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POETRY
– handout by Pikli Natália –
A poem= specially patterned text, to express with language what cannot be expressed by
using ordinary, everyday language => form and content are interrelated, in strong relation
with each other
Types of poetry:
1. narrative poetry (telling a story)
genres: the epic, the ballad, the romance
2. lyric poetry (emotional, philosophical response to the world)
genres: the song, the ode, the hymn, the elegy, the sonnet
What makes a poem?
1. Music (lyric<lyre, ancient poems were sung, dance/music/poetry)
- rhythm
- metre
- rhyme
- alliteration (‘head rhyme’ – matching initial consonants)
- sound associations (harmonious, disharmonious)
2. Imagery (figurative language and tropes)
- metaphor (identification; subject/tenor/ & figurative term /vehicle/)
(conceit: complex, far-fetched metaphor, unlikely , unexpected connections)
- simile (like, as)
- personification (inanimate → attributes of the animate)
- oxymoron (a paradox in a metaphor, “irreligious piety”)
- metonymy (an attribute/a part of the thing is substituted for the thing itself /pars
pro toto/ synecdoche/, based not on similarity but association/relation/connection)
- synesthesia
- allegory
- symbol
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3. Poetic diction (language)
- archaism or/and coining new words, phrases
- parallels and contrasts, ambiguity, paradox
- repetition (repetition with variation= incremental repetition) → rhythm
- special word order (eg. inversion)
4. A personal impersonal attitude to the world (persona) (cf. dramatic monologue)
Metre, rhyme and verse form
Metre: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry (regular rise and
fall) – gives the underlying rhythm of a poem
Most common from the early Renaissance in English poetry:
STRESS-SYLLABLE METRE (also called accentual-syllabic metre)
(1. pure syllabic/quantitative metre is very rare = Hungarian, Greco-Roman ‘időmértékes’
metre
2. Old English poetry and medieval alliterative poetry, nursery rhymes: PURE STRESS
METRE/ACCENTUAL VERSE: only stress matters, syllables do not = strong-stress metre,
always four stresses in a line, cf. Baa baa black sheep)
a little unit of syllables (at least one stressed ΄ BEAT and one or more unstressed ˇ OFF-BEAT
) = a foot
Most common metrical feet :
the iamb (ˇ ΄), iambic foot eg. behind
the trochee (΄ ˇ), trochaic foot eg. rabbit
the spondee (΄ ΄), spondaic foot eg. Dark, dark
the anapaest (ˇ ˇ ΄), anapaestic foot eg. understand
the dactyl (΄ ˇ ˇ), dactylic foot, eg. agitate
“Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time”
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LINES: dimeter (two feet, eg. chimney sweeper = trochaic dimeter), trimeter (3), tetrameter
(4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6) (iambic hexameter= alexandrine)
caesura: a pause in a line of poetry
end-stopped lines: a pause at the end of a line (marked by punctuation)
run-on lines (enjambement)
VERSE FORMS/STANZAS:
heroic couplet (rhymed iambic pentameter)
triplet/tercet (three lines with a single rhyme)
quatrain (a four-line stanza)
ballad metre (4 lines, xaxa, iambic tetra- and trimetre, in Hungarian lit. called ‘Scottish
balladform’ A walesi bárdok, Szózat)
rhyme royal (a seven-line stanza in iambic pentameter rhyming ababbcc)
octava rima (an eight-line stanza rhyming abababcc)
Spenserian stanza (a nine-line stanza rhyming ababbcbcc, 8x iambic pentameter + an
alexandrine)
blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter, Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s plays)
sonnet
1. Petrarchan/Italian : 4 stanzas of 4+4+3+3 lines (an octave+a sestet)
abba abba cde cde (or any other variation of 8+6 rhyming scheme)
2. Shakespearean/English: 4+4+4+2 lines (three quatrains and a couplet)
abbacddceffegg in iambic pentameter
RHYMES:
rhyme pattern/scheme
- assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) vs perfect rhyme: last stressed V + all following
sounds match
- end/tail rhyme
- internal rhyme
- masculine (strong) rhyme: a single stressed syllable – “hill” and “still” (or, the last syllable is
rhyming and stressed)
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- feminine (weak) rhyme: two rhyming syllables, one stressed, the other unstressed –
“hollow” and “follow”
- eye rhyme: spelt alike but not rhyming – “love” and “prove”
- imperfect/slant/oblique rhyme: do not quite rhyme – “soul” and “wall”
- sprung/half-rhyme (consonance, matching consonants) “groaned” and “groined”
- holorhyme – identical rhyme (fun) ‘For I scream/ for ice cream’
A possible method to approach a poem (Help with Poems 101)
1. Read the poem several times (let it flow through your soul/mind, evoking thoughts and
emotions)
2. Try to define the basic problems/questions/ideas/emotions the poem brings up. (Help:
search for basic contrasts)
3. See how the form, the patterning of the language contributes to and supports the main
problems/emotions. Search for the non-literal, the out-of-the-ordinary – circle/underline it
Point to a detail, and justify its presence: why is it there, how does it relate to the main
questions. Say how the different poetic means express what is behind/between the lines –
- title: how does it relate to the poem
- the general atmosphere evoked
- look for structuring thoughts/impressions: basic contrasts, parallels
- poetic means: what do rhymes/alliterations/assonance connect
how rhythm/metre/repetitions contribute to the thoughts/emotions
images: what kind of tropes, what do they highlight, what do they call
attention to
- use direct quotes to pinpoint important ideas in your analysis, but keep the balance
(it’s not “a book of aphorisms”)
4. Put the poem into a larger context; you might relate it
- to other works by the author
- to other works of the era/national poetry/international poetry
- to certain archetypes, or other concepts out of the strictly literary