Poetry Lesson #1
The Basics
Instead of sentences, poems have LINES.
 RHYTHM (sometimes called METER) is the
beat created by the sounds of the words
when you read them.
 RHYME SCHEME is a planned pattern of
rhyming words such as AABBA.

There once was a fella named Pat,
(A)
When he sang, he sounded a bit flat.
(A)
The people around, (B)
Found they could muffle the sound,
(B)
If they covered their ears with a hat!
Let’s try another one…
How many lines are in this poem?
What is the rhyme scheme?
The Fog
I saw the fog grow thick,
Which soon made blind my ken;
It made tall men of boys,
And giants of tall men.
The street lamps, and the lights
Upon the halted cars,
Could either be on earth
Or be the heavenly stars.
It clutched my throat, I coughed;
Nothing was in my head
Except two heavy eyes
Like balls of burning lead.
A man passed by me close,
I asked my way, he said,
"Come, follow me, my friend",
I followed where he led.
And when it grew so black
That I could know no place,
I lost all judgment then,
Of distance and of space.
He rapped the stones in front,
"Trust me," he said, "and come";
I followed like a child,
A blind man led me home.
--Henry Davies
A grouping of lines in a poem is not called a paragraph, it is
called a STANZA.
◦ Lines are usually separated into stanzas to make the poem easier to
read, or to fit into a rhyme scheme.
 The place where a line of poetry ends is called a LINE BREAK.

My Shadow
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to growNot at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!
One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
--Robert Louis Stevenson
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry 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;
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.
--Robert Frost
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.
Let’s build on what we know… How many
stanzas are in this poem? How many lines are
in each stanza? What is the rhyme scheme?
Poetry Lesson #2
Rhymed Verse and Free Verse

Free Verse (open form) - Poetry that
doesn’t have a regular meter or rhyme
pattern.

Rhymed verse- where the lines of the
poem follow a rhyme pattern.
◦ Example: ABCB

Both types of poems can have rhythm,
imagery, and imaginative language.
Let’s look at two poems and you
decide which is which!
ELDORADO
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew oldThis knight so boldAnd o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it beThis land of Eldorado?"
"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the
Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied"If you seek for
Eldorado!"
--Edgar Allan Poe
Birches (Excerpt)
When I see birches bend left to right
Across the line of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust –
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away.
--Robert Frost
Poetry Lesson #3
Poet’s Toolbox: Repetition

Poets will sometimes repeat words or
phrases to establish a rhythm in their poem.

Poets will sometimes use ALLITERATIONthe repetition of consonant or vowel sound
at the beginning or in the middle of words.
◦ Examples:
 Peter picked pickles in a pickle patch.
 Smart sharks swim slowly.
 Billy’s bought butter, but the butter was bitter, so
Billy bought better butter to make the bitter butter
better!
Can you find some in
your reading?
1. Just listen to the following
poem and look for the presence of
repetition of certain words,
phrases, or sounds.
What repetition takes place?
Repeating exact words, a pattern
of rhyming words, alliteration,
rhythm.
I.
Gray November
Dull, dimly gleaming,
The dawn looks downward
Where, flowing townward,
The river, steaming
With mist, is hidden:
Each bush, that huddles
Beside the road, the rain has pooled with puddles,
Seems, in the fog, a hag or thing hag-ridden.
II.
Where leaves hang tattered
In forest tangles,
And woodway angles
Are acorn-scattered,
Coughing and yawning
The woodsman slouches,
Or stands as silent as the hound that crouches
Beside him, ghostly in the mist-drenched dawning.
III.
Through roses, rotting
Within the garden,
With blooms, that harden,
Of marigolds, knotting,
(Each one an ember
Dull, dead and dripping,)
Her brow, from which their faded wreath is slipping,
Mantled in frost and fog, comes in November.
--Madison Julius Cawein
Poetry Lesson #4
Poet’s Toolbox:
The Power of Language & Imagery
Poets are very careful in the words that
they choose.
 They choose words that help the
reader to:
◦ Paint a picture in their mind.
◦ Hear a certain sound.

This is called:
Imagery

Poets also choose words wisely to make us:
Think about a certain topic.
Feel emotions.
Theme- the topic that the poem makes you think
about. (friendship, love, honesty, compassion,
family, loyalty, etc.)
Tone- the feeling you get about how the author
feels about what they are saying (are they mad,
are they joking, are they sad?)
Mood- very similar to tone. What emotions are
portrayed by the poem. Is it a happy poem, a sad
poem, a poem that feels angry?
Theme, Tone, and Mood

What do you hear?

What do you see?

What do you smell?

What do you feel?

What do you taste?

What do you think?
What examples
of imagery can
you find in the
next poem???
Good Poets are artists that use
words instead of drawings…
Rain in Summer
How beautiful is the rain,
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing
spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.
From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Engulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.
In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Poetry Lesson #5
Poet’s Toolbox:
Figurative Language,
a poet’s best friend!
Simile- Comparing two things using the
words “like” or “as”
Her face was as red as a tomato
when she got on stage to perform
for the first time.
The tree was tall like a skyscraper,
stretching towards the sky.
Similes
Metaphor- Comparing two things without
the use of like or as.
Sam was a cheetah running around the
playground.
The rock was a sinking ship plummeting to
the bottom of the ocean.
Metaphor
Personification- giving human-like
characteristics to an inanimate object.
The tree waved its branches in
the wind.
The whistle sang, signaling it was
time to go home for the day.
Personification
Hyperbole- an extreme exaggeration
“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!”
I have a million things to do!
Hyperbole

Onomatopoeia- words that imitate a
sound and suggest their meaning.
The bacon hit the pan
with a
Onomatopoeia
The buzzing bee
flew past my ear
and stung me!
The Final Deployment
Selena strapped on her sneakers and ran to the airport
like a race horse sprints to the finish line.
She trotted past traffic and trees,
Zipped over curbs and cracks
And soon reached her final destination
Where a thousand of her closest friends waited.
And turned their owl eyes in her direction
She took a gasp so loud
it was heard on three other continents.
Selena spotted her brother
Thin, clean-shaven, and a fit fiddle
The siblings stared straight at each other
And ran to give hugs that had waited
Too long to be given.
Then, like champions taking their final lap,
Ran home to proclaim their memories back.
As family kissed and hugged
and cried a river of tears,
Selena kicked off her sneakers
That slumped with exhaustion near
combat boots that had a million stories to tell.
--Anna Prokos
What figurative language can you
find?
Questions to ask yourself when reading a
poem:
 How does this poem make me feel?
 What do I think this poem is about?
 What are my favorite words/phrases in
the poem? Why?
 What do I see in my mind when I read
this poem?
 What does this poem make me wonder?
 Is there anything I don’t understand?
Responding to poetry