WHAT IS POETRY?
Poetry is...the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility.
William Wordsworth
...if it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry, if I
feel physically, as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry.
Emily Dickinson
Poetry is....the distilled, imaginative expression of feeling.
T. S. Eliot
What is poetry? Who knows?
Not a rose, but the scent of a rose;
Not the sky, but the light in the sky;
Not the fly; but the gleam of the fly;
Not the sea; but the sound of the sea;
Not myself; but what makes me
See, hear, and feel something that prose
Cannot, and what it is, who knows?
Eleanor Farjean
Poetry is a poet’s intuition of truth. It combines richness of meaning with the sound
of language arranged in its most beautiful form. Poetry is filled with carefully
selected words that are arranged to call attention to experiences we have not known
or fully recognized. Poetry can make us chuckle...it can startle us with insight or
surprise us with clarity. It can also bring a peacefulness and sense of repose. Some
poems express feeling that we did not even know we had until we read them; then
we say, “Yes, that’s just as it is.” Poetry deals with truth—the essence of life and
experience.
Bernice Cullinan
Poets are the athletes of language. What we call poetic skill is the ability to get the
most out of certain capacities of language that we all use in less interesting ways—
just as athletic skill in baseball, dancing, swimming, or tennis is the ability to get
the most out of certain bodily capacities we all use everyday, but not so powerfully
or gracefully. The secret of both kinds of skill, the poet’s and the athlete’s, is
coordination.
Robert W. Boynton
When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power
narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his
existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. John F. Kennedy Amherst, Honoring Robert Frost
A poem . . . begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. .
. . It finds the thought and the thought finds the words Robert Frost\
Poetry is what gets lost in translation. ~Robert Frost
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. ~Percy Shelley, A
Defence of Poetry, 1821
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato, Ion
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes. ~Carl Sandburg
Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and
appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats
It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around
things. ~Stephen Mallarme
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry
Poetry is life distilled. ~Gwendolyn Brooks
Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~Thomas Gray
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved
and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul
Engle, New York Times, 17 February 1957
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. ~Rita Dove
Poetry should be like fireworks, packed carefully and artfully, ready to explode with unpredictable
effects." -Lilian Moore
"If there would be a recipe for a poem, these would be the ingredients: word sounds, rhythm,
description, feeling, memory, rhyme, and imagination. They can be put together a thousand
different ways, a thousand, thousand... more." - Karla Kuskin
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood." - T. S. Eliot
"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech." – Simonides
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does
honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant
about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the
poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its
validity for themselves.- W. H. Auden
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar
objects be as if they were not familiar.- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.- Edgar Allan Poe
The art which uses words as both speech and song to reveal the realities that the
senses record, the feelings salute, the mind perceives, and the shaping
imagination orders. - Babettes Deutsch
Poetry is important because:
1. It makes us laugh, it’s pleasurable.
2. It creates images.
3. It expresses feelings and provokes feelings.
4. It promotes language learning---because it
a. Contains highly charged words
b. Uses only a few words to say a great deal
c. Is melodic---sings as it says
d. Contains rhythm, repetition, and rhyme
e. Captures the essence of a concept
f. Says more than it says
g. Has layers of meaning
h. Uses words as sound (rhyme, alliteration, assonance), rhythm, and
meaning
Criteria for Selecting Poetry:
1. Can children understand it? Can they understand it with help from adults?
2. Does the poem stir emotions like delight, sadness, nostalgia?
3. Does it create images of sight, touch, smell, taste?
4. Does it play with the sounds of language? Does the sound echo the sense?
5. Does the rhythm reinforce the meaning?
6. Is the form appropriate for the content of the poem?
Children’s Poetry Preferences:
1. Contemporary poems
2. Poems they can understand
3. Narrative poems
4. Poems with rhyme, rhythm, and sound
5. Humorous poems
6. Poems that relate to their personal experiences
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
1. Descriptive, Sensory Words
2. Figurative Language
a. Metaphor/Simile
b. Personification
c. Hyperbole
3. Sound Patterns
a. Rhyme
b. Alliteration
c. Assonance
d. Onomatopoeia
4. Rhythm Patterns
a. Phrasing
b. Beat/Accent
c. Length of Words
d. Meter
e. Flow
5. Emotional Intensity
6. Compactness
The poet uses rhythm to enhance the
feeling that the poet’s words express.
When we are happy we speak quickly,
when we are sad, or serious, or matter
of fact, our words come more slowly.
In the same way the poet uses a
quickly moving line with many
unaccented syllables and short vowels
to express lightheartedness in lines
that move as quickly. When serious
the rhythm moves more slowly with
longer vowels and a higher proportion
of accented syllables.
The best poetry uses rhythm to add
meaning to words.
Luke
POETIC FORMS
1. Narrative poetry which tells a story
2. Lyric poetry that is about a mood or feeling, more
song-like
3. Free verse; unrhymed with no regular pattern or
meter
4. Haiku – pattern of syllables; about nature
5. Cinquain -pattern
6. Diamante/Clerihew – pattern; shows change
7. Limerick – has distinctive rhyme and rhythm
pattern; humorous
8. Ballad
9. Sonnet
10. Concrete poetry
POETRY AND VERSE...
...SAME OR DIFFERENT???
Some consider verse to be just pleasant rhyming words, not real
poetry, because it does not have the depth, truth, and emotion that
many use in their definition of poetry. Others consider anything in a
poetic form to be poetry.
Verse is pleasant and entertaining, but....while feeling and
imaginative power are found in real poetry, verse is merely a
matter of structure, formal metrical order and rhyme pattern---a superior amusement.
T.S. Eliot