Poetry
A Brief Review to Flex your
Poetic Muscles
As a reminder…
Poetry is…
A kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery
designed to appeal to our emotions and imagination.
Poetry is usually arranged in lines.
It often has a regular pattern of rhythm and may have a regular rhyme scheme.
Free verse is poetry that has no regular pattern of rhythm or rhyme, though it
is generally arranged in lines
The major forms of poetry are lyric, narrative, epic, and ballad.
Poetic Devices
• Rhyme: The repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds
following them in words that are close together in a poem.
• Onomatopoeia: The use of words whose sounds imitate or suggest
their meaning.
• Diction: A writer’s or speaker’s choice of words.
• Rhythm: A musical quality produced by the repetition of stressed and
unstressed syllables or by the repetition of certain other sound
patterns.
• Homophones: Words that sound the same but are
spelled differently.
Other Literary Terms Frequently Seen in Poetry…
o Metaphor: A direct comparison between two unlike things in which
one thing is said to be another thing.
o Simile: A comparison between two unlike things using like or as.
o Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close
together.
o Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds in words that are close
together.
o Repetition: The repetition of words or phrases to emphasize an idea or
to draw attention to a passage.
Even More Literary Terms Frequently Seen in Poetry…
o Personification: Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things, such as objects or animals.
o Hyperbole: An obvious or intentional exaggeration that is not
intended to be taken seriously.
o Idioms: An expression unique to a language or culture that
means something different from the literal meaning of the
words.
o Imagery: Language that appeals to the senses.
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Shel Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Shel Silverstein
Repetition
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Alliteration
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Shel Silverstein
Repetition
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Imagery
Alliteration
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Shel Silverstein
Repetition
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
Alliteration
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Imagery
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
Rhyme
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Shel Silverstein
Repetition
Where the Sidewalk Ends
TAPS
T
Topic
A
Audience
P
Purpose
S
Speaker
T:
P:
A:
S:
One Art
-Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
T: Losing things. Specifically, losing a loved P:
one (most likely a spouse/boyfriend).
A:
S:
One Art
-Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
T: Losing things. Specifically, losing a loved P:
one (most likely a spouse/boyfriend).
A: Seems to be specifically written for the S:
One Art former spouse/bf.
-Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
T: Losing things. Specifically, losing a loved P: To express and confirm the speaker’s
one (most likely a spouse/boyfriend).
ability to survive loss.
A: Seems to be specifically written for the S:
One Art former spouse/bf.
-Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
T: Losing things. Specifically, losing a loved
one (most likely a spouse/boyfriend).
A: Seems to be specifically written for the
One Art former spouse/bf.
-Elizabeth Bishop
P: To express and confirm the speaker’s
ability to survive loss.
S: First-person, likely the author (Elizabeth
Bishop).
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Stamp it out!
S
Subject
T
Tone
A
Audience
M
Metaphor
P
Point-of-View
Fragments
-Stephen Dobyns
S:
T:
A:
M:
P:
Now there is a slit in the blue fabric of air.
His house spins faster. He holds down books,
chairs; his life and its objects fly upward:
vanishing black specks in the indifferent sky.
The sky is a torn piece of blue paper.
He tries to repair it, but the memory
of death is like paste on his fingers
and certain days stick like dead flies.
Say the sky goes back to being the sky
and the sun continues as always. Now,
knowing what you know, how can you not see
thin cracks in the fragile blue vaults of air.
My friend, what can I give you or darkness
lift from you but fragments of language,
fragments of blue sky. You had three
beautiful daughters and one has died.
for Donald Murray
Fragments
-Stephen Dobyns
S: The effect of a child’s death on the
parents.
T:
A:
M:
P:
Now there is a slit in the blue fabric of air.
His house spins faster. He holds down books,
chairs; his life and its objects fly upward:
vanishing black specks in the indifferent sky.
The sky is a torn piece of blue paper.
He tries to repair it, but the memory
of death is like paste on his fingers
and certain days stick like dead flies.
Say the sky goes back to being the sky
and the sun continues as always. Now,
knowing what you know, how can you not see
thin cracks in the fragile blue vaults of air.
My friend, what can I give you or darkness
lift from you but fragments of language,
fragments of blue sky. You had three
beautiful daughters and one has died.
for Donald Murray
Fragments
-Stephen Dobyns
S: The effect of a child’s death on the
parents.
T: Despairing; powerless to help, but
sympathetic
A:
M:
P:
Now there is a slit in the blue fabric of air.
His house spins faster. He holds down books,
chairs; his life and its objects fly upward:
vanishing black specks in the indifferent sky.
The sky is a torn piece of blue paper.
He tries to repair it, but the memory
of death is like paste on his fingers
and certain days stick like dead flies.
Say the sky goes back to being the sky
and the sun continues as always. Now,
knowing what you know, how can you not see
thin cracks in the fragile blue vaults of air.
My friend, what can I give you or darkness
lift from you but fragments of language,
fragments of blue sky. You had three
beautiful daughters and one has died.
for Donald Murray
Fragments
-Stephen Dobyns
S: The effect of a child’s death on the
parents.
T: Despairing; powerless to help, but
sympathetic
A: Specific: Donald Murray
General: parents who’ve lost a child
M:
P:
Now there is a slit in the blue fabric of air.
His house spins faster. He holds down books,
chairs; his life and its objects fly upward:
vanishing black specks in the indifferent sky.
The sky is a torn piece of blue paper.
He tries to repair it, but the memory
of death is like paste on his fingers
and certain days stick like dead flies.
Say the sky goes back to being the sky
and the sun continues as always. Now,
knowing what you know, how can you not see
thin cracks in the fragile blue vaults of air.
My friend, what can I give you or darkness
lift from you but fragments of language,
fragments of blue sky. You had three
beautiful daughters and one has died.
for Donald Murray
Fragments
-Stephen Dobyns
S: The effect of a child’s death on the
parents.
T: Despairing; powerless to help, but
sympathetic
A: Specific: Donald Murray
General: parents who’ve lost a child
M: The poem is an extended metaphor
comparing the destruction of the sky to the way
losing a child alters a parent’s reality/world.
P:
Now there is a slit in the blue fabric of air.
His house spins faster. He holds down books,
chairs; his life and its objects fly upward:
vanishing black specks in the indifferent sky.
The sky is a torn piece of blue paper.
He tries to repair it, but the memory
of death is like paste on his fingers
and certain days stick like dead flies.
Say the sky goes back to being the sky
and the sun continues as always. Now,
knowing what you know, how can you not see
thin cracks in the fragile blue vaults of air.
My friend, what can I give you or darkness
lift from you but fragments of language,
fragments of blue sky. You had three
beautiful daughters and one has died.
for Donald Murray
Fragments
-Stephen Dobyns
S: The effect of a child’s death on the
parents.
T: Despairing; powerless to help, but
sympathetic
A: Specific: Donald Murray
General: parents who’ve lost a child
M: The poem is an extended metaphor
comparing the destruction of the sky to the way
losing a child alters a parent’s reality/world.
P: Written from the POV of the author
– 1st person, to friend who’s child died.
Now there is a slit in the blue fabric of air.
His house spins faster. He holds down books,
chairs; his life and its objects fly upward:
vanishing black specks in the indifferent sky.
The sky is a torn piece of blue paper.
He tries to repair it, but the memory
of death is like paste on his fingers
and certain days stick like dead flies.
Say the sky goes back to being the sky
and the sun continues as always. Now,
knowing what you know, how can you not see
thin cracks in the fragile blue vaults of air.
My friend, what can I give you or darkness
lift from you but fragments of language,
fragments of blue sky. You had three
beautiful daughters and one has died.
for Donald Murray
William 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 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 Death of Santa Claus
-Charles Webb
He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,
he's let his Blue Cross lapse,
blood tests make him faint,
hospital gown always flap
open, waiting rooms upset
his stomach, and it's only
indigestion anyway, he thinks,
until, feeding the reindeer,
he feels as if a monster fist
has grabbed his heart and won't
stop squeezing. He can't
breathe, and the beautiful white
world he loves goes black,
and he drops on his jelly belly
in the snow and Mrs. Claus
tears out of the toy factory
wailing, and the elves wring
their little hands, and Rudolph's
nose blinks like a sad ambulance
light, and in a tract house
in Houston, Texas, I'm 8,
telling my mom that stupid
kids at school say Santa's a big
fake, and she sits with me
on our purple-flowered couch,
and takes my hand, tears
in her throat, the terrible
news rising in her eyes.
Female Author
-Sylvia Plath
All day she plays at chess with the bones of the world:
Favored (while suddenly the rains begin
Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curled
And nibbles an occasional bonbon of sin.
Prim, pink-breasted, feminine, she nurses
Chocolate fancies in rose-papered rooms
Where polished higboys whisper creaking curses
And hothouse roses shed immortal blooms.
The garnets on her fingers twinkle quick
And blood reflects across the manuscript;
She muses on the odor, sweet and sick,
Of festering gardenias in a crypt,
And lost in subtle metaphor, retreats
From gray child faces crying in the streets.
Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and
goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first
time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.
Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp
temptation
to save them somewhere as
schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give
them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green
deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my
shoes.
The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.
Pablo Neruda
Ode to My Socks
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Courage That My Mother Had
The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.
The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.
Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!–
The courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.
Just in case you were wondering, a
brooch is a large decorative pin, usually
worn at the neck.
Eating Poetry
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
Mark Strand
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Hate Poem
I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates
everything
about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest
bones were they trapped in the jaws
of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its
capillary hates you.
A closed window is both a closed
window and an obvious
symbol of how I hate you.
Julie Sheehan
My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me
for a drive: hate.
My pleasant “good morning”: hate.
You know how when I’m sleepy I
nuzzle my head
under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes
articulate hate. My wit practices it.
Look out! Fore! I hate you.
My breasts relaxing in their holster
from morning to night hate you.
The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m Layers of hate, a parfait.
digging from under my third toenail, Hours after our latest row,
left foot, hates you.
brandishing the sharp glee of hate,
The history of this keychain hates
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I
you.
might hate each one
My sigh in the background as you
individually and at leisure.
explain your relational databases
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand
hates you.
with the utter validity of my hate,
The goldfish of my genius hates
which can never have enough of
you.
you,
My aorta hates you. Also my
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a
ancestors.
broken submarine.
e e cummings
[Buffalo Bill’s]
e e cummings
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeons justlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death