________________
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
Be the First to Identify the Meter and Feet!
Picture yourself in a boat on a river with
tangerine tree-ees and marmalade skii-ii-es.
From: “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by The Beatles
Getting better all the time
To be or not to be.
Seasong, seasong, in my ear
Waves upon the shore so near
The murmuring pines and the forest primeval
Adapted from Longfellow’s Evangeline
Tell me not in mournful numbers
Identify this poem:
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
--Emily Dickinson
Iambic Trimeter (mainly)
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
--Emily Dickinson
Identify this poem:
Bats have webby wings that fold up;
Bats from ceilings hang down rolled up;
Bats when flying undismayed are;
Bats are careful; bats use radar;
--Frank Jacobs, “The Bat”
Identify this poem:
Just a small town girl
Livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train
Going anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train going anywhere…
Don’t stop believin’
Rhyme Scheme and Meter:
There was | a young la | -dy from York
Who had | a great fond | -ness for pork.
She ate | it all day
And ne | -ver could play
'Cause her hand | would not put | down her fork.
Rhyme Scheme and Meter:
’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
What is the meter?
How many feet does each line have?
The final answer? Put it all together.
Challenge
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall
The first line of Donne’s “Last Duchess” has three kinds!
THAT'S my / LAST DUCH / ess PAINT / ed on / the WALL
Trochaic
spondee
iambic
pyrric iambic
“Metrical Feet” by Samuel Coleridge
/ u /
u
/ u /
• Trochee trips from long to short
u / u / u / u
/
• From long to long in solemn sort
/
/
/
/
/
/ / / / u
• Slow spondee stalks; strong foot yet ill able
• Ever to run with the dactyl trisyllable.
• Iambics march from short to long.
• With a leap and a bound the swift anapests throng.
Meter and feet worksheet
• Hey, that rhymes!
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.
In free verse the writer makes his/her own rules. The writer decides how the poem should
look, feel, and sound. Henry David Thoreau, a great philosopher, explained it this way, ". . .
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he
hears, however measured or far away." It may take you a while to "hear your own
drummer," but free verse can be a great way to "get things off your chest" and express
what you really feel.
Here are some examples:
Winter Poem
Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
BLANK VERSE POETRY
from Julius Caesar
• 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.
LAMP
STAMP
á Share the short “a”
vowel sound
á 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” by Shel Silverstein
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.
“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
á Different vowel sounds
(long “o” and “oo”
sound)
á 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.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.
a
b
c
b
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
Rhyme scheme? Meter?
Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Robert Frost
“Hector the Collector” by Shel Silverstein
Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string,
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring.
Pieces out of picture puzzles,
Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wires, worn-out tires,
Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,
Gatlin' guns that wouldn't shoot,
Leaky boats that wouldn't float
And stopped-up horns that wouldn't
toot.
Butter knives that had no handles,
Copper keys that fit no locks,
Rings that were too small for fingers,
Dried-up leaves and patched-up socks.
Worn-out belts that had no buckles,
'Lectric trains that had no tracks,
Airplane models, broken bottles,
Three-legged chairs and cups with cracks.
Hector the Collector
Loved these things with all his soul‹
Loved them more than shining diamonds,
Loved them more than glistenin' gold.
Hector called to all the people,
"Come and share my treasure trunk!"
And all the silly sightless people
Came and looked...and called it junk.
Check out the rhyme scheme of this poem!
“Casey At the Bat” p. 299
• “The Pasture” p. 196
• “A Time to Talk” p 196
• See these examples in
book for rhyme scheme
and repetition.
Sonnet
A 14-line poem that begins with eight lines and is
followed by six lines.
“How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How Do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach,
when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints.
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
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 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 sometimes 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 Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
“My Mistress Eyes”
Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare
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;
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 saw 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.
“The Man in the Glass” by Major League Pitcher Herb Score
When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you long for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what THAT man has to say.
For if it is not your father or mother or wife If you can't look him straight in the eye.
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
For he's with you dear up to the end. And
you have passed your most dangerous, difficult test
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back in the glass.
If the guy in the glass is your friend
Some people might think you are a
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of
straight shootin' chum and
years, and get pats on the back as you pass.
call you a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum, But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you have cheated the man in the glass.
Check out the rhyme scheme here!
What is the theme of the poem?
Assignment: Take time to do both.
• Write a poem with a
rhyme scheme.
• Write a Concrete Poem.
See examples of past
students in folder
See examples on
http://www.literacyrules.com/concre
te_poems.htm
Concrete Poetry
http://schools.pinellas.k12.fl.us/educators/tec/pravda3/concrete.html
I
am
a very
special
shape I have
three points and
three lines straight.
Look through my words
and you will see, the shape
that I am meant to be. I'm just
not words caught in a tangle. Look
close to see a small triangle. My angles
add to one hundred and eighty degrees, you
learn this at school with your abc's. Practice your
maths and you will see, some other fine examples of me.
http://members.optushome.com.au/kazoom/poetry/concrete.html