What is this thing called poetry?
• “Poetry: the best words in the best order.” –Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• “The poet is the priest of the invisible.” — Wallace Stevens
• “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel
with ourselves, poetry.” – William Butler Yeats
• “I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.” – A. E.
Housman
• “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that
is poetry.” – Emily Dickinson
• “I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem
is discovering.” – Robert Frost
• ”A poem should not mean. But be.” – Archibald MacLeish
• “Poetry fettered fetters the human race.” - William Blake
•
The 50 Greatest Quotes About Poetry From Poets:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/03/poetry-quotes-poets_n_1935933.html
What is this thing called poetry?
• In writing poetry there
are no rules
• “Poetry fettered fetters
the human race.” –
William Blake
• In writing about poetry
only one rule: Detail
• Illustrate your reading of a poem with detailed
discussion of the poet’s choices
• Examine 4 different poems
to illustrate union of form and content
Two key questions:
1.What does the poem
seek to do?
2. How does the poem do
what it does?
Alice Walker,
“The Nature of this Flower is to Bloom”
How does the poem do what it does?
Poet’s use of formal and rhetoric strategies:
Form
Diction
What Genre of poem is it? What Metre,
Rhyme scheme & Stanza structure is
used? (various forms in English poetry.)
In the absence of rhyme, is it blank
verse or free verse?
Close attention to the poet’s
word choice, imagery and
metaphor
Design
Tone
the movement of thought in the
poem
How is emotion conveyed or
implied?
How does the poem do what it does?
Poet’s use of formal and rhetoric strategies:
Form – What Genre of poem is it?
What Metre, Rhyme scheme &
Stanza structure is used? (various
forms in English poetry.)
In the absence of rhyme, is it blank
verse or free verse?
Diction – attention to the poet’s
word choice, imagery and metaphor
Design – the movement of thought
in the poem
Tone – How is emotion conveyed or
implied?
“The Nature of this
Flower is to Bloom”
Rebellious. Living.
Against the Elemental
Crush.
A Song of Color
Blooming
For Deserving Eyes.
Blooming Gloriously
For its Self.
Revolutionary Petunia
Listen to Larkin reading the poem: http://youtu.be/1rjRYSfCJvM
“This be the Verse” by Philip Larkin
What does the poem seek to do?
 Amuse, shock, delight and teach his reader. Communicate his
convictions and experience. Poetry as a form of moral teaching but
tone suggests not passion but a resigned ironic distance and perhaps
self-doubt
How does the poem do what it does?
Form: Use of regular abab rhyme scheme across 3 stanzas creates a
sing-song pattern
Diction: “This be the Verse” - echo of the language of the Anglican
church combined with the deliberate use of shocking language and
puns: “fuck you up” ; colloquial language “mum and dad” “soppy” “at
each other’s throats” “get out” “kids”.
Imagery: coastal shelf – image of erosion, a deepening of misery
 Design: mum and dad  kids. Repetitive rhyme scheme suggests
cycles of existence, children becoming parents, inevitability of suffering
“Reggae Sounds”
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Shock-black bubble-doun-beat bouncing
rock-wise tumble-doun sound music;
foot-drop, find drum, blood story,
bass history is a moving
is a hurting black story.
Thunda from a bass drum sounding
Lightening from a trumpet and a organ,
bass and rhythm and trumpet double-up
team-up with drums for a deep doun searching.
Rhythm of a tropical, electrical storm
(cooled doun to the pace of the struggle),
flame-rhythm of historically yearning
flame-rhythmof the time of turning,
measuring the time for bombs and for burning.
Slow drop. make stop. move forward
dig doun to the root of the pain;
shape it into violence for the people,
they will know what to do, they will do it.
Shock-black bubble-doun-beat bouncing
rock-wise tumble-doun sound music;
foot-drop, find drum, blood story,
bass history is a moving
is a hurting black story.
Listen to Johnson performing the poem
http://youtu.be/8omA7huF6XE?list=RD8omA7
huF6XE
http://www.lintonkwesijohnson.com/lintonkwesi-johnson/
“Reggae Sounds” by Linton Kwesi Johnson
What does the poem seek to do?
Johnson records in written verse the connections between Jamaican
music, history, and his new chosen form of reggae poetry.
How does the poem do what it does?
Form: A dub poem has a built-in reggae rhythm. The poem is selfreflexive, a poem about writing poetry. Reggae is described in lines of
verse that re-create its rhythmic pull
is not merely putting a piece of poem ’pon a reggae rhythm,
it is a poem that has a built-in reggae rhythm – hence when
the poem is read without any… backing one can distinctly
hear the reggae rhythm coming out of the poem
(Oku Onuora, Jamaican poet, 1979)
 Diction: Jamaican Creole, a combination of English, Spanish,
Portuguese and African languages. Imagery of the island of Jamaica,
the birthplace of reggae music, and of reggae music’s articulation of
global black struggle.
 Design: what is the effect of the repetition?
Tone: how would you describe the tone?
Form, Diction, Design and Tone are all Poetic Choices
•Johnson works within the African and Caribbean tradition of the poet as community
historian and spokesperson
•Johnson’s choice of Jamaican Creole is deliberate to establish and sustain that
community, using the appropriate language to voice the concerns of his own
community of migrants from the Caribbean in Britain
• “Reggae Sounds” is a poetic manifesto of reggae poetry
“Sunship” by Robert Berold
Coltrane composed
An anthem
For the sun
sun ship
sun ship
sweet sharp the music
tenser
than a gun
tenser
it rained in the subway
a knife in the park
another messiah
lay quiet in the dark
Tyner drove taxis
Miles met the narc
Nothing the fans did
could light up the spark
which was Coltrane
It went like
one of those winter days
sun shone white
as the band played
trees stood stripped
as the tenor ripped
nothing would ever be the same
after Coltrane
his pain
broke notes on the floor
they got up
but he got up no more
Coltrane composed
an anthem
for the sun
sun ship
sun ship
he knew one day
he’d have to
take the trip
sun ship
Listen to Sun Ship (1971)
http://youtu.be/_znSj_mDOY?list=PL142571E685268924
Listen to Kind of Blue (1959) http://youtu.be/FEPFH-gz3wE
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richardbrody/sun-ship-the-complete-session-johncoltranes-musical-documentary
“Sunship” by Robert Berold
What does the poem seek to do?
Berold tells the story of American tenor saxophonist Coltrane and
Sunship, his posthumously released jazz album recorded on August 26,
1965, in a form that resonates with free jazz. A poem about life, death,
music, and art.
How does the poem do what it does?
Form: Use of several free flowing stanzas which break in and out of
rhyme, frequent use of alliteration (“Coltrane composed”), assonance
(“an anthem”) repetition (“sunship”) alternate rhyme – seeks to imitate
or evoke the experimental sound of Coltrane’s rapid-fire four-note
theme repetitions, and the use in free form jazz of both melody and
improvisation
Diction: American slang “narc” “sweet sharp” and impressionistic
images of New York city, image of music as pain, as a tangible object
that lives on beyond the creator.
 Design: cyclical with variation
Tone: shifting moods evoke the sound of jazz itself