POETRY
by James Vineyard
Sachse High School
ELA Department
BASIC FORMS OF POETRY
• Lyric
• Short poems about a single subject
• Narrative
• Longer poems that tell a story
• Free Verse
• Poems that use no standard form of
rhyme scheme or meter
BASIC TERMS
• Rhyme Scheme
• The pattern of rhyme repeated throughout
a poem
• Meter
• The beat or rhythm of a poem
• Line
• The “sentences” of poems; groups of
words set on a single line together
BASIC TERMS
• Stanza
• The “Paragraphs” of poems; a group of
lines set apart that express a common
idea
• Speaker
• The “narrator” of the poem—the person
through whom the writer speaks his/her
ideas—not necessarily the author
WALT WHITMAN
from “The Walt Whitman Archive”
www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/index.html
• Born on Long Island in 1819
• Worked in the printing industry as a boy
• Used teaching as a career to escape
working on the family farm
• Strong opponent of slavery; strong
supporter of Lincoln
• Wrote a majority of his poems in the
1840-50’s
WALT WHITMAN
• Most famous work: a
•
•
collection of poems
called Leaves of Grass
Befriended many
Transcendentalists,
such as Thoreau
Died of mild
tuberculosis in 1892
EMILY DICKINSON
from “The Dickinson Homestead”
www.dickisnsonhomestead.org
• Born in 1830
• A recluse, Dickinson often locked herself
away in her family home in Amherst,
Massachusetts
• Most of her writing was done from 18581865
• Almost all of her work was published
posthumously
EMILY DICKINSON
• All of her poetry has a
•
•
distinct rhythm and
meter
Many of her poems
are dark, focusing on
death
Dies in 1886 in her
parents’ home
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
from “Edwin Arlington Robinson”
www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/robinson
• Born in Maine in 1869
• Attended Harvard despite doubts from his
father
• Noted for his mastery of conventional
forms, such as sonnets and the eight-line
stanza
• Most of his poems are narrative, with the
main character facing failure and tragedy
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
• Lived most of his life
•
•
in poverty until his
work was noticed by
the son of Theodore
Roosevelt
Received financial
assistance from
anonymous sources
Dies in April, 1935
PAUL LAWRENCE DUNBAR
Information from The Academy of American Poets.
www.poets.org
• 1872-1906
• One of the first
•
•
•
African-American
poets to gain national
recognition.
Befriended/mentored
by Frederick Douglass
Clerked at the Library
of Congress
Died of tuberculosis
LANGSTON HUGHES
Information from The Academy of American Poets.
www.poets.org
• 1902-1967
• Born in Joplin. MO;
raised by grandmother
• Influenced by Dunbar,
Whitman, and
Sandburg
• Prominent voice of the
Harlem Renaissance
• Incorporated aspects of
black culture, such as
jazz and black slang
into his writing
DOROTHY PARKER
Information from The Academy of American Poets.
www.poets.org
• 1893-1967
• Grew up on Manhattan’s wealthy Upper
West Side
• Led an unhappy childhood; her father died
when she was 19
• Sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914
• Founding member of a group of New York
poets called the Algonquin Round Table
DOROTHY PARKER
• Listed on the initial
•
•
editorial board of The
New Yorker in 1925
Befriended exiled
Modernists such as
Fitzgerald and
Hemingway
Died of a heart attack
T.S. ELIOT
from “The Academy of American Poets”
www.poets.org/poets
• Born in Missouri in 1888
• Migrated to Europe after graduating
Harvard in 1910’s
• Came under the influence of Ezra Pound
• Prominent poet of the Modernist
movement
• Most famous works: “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock,” “The Waste Lands”
T.S. ELIOT
• Influenced by
•
•
•
metaphysical poetry
Became an British
citizen in 1927
Received the Nobel
Prize for Literature
in 1948
Died in London in
1965