Good Day!
November 16, 2012
Agenda:
• Turn in Chapter 15 Poetry Homework
• Introduce Inquiring Minds and The Renaissance
• Notes on Sounds in Poetry
• Peer Analysis of SRP Outlines
Homework:
1. Poetry Sounds Test is next Monday, 11/19
2. Renaissance Presentations Due Tuesday, 11/20
Poets
Play
with
Sounds
Today’s Lesson
• Rhythm
• Meter
• Scansion
– stressed & unstressed syllables
– enjambment and end-stopped lines
• Feet
• Free verse
• Structure
Rhythm is
• The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables
in language (not just poetry)
• Why is rhythm a big deal?
• There was this girl named Mary and she had this
white lamb that kept following her
• life is full of rhythms—rocking chairs, swings,
marching, heartbeats
• a poem that has rhythm is memorable
• a poem with rhythm is like a song
• rhythm is made up of stressed (strong) and
unstressed (weak) syllables
• and pauses
Meter is:
• the regular pattern of stressed (strong) and
unstressed (weak) syllables found in some poetry
• the most obvious kind of rhythm
• Take me up, tenderly
• Double, double, toil and trouble
Scansion is
• marking the stressed and unstressed syllables
(meter) in a poem
• using  for unstressed syllables and an accent mark
/ for stressed syllables
• rhythmic lines have a pattern that can be broken up
into feet just like music has measures
• The best tool for scanning a poem is a dictionary
Mary had a little lamb
• Scansion:
/  /  /  /
Ma ry had a lit tle lamb
Scansion with feet marked:
/  /  / 
/
Mary  had a  little  lamb
Feet and Iambs
• Feet have different names according to their
patterns.
• An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed
syllable is called an iamb
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
• The line of poetry above has five feet
• iambic pentameter—Shakespeare’s favorite!
Rhythm and Scansion

  
 
 
Shall I  compare  thee to  a sum 


mer’s day?
• Why does rhythm matter?
• It reinforces the meaning of the poem.
• Two or more stressed syllables next to each other
add power and force to the poem
• Two or more unstressed syllables next to each other
seem uncertain or quiet
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies
William Shakespeare
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them---Ding-dong, bell.
End-Stopped vs. Enjambment
• If a line of poetry ends with punctuation, we pause
= end-stopped line
• If a line of poetry doesn’t end with punctuation, we
don’t pause = enjambment
• End-stopped lines sound like definite statements
and they emphasize the rhythm
• Enjambed lines sound hurried or like things are
sweeping along
---from “At the Altar”
Robert Lowell
I sit at a gold table with my girl
Whose eyelids burn with brandy. What a whirl
Of Easter eggs is colored by the lights,
As the Norwegian dancer’s crystalled tights
Flash with her naked leg’s high-booted skate,
Like Northern Lights upon my watching plate.
Feminine vs. Masculine Rhyme
• Feminine Rhyme: a rhyme with two or more
syllables with a stress on a syllable other than the
last.
• For Example:
tur-tle and fur-tile
pow-er and dow-er
walk-ing and talk-ing
• Your Turn!
Feminine vs. Masculine Rhyme
• Masculine Rhyme: either a rhyme of one syllable
words (as in fox and sox) or, in polysyllabic words,
a rhyme on the stressed final syllables:
• For Example:
con-trive and sur-vive
de-fine and a-lign
to-day and a-rray
• Your Turn!
Free Verse
•
•
•
•
•
•
What if a poet chooses not to use rhythm?
S/he writes in free verse
sounds like natural conversation
follows “curves of thought” or “shapes of speech”
some readers like it, some don’t
Robert Frost says writing a poem in free verse is
“like playing tennis with the net down.”
This is Just to Say
William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
• So rhythm aligns with meaning . . . .?
Structure:
•
•
•
•
•
the form of the poem
how the poem looks on the page
lengths of lines
lengths of words and syllables
how and where the poem is/isn’t divided into
stanzas
• where the poem rhymes or doesn’t rhyme
• repetition of words or phrases
Some famous poetic structures are
• sonnets
• haikus
• ballads
Structure also aligns with meaning
Not to change the subject, but what is a hook and eye?
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
• --Margaret Atwood