Poem or Poetry
The word is derived from the
Greek poiein, “to create or make.”
Remember:
• All good poems are unique
• All good poems broaden our
comprehension
• All good poems add layers to our
understandings
When Reading Poems:
• Read carefully
• Read thoughtfully
• Read sympathetically
Look at Herrick’s Poem
Here a pretty baby lies
Sung asleep with lullabies:
Pray be silent, and not stir
Th’easy earth that covers her.
The Ballad
• The ballad is one of the earliest poetic forms; it is
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a narrative which was originally spoken or sung.
It usually:
*Is simple.
*Employs dialogue, repetition, minor
characterization.
*Is written in quatrains.
*Has a basic rhyme scheme, primarily A B C B.
*Has a refrain which adds to its songlike quality.
*Ballads often deal with the events of a folk hero;
sometimes they retell historical events; often
times they deal with the supernatural, disasters,
good and evil, and love and loss.
A Ballad of the Mulberry Road
by Ezra Pound
The sun rises in south-east corner of things
To look on the tall house of the Shin
For they have a daughter named Rafu (pretty girl).
She made the name for herself: “Gauze Veil,”
For she feeds mulberries to silkworms,
She gets them by the south wall of the town.
With green strings she makes the warp of her basket,
She makes the shoulderstraps of her basket from the boughs of Katsura,
And she piles her hair up on the left side of her headpiece.
Her earrings are made of pearl,
Her underskirt is of green pattern-silk,
Her overskirt is the same silk dyed in purple,
And when men going by look on Rafu they set down their burdens,
They stand and twirl their moustaches.
The Lyric
• Lyric poetry is highly personal and
emotional.
• It can be as simple as a sensory
impression or as elevated as an ode or
elegy.
• Subjective and melodious, it is often
reflective in tone; often designed to be set
to music.
• It is written in a repeating stanzaic form.
Let’s Look at Robert Burns’
“A Red, Red, Rose”
O my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
*Note: This is only two stanzas of his four stanza
poem.
The Elegy
• This is a formal lyric poem written in
honor of someone who has died.
• Don’t confuse the elegy with the eulogy
(funeral oration).
Dramatic Monologue
• A poem in which a speaker addresses an internal
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listener or the reader.
Often the speaker includes detail reflecting the
listener’s nonverbal responses.
The dramatic monologue relates an episode in a
speaker’s life through a conversational format
which reveals the character of the speaker.
Dramatic monologues can be very rich in narrative
detail and characterization.
To connect dramatic monologue to drama, think
soliloquy or aside
The Sonnet
• Has 14 lines
• Two types: Italian or Petrarchan sonnet
and English or Shakespearean
• The two differ in rhyme scheme and
stanza form
The Sonnet
• Subject matter of sonnets vary greatly –
love, religion, politics
• The sonnet is highly polished, and the
strictness of its form complements the
complexity of the subject matter.
Shakespearean Sonnet
• Three Quatrains (4 lines) and one couplet
(two lines)
• Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Italian:
• One Octave (eight lines) and one Sestet
(six lines)
• Rhyme Scheme: ABBAABBA CDECDE (the
sestet can vary)
What to remember
• Sonnets, no matter the time period, will
always have 14 lines.
Villanelle
• Fixed form in poetry
• Six stanzas: five tercets (3 lines) and a
final quatrain (4 line)
• It utilized two refrains: the first and last
lines of the first stanza alternate as the
last line of the next four stanzas and then
form the final couplet in the quatrain.
• Only two rhyming sounds occur
throughout
• “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”