Warm-up: Write an Acrostic Poem
 It can be about any subject. Write the letters that spell your subject down the side of your
page. When you have done this then you go back to each letter and think of a word,
phrase or sentence that starts with that letter and describes your subject. The following
poem is an example of acrostic poems written in this format. Pick a word and write your
own!
Rainstorm
Rain drops drip drop on my shoes
And more drops fall, in ones and twos
I think of all my friends inside
Not me, I think, I shall not hide
Stormy weather makes me run
To puddles outside, so much fun
On rainy days, I'll always be
Running around for all to see
Mud and splashes cover me!
Agenda
 Share your Acrostic with your group
 Poetic Structure PowerPoint – take notes
 Structure worksheet
Does it make a difference?
Poem structure - the line is a building block
 The basic building-block of prose (writing that isn't poetry) is the sentence.
But poetry has something else -- the poetic line. Poets decide how long each
line is going to be and where it will break off. That's why poetry often has a
shape like this:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
That's the beginning of a poem by Robert Herrick. No matter where it is
printed, the first line always ends with the word "may" and the second line with
the word "a-flying" because the poet has written it this way. If you print a piece
of prose such as a short story, the length of the lines will depend on the font
size, the paper size, margins, etc. But in poetry, the line is part of the work of
art you have created. The length of the lines and the line breaks are important
choices that will affect many aspects of the reader's experience:
Traditional/Standard Form
 If you are writing a poem in a standard form such as a
villanelle, your choices about line length are somewhat
restricted by the rules of the form. But you still have to
decide how to fit the ideas and sentences of your poem
over the lines.
End Stopped Line
 Lines that finish at ends of sentences or at natural
stopping points (for example, at a comma) are
called end-stopped lines. Here's an example:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
Enjambment
 Lines that end in the middle of the natural flow of a
sentence are called run-on or enjambed lines. Here's an
example:
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
WHY USE THIS TECHNIQUE?
 When a sentence or phrase continues from one line to the
next, the reader feels pulled along. If your line break
interrupts a sentence or idea in a surprising place, the effect
can be startling, suspenseful, or can highlight a certain
phrase or double-meaning.
Stanza
 In prose, ideas are usually grouped together in paragraphs. In poems,
lines are often grouped together into what are called stanzas. Like
paragraphs, stanzas are often used to organize ideas.
For example, here are the two final stanzas of the Robert Herrick's poem. In the first of these
stanzas, he is explaining that being young is great, but life just gets worse and worse as
you get older. In the second one, he is saying: "So get married before you're too old and
have lost your chance.”
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
<- This space between stanzas
is called a line break.
Caesura
 caesura : a mark of punctuation that comes within the
line itself.
A caesura is a strong pause within a line. If all the pauses
in the sense of the poem were to occur at the line breaks,
this could become dull; moving the pauses so they occur
within the line creates a musical interest.
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
Syntax
 syntax - the organization of words, phrases and
clauses, i.e. the word order.
 “At fourteen I married My Lord, you.” vs. “I married
you, My Lord, at fourteen.”
 "Thirty-five years I lived with my husband." vs. "I
lived with my husband for thirty-five years"
Playing with structure…
Structure is one of the ways that you can get creative with your own poetry. Let’s
look at an example of interesting structure:
Buffalo Bill 's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
Homework
 Finish the structure worksheet