Poetry
Introduction
Poetry . .
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Rhymes
Is boring and difficult
Is musical
Can be powerfully emotional
Is whatever you want it to be
Is a picture painted with words
Should be performed
Has a strong message
This Is Just To Say
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
1. What is your favourite food?
2. Where is your favourite food
stored?
3. If this food is meant for someone
else, when are they planning on
eating it?
4. The plums were ‘delicious’, ‘sweet’
and cold’. Which three adjectives
would you use to describe your
favourite food?
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the
1
that were in
2
and which
you were probably
saving
for
3
Forgive me
they were 4
so
4
and so
4
Imagery
• Poets often use imagery to
create a clear picture for the
reader.
• Similes and metaphors are the
two most commonly used forms
of imagery.
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Metaphor
I'm a riddle in nine syllables.
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat
purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting
off.
Alliteration
• Britain’s Biggest Bingo Bonanza!
• Super Scots Shock Sorry Swedes
• I have stood still and stopped the
sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another
street,
Rewrite the following
headlines using alliteration
1.
2.
3.
4.
Prices cut at Slater’s.
Motherwell triumph in the cup.
Celebrity disgraces himself.
Local school receives
fantastic report.
Rhyme
I know an old bloke
his name is Lord Jim
He had a wife who threw tomatoes at
him.
Now tomatoes are juicyAnd don’t injure the skin
But these ones did
They was inside a tin.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Most poems rhyme
This one doesn’t.
Rhythm
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the
table,
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a
broom,
Hard as they were able
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a
broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
Juxtaposition
• Putting one thing beside
another.
• Poets often put images beside
each other in an unexpected
way.
A Child Is Singing
A child is singing
And nobody listening
But the child who is singing:
Bulldozers grab the earth and
shower it.
The house is on fire.
Gardeners wet the earth and
flower it.
The house is on fire,
The houses are on fire.
Fetch the fire engine, the fire
engine’s on fire.
We will have to hide in a hole.
We will burn slow like coal.
All the people are on fire.
And a child is singing
And nobody listening
But the child who is singing.
Personification
• To give human qualities to
something which is not.
• The wind cried Mary.
• The camera loves me.
• The car engine coughed and
spluttered.
• The tropical storm slept for two
days.
Two Sunflowers
Move in the Yellow Room.
"Ah, William, we're weary of weather,"
said the sunflowers, shining with dew.
"Our traveling habits have tired us.
Can you give us a room with a view?"
They arranged themselves at the window
and counted the steps of the sun,
and they both took root in the carpet
where the topaz tortoises run.
I am silver and exact.
I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow
immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or
dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful--
Personify the following sentences. Change the words
in parentheses to words that would describe a
human's
actions:
1.The puppy (barked) when I left for school.
2. The rain (fell) all night.
3.Hair (is) on my head.
4.The CD player (made a noise).
5.The player piano keys (moved up and down).
6.The space shuttle (took off).
7.The little arrow (moves) across the computer
screen.
Punning
• A way of using words, so that more
than one meaning comes over at the
same time.
• ‘He ate so much over the Christmas
holidays that he decided to quit cold
turkey.’
• I couldn’t quite remember how to
throw a boomerang, but eventually it
came back to me.
• Did you hear about the lonely
prisoner? He was locked in his sel.
Oxymoron
• A figure of speech that contains
two normally contradictory
terms.
• A fine mess
• Alone in a crowd
• Bittersweet
• Living dead
• Healthy tan
Identify the following
techniques
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
A comparison which uses like or as.
To give human qualities to something
which is not.
Repetition of consonants at the
beginning of words.
Placing unusual images beside each
other.
A comparison which says one thing is
another.
The musical beat of a poem.
A figure of speech that contains two
normally contradictory terms.
Slow
As a limping cow
Or a mighty bull
With its legs split in two.
Long dark night is the silence in
front of me
Limbo
Limbo like me
Limbo
Limbo like me
Louis he was King of France
before the revolution
Then he had his head chopped off
Which spoiled his constitution
• Brash with glass,
name flaring like a flag,
it squats
in the grass and weeds,
incipient Port Jackson trees:
• The older of the two with grey
iron hair
and hunched back
looking down like some
gargoyle Quasimodo
• Ah, sweet mystery;
Come to break the frozen lake
in me,
Shaking the foundations of the
very trees within me,
That the earth is the earth is
the earth.
• A child is singing
• Bulldozers grab the earth and
shower it.
• The house is on fire.
• A police man says to the tramp
asleep under a park bench:
‘You’re under a rest.’
•
You never turned around to see the frowns on the
jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before:
My heart has left its dwellingplace
And can return no more