 1) The true meaning of a poem can only be understood by the person who wrote it.
 2) Poems are always about emotions.
 3) No poem can ever be completely understood.
 4) A good poem makes you feel an emotion
 5) Poems have to use standard grammar rules

 Poetry is a way of expressing thoughts and feelings in an imaginative, suggestive language.
 Poets often try to capture in words what painters and photographers can achieve with shapes and colors.

GUIDELINES FOR CLOSE READING OF
POETRY
 Read the poem out loud at least once
 Follow punctuation
 Look for key words and descriptions
 Write paraphrases of lines in your mind to determine meaning
 Find it’s central idea or meaning

o
Woman without her man is nothing. o Half of the class punctuated the sentence in the following way:
Woman: without her, man is nothing. o The other half of the class responded with the following:
Woman, without her man, is nothing.

 Capitalize the first word in every sentence
 Exercise 1 Complete & Review
 Traditionally, the first word of a line of poetry is capitalized
 Capitalize the first word of a directly quoted sentence.
 Capitalize the first word in both the salutation and the closing of a letter.
 Capitalize the pronoun/and the interjection O.
 Exercise 2 Complete & Review
 Capitalize proper nouns and proper adjectives
 Capitalize the names of persons and animals
 Capitalize initials in names and abbreviations that come before or after names.

 Capitalize geographical names (places)
 Exercise 3 Complete and review (page 250)
 Capitalize the names of organizations, teams, government bodies, and institutions.
 Capitalize the names of historical events and periods, special events, holidays and other calendar items.
 Capitalize the names of nationalities, races, and peoples
 Capitalize the names of religions and their followers, holy days, and celebrations, sacred writings, and specific deities.
 Capitalize the names of businesses and the brand names of business products.
 Capitalize the names of planets, stars, constellations, and other heavenly bodies

 Capitalize the names of ships, trains, aircraft, and spacecraft.
 Capitalize the names of awards, memorials, and monuments.
 Capitalize the names of particular buildings and other structures.
 Exercise 4 Complete and Review (page 254)
 Capitalize the first and last words and all important words in titles and subtitles.
 Chapter review

o A type of literature that expresses ideas, feelings, or tells a story in a specific form (usually using lines and stanzas).



POETRY FORM
 FORM - the appearance of the words on the page
 LINE - a group of words together on one line of the poem
 STANZA - a group of lines arranged together
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

Couplet = a two line stanza
Triplet (Tercet) = a three line stanza
Quatrain = a four line stanza
Quintet = a five line stanza
Sestet (Sextet) = a six line stanza
Septet
Octave
= a seven line stanza
= an eight line stanza

o There are several different types of Sonnets and they each have a different Rhyme Scheme. o Even though all sonnets have exactly 14 lines and they are generally written in Iambic Pentameter, many authors chose to invent their own Rhyme Scheme.
o You can invent your own, as well. This is a Shakespearean
Sonnet and it might be Shakespeare’s most famous one. Of course, that is debatable.

Bethlehem Steel Closes

 When you read a poem ask yourself who is speaking.
 The speaker in a poem may be the poet, the voice in the poem could be a fictional character or an object.
 In a a dramatic poem their may be more than one speaker.

POET SPEAKER
 The poet is the author of the poem.
 The speaker of the poem is the “narrator” of the poem.

 A statement is followed by a period (a
declarative).
 A question (or interrogative sentence) is followed by a question mark.
 An exclamation (or exclamatory sentence) is followed by an exclamation point.
 A command or request (or imperative
sentence) is followed by either a period or an exclamation point.
 Exercise 1 (pg. 266)

 Use a period after certain abbreviations (Ida. B. Wells)
 Abbreviate social titles whether used before the full name or before the last name alone (Mr. , Mrs.)
 You may abbreviate civil and military titles used before full names or before initials and last names. Spell such titles out before last names used alone (Sen., Brig. Gen, Prof. )
 Abbreviate titles and academic degrees that follow proper names.
 Acronyms (AMA = American Medical Association)
 Geographical Terms (Tucson, Ariz. )
 Time (A.D, B.C)
 Units of Measurement (tsp , mph)
 Exercise 2 complete and review (page 270)


Poets, like musicians are sensitive to the effects of sound.
 Varying rhythms, use harsh or melodious words that create a sound to convey a particular mood.
 In combination, these devices can give a poem a rich texture of sound, which is pleasurable in itself and which also enhances the poem’s meaning.

 The beat created by the sounds of the words in a poem
 Rhythm can be created by meter, rhyme, alliteration and refrain.

o A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
o Meter occurs when the stressed and unstressed syllables of the words in a poem are arranged in a repeating pattern.
o When poets write in meter, they count out the number of stressed (strong) syllables and unstressed (weak) syllables for each line. They repeat the pattern throughout the poem.

 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.)

Iambic - unstressed, stressed
Trochaic - stressed, unstressed
Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed, stressed
Dactylic - stressed, unstressed, unstressed

 Unlike metered poetry, free verse poetry does NOT have any repeating patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.
 Free verse poetry is very conversational sounds like someone talking with you.
 Does NOT have rhyme.
 A more modern type of poetry.

 Written in lines of iambic pentameter, but does NOT use end rhyme.
Julius Cesar: Excerpt
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.

o Words sound alike because they share the same ending vowel and consonant sounds.
o (A word always rhymes with itself.)

Bridge/Grudge
Moon/On
Hinge/Orange

There are multitudes of names for words that almost 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.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB
(334)

 A word inside a line rhymes with another word on the same line.
o Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.
From “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

 Words that imitate the sound they are naming
BUZZ
 OR sounds that imitate another sound
“The silken, sad, uncertain, rustling of each purple curtain . . .”

 Consonant sounds repeated at the beginnings of word.
 If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many
pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?
 Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck,

 Similar to alliteration EXCEPT . . .
 The repeated consonant sounds can be anywhere in the words
 “silken, sad, uncertain, rustling . . “

 Repeated VOWEL sounds in a line or lines of poetry.
(Often creates near rhyme.)
Lake Fate Base Fade
(All share the long “a” sound.)

Examples of ASSONANCE:
“Slow the low gradual moan came in the snowing.”
John Masefield
“Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep.”
- William Shakespeare

 A sound, word, phrase or line repeated regularly in a poem.
“Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
The Raven

 A short poem
 Usually written in first person point of view
 Expresses an emotion or an idea or describes a scene
 Do not tell a story and are often musical.

A five line poem containing
22 syllables
Two Syllables
Four Syllables
Six Syllables
Eight Syllables
Two Syllables
How frail
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs
Autumnal, evanescent, wan
The moon.

 A poem that tells a story.
 Generally longer than the lyric styles of poetry b/c the poet needs to establish characters and a plot.
Examples of Narrative
Poems
“The Raven”
“The Highwayman”
“Casey at the Bat”
“The Walrus and the
Carpenter”

 In concrete poems, the words are arranged to create a picture that relates to the content of the poem.
Poetry
Is like
Flames,
Which are
Swift and elusive
Dodging realization
Sparks, like words on the
Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
Tongues, formless and shifting
Shapes, tease the imiagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their mind’s
Eye, they burn
Up the page.

A Japanese poem written in three lines
Five Syllables
Seven Syllables
Five Syllables
An old silent pond . . .
A frog jumps into the pond.
Splash! Silence again.

 Draft 2 Haikus.
 Select 2 images form a magazine and write a Haiku for each of the pictures.
 Attach the pictures to your poem.
 Be sure to review the elements of Form, Content and
Image on your rubric.
 Sample Haiku’s are on the back of the handout.

 A comparison of two things using “like, as than,” or
“resembles.”
 “She is as beautiful as a sunrise.”

 A direct comparison of two unlike things
 “All the world’s a stage, and we are merely players.”
- William Shakespeare

 A metaphor that goes several lines or possible the entire length of a work.

 The comparison is hinted at but not clearly stated.
 “The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it.”
by John Steinbeck
The Pearl

 Exaggeration often used for emphasis.

 An animal given humanlike qualities or an object given life-like qualities.
Ninki by Shirley Jackson
“Ninki was by this time irritated beyond belief by the general air of incompetence exhibited in the kitchen, and she went into the living room and got Shax, who is extraordinarily lazy and never catches his own chipmunks, but who is, at least, a cat, and preferable, Ninki saw clearly, to a man with a gun.

 When a person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself also represents, or stands for, something else.
= Innocence
= America
= Peace

o A symbol is anything that hints at something else, usually something abstract, such as an idea or belief. A literary symbol is an object, a person, a situation, or an action that has a literal meaning in a story but suggests or represents other meanings.

 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

 Language that appeals to the senses.
 Most images are visual, but they can also appeal to the senses of sound, touch, taste, or smell.
then with cracked hands that ached
.
from labor in the weekday weather . . from “Those Winter Sundays”

 Verbal Irony:
 Examples: clear as mud”, "as much fun as a root canal.
 Situational Irony - Situational irony results from recognizing the oddness or unfairness of a given situation, be it positive or negative.
 Examples: Bill Gates win’s a computer contest
 Dramatic Irony :when the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters
 Examples: “The Quiet Man” Shawn Kelvin who wants to avoid conflict, is a prize fighter. Big Liam of course doesn’t know this.
Alanis Morissette: Isn't it ironic

 Look over your key word terms for the unit and the slides and examples from class.
 Unit test will cover concepts NOT specific poetry.
 We may ask you to read a poem, and dissect some of these elements however.