D. Watts
Poetry Booklet
English 10
2009
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Definitions of Poetic Terms
The following is a list of poetry terms and elements that you will become familiar with during
this poetry unit. You will use these throughout the poetry unit.
Abstract - An idea, concept, belief that does not have an actual existence: opposite of concrete.
Alliteration - The repetition of initial consonant sound in words that are close to one another.
E.g. “sweet and sour,” “gaggle of geese.” Alliteration occurs most often at the beginning of
words.
Allusion – A reference to a statement, person, place, event, or thing that is known from
literature, history, religion, myth, politics, sports, science, or pop culture. e.g. …”Like Midas, I
guess / everything we touch turns / to a poem…” Here the allusion is to King Midas in Greek
mythology who turns everything he touches to gold.
Assonance - The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in
words that are close together. e.g. The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.
Audience - The person or group to whom the words or actions are directed.
Concrete - Having actual objective existence; opposite of abstract.
Connotation - A word with meaning that is suggested or implied
Consonance – Repetition of internal consonant sounds within a group of words. e.g. The
detectives suspected the suspiciously silent girls.
Couplet - Two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme.
Dramatic Poem - Verse portraying a story of life or character, usually involving conflict and
emotions. It has a bit of a plot coming from the action and dialogue.
Figurative language - Language that is always based on some kind of comparison that is not
literally true. Figurative language includes figures of speech. Figure of speech - A word or
phrase that describes one thing in terms of another and is not meant to be understood on a literal
level. The most common figures of speech are the simile, the metaphor, and personification.
Hyperbole - A bold, unrealistic overstatement. e.g. “I’d give you my right arm for a piece of
pizza.” It is not intended to be taken literally., and is used to emphasize the truth about
something.
Free Verse- Poetry that has no regular meter or rhyme scheme.
Imagery – Words and phrases the writer selects to create a certain picture in the mind of the
reader. Imagery is usually based on the five senses.
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Irony – Using a word or phrase to mean the exact opposite of its literal or normal meaning.
There are three kinds of irony: Dramatic irony is when the reader or audience sees a character’s
mistakes or misunderstandings, but the character him- or herself does not. Verbal irony is when
the writer says one thing and means another, and Irony of situation exists when there is a great
deal of difference between the purpose of a particular action and the result.
Lyric Poetry - Poetry that focuses on expressing emotions or thoughts, rather than telling a
story.
Metaphor - A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things
without using the connective words like, as, than, or resembles. An extended metaphor is a
metaphor that is extended, or developed, over several lines of writing or even throughout an
entire poem.
Mood – The feeling a piece of literature arouses in the reader e.g. happiness, fear.
Narrative Poetry - Poetry that focuses on telling a story or relates a series of events.
Onomatopoeia - The use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning. e.g. buzz,
knock, splash and bark
Oxymoron - Two words together, which seem contradictory, but whose meaning expresses a
truth or dramatic effect. e.g. cool fire, deafening silence, wise folly
Personification - A kind of metaphor in which a non human thing or quality is talked about as if
it were human.
Purpose - The goal or end to be attained.
Refrain - A repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines.
Repetition - A rhetorical device reiterating a word or phrase, or rewording the same idea.
Rhyme - The repetition of accented vowel sounds and all sounds following them in words that
are close together in a poem. End rhymes occur at ends of rhymes. Internal rhymes occur
within lines. Near rhyme is an imperfect, or half rhyme—an almost rhyme that can occur in the
middle of lines. e.g. the words ‘date’ and ‘fade.’
Rhetorical Question - A question solely for effect, with no answer expected. The answer is
obvious. It is a means to emphasize and is stronger than a direct statement. e.g: “Ode to the
West Wind,… O, Wind, / If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? (Shelley)
Rhyme scheme - Any fixed pattern of rhymes characterizing a whole poem or its stanzas. The
pattern of rhymed lines in a poem is called its rhyme scheme.
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Simile - A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things by
using a connective word such as like, as, than, or resembles.
Sonnet - A fixed form consisting of 14 lines with other specific patterns. If your poem has 14
lines, check it out with Ms. H.
Speaker - Person who acts as a spokesman for the ideas or words presented.
Stanza - A group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit.
Symbol - Often an ordinary object, event, animal, or person to which we have attached
extraordinary meaning and significance. A symbol stands both for itself and for something
beyond itself.
Theme - The central idea or insight of a work of literature.
Tone - The attitude created by the writer’s use of words towards a subject or character e.g.
satirical, serious.
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About School
~ Anonymous
He always
He always wanted to explain things, but no one cared,
So he drew.
Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn’t anything.
He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky.
He would lie out on the grass and look up at the sky and it would
Be only the sky and things inside him that needed saying.
And it was after that that he drew the picture,
It was a beautiful picture. He kept it under his pillow and would
Let no one see it.
And he would look at it every night and think about it.
And when it was dark and his eyes were closed he could see it still.
And it was all of him and he loved it.
When he started school he brought it with him,
Not to show anyone, but just to have with him like a friend.
It was funny about school.
He sat in a square brown room, like all the other rooms,
And it was tight and close and stiff.
He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, with his arm stiff and
His feet flat on the floor, stiff, with the teacher watching
And watching.
The teacher came and spoke to him.
She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys.
He said he didn’t like them and she said it didn’t matter.
After that he drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way
He felt about morning. And it was beautiful.
The teacher came and smiled at him. “What’s this?” she said.
“Why don’t you draw something like Ken’s drawing?
Isn’t it beautiful?”
After that his mother bought him a tie and he always drew
Airplanes and rocket-ships like everyone else.
And he threw the old picture away.
And when he lay all alone looking at the sky, it was big and blue,
And all of everything, but he wasn’t anymore.
He was square and brown inside and his hands were stiff.
And he was like everyone else. All the things inside him that
Needed saying didn’t need it anymore.
It had stopped pushing. It was crushed.
Stiff.
Like everything else.
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Still I Rise
~ Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.
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You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
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This Is A Photograph Of Me
by Margaret Atwood
It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion
but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)
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Funeral Blues
W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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If you were coming in the Fall
by Emily Dickinson
If you were coming in the Fall,
I'd brush the Summer by
With half a smile, and half a spurn,
As Housewives do, a Fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls -And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the numbers fuse -If only Centuries, delayed,
I'd count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, till my fingers dropped
Into Van Dieman's Land.
If certain, when this life was out -That yours and mine, should be
I'd toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity -But, now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee -That will not state -- its sting.
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'Out, Out–'
Robert Frost
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
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Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
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To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
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Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap-He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
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Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart-He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off--
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The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then--the watcher at his pulse took fright.
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No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little--less--nothing!--and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
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If
~ Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your
master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
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The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two Roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry that I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Mother to Son (aka: The Crystal Stair)
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
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And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
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Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
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And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
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1958
Gwendolyn MacEwen
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was a fabulous year
when you parked in the lot at the lakeshore
next to the Palais Royale
and necked for hours in those souped up cars, you
savages of the Fifties, your terrible perfect bodies
looped around the gearshift, the wheel, along the
dashboard, and the smell, the smell,
the smell
of the lake and the fish and the United States –
O,
those guys spoke in crazy cryptic monosyllables, and
those girls said nothing and were mean and cracked gum
and looked you up and down like you were nowhere,
them in their
black batwing sweaters and skirts with slits
and little black low-heeled shoes and smoking
Black Cat corktips because the package
looked mysterious, and
some girls wore crinolines and socks
folded over at least three times
and Peter Pan collars with plastic roses
holding them together –
Someone was always the Queen of the School and
she taught you how to use a lipstick brush, not
a messy old tube; she
was Xenobia, she
was Cat Woman, she
was so tough she made you faint, who went
like you
to Western Technical High School where
the boys learned shop and the girls
sewed shaky seams in dresses they would never wear,
where
everyone had ducktails and smelled of Vitalis
and you cracked your gum, cracked your gum
and died inside
and looked the whole world up and down.
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Poetry
Pablo Neruda
And it was at that age….Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not words, or silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires
or returning alone, there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
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Mad Girl's Love Song
By Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
- Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
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Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
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Cinderella by Anne Sexton
You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
- Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
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Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
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Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
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Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
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Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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The Daffodils
William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
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The Lamb
William Blake
The Tyger
William Blake
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee.
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And What shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
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