Poetry Forms
And Poetic Elements
Poetry:
A type of rhythmic and compressed
language that uses figures of speech
and imagery that appeals to the
reader’s emotions and imagination.
Rhyme
• Exact Rhyme
pick up/hiccup
sing/ring
word/heard
maroon/June
drastic/elastic
• End Rhyme
believe/receive
flight/ignite
skies/eyes
funny/bunny
• Internal Rhyme
neigh/away
breeze/sneeze
• Approximate Rhyme
flour/tower
library/carry
• Exact Rhyme: Sounds are exact.
fellow/yellow
heard/word
history/mystery
• Approximate Rhyme: Sounds are similar
but not exact.
fellow/follow
mastery/mystery
heard/world
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•
•
•
This is the land the Sunset washesThere are the banks of the Yellow seaWhere it rose-or whither it rushesThere are the Western Mystery!
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•
•
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Night after night her purple traffic
Strews the landing with Opal BalesMerchantmen poise upon horizonsDip-and vanish like Orioles!
Emily Dickinson
End Rhyme and Rhyme Scheme
• End rhyme occurs at the ends of the lines.
• Rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyming
words at the ends of lines.
– Rhyme scheme is labeled with lower case
letters.
– The first sound is labeled with “a,” and the
subsequent sounds are labeled with
subsequent letters of the alphabet.
The Coloring Spree
Six felt pens went off to play
Into the world of Yesterday.
They colored the rainbow and also the skies,
They found stone statues and colored the eyes,
They colored the flowers, especially the rose,
They colored the nails on a Sphynx’s toes,
They colored in cracks on a castle wall,
They found white parrots and colored them all,
They added a touch to the autumn trees,
And wrote: “Felt Rules!” on parchment leaves.
They had such fun on their coloring spree
There isn’t much left in the pens for me!
The Coloring Spree
Six felt pens went off to play
Into the world of Yesterday.
a
a
They colored the rainbow and also the skies,
They found stone statues and colored the eyes,
They colored the flowers, especially the rose,
They colored the nails on a Sphynx’s toes,
They colored in cracks on a castle wall,
They found white parrots and colored them all,
They added a touch to the autumn trees,
And wrote: “Felt Rules!” on parchment leaves.
They had such fun on their coloring spree
There isn’t much left in the pens for me!
f
f
b
b
c
c
d
d
e
e
Internal Rhyme
• Rhyme occurs within the lines.
• Words within a line may rhyme with a word
at the end of the line.
• Words within 2 or more lines may rhyme
with each other.
Reading the Tree
I need to read my family Tree
upside-down.
If I turn it around with the boughs in the ground,
then offshoots are roots
that show how I grow.
Couplet: 2 consecutive lines that rhyme
Once by the Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff.
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more that ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.
by Robert Frost
Onomatopoeia
• The use of words that sound like what they
mean.
Snap
Whoosh
Thrum
Gurgle
Smack
Ping
Rattle
Boom
Hiss
Click
Small Sounds
Have you heard
small sounds of the world:
a tippity-tap when a ladybird lands,
the scrinching-scrunch of a slug crunching lunch
or the rumble of worm murmurs under the ground?
Have you heard
the small of the world?
Alliteration: the repetition of an initial consonant sound
Betty bought a bit of butter,
But the butter Betty bought was a bit bitter.
So Betty bought a bit of better butter,
To make Betty's bitter butter better.
Six sleek swans swam swiftly southwards.
Jolly juggling jesters jauntily juggled
jingling jacks.
If two witches were watching two watches,
which witch would watch which watch ?
Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds.
Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things.
So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came. -Carl Sandburg, Early Moon
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride.
--Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee"
Prose Poem: poetry that is written in ordinary paragraph
form yet uses the elements of poetry – especially very
powerful images.
Campbell McGrath’s winding and descriptive “The Prose Poem” is a recent
example of the form; it begins:
On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard,
though driving past you would hardly notice it, this
boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that
cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more
gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with
a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken.
There is no fence, though here and there a weathered
post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken
by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the
distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of
green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row
upon row upon row.
Quatrain
• A four line poem or stanza
Later
My teacher said I should look up
This word: PROCRASTINATE.
I’ll check it out when I get home,
It’s just a little wait.
But after school my friends drop by,
We laugh and play and fight;
Then suddenly it’s dinner time,
I’ll look it up tonight.
But now the television’s on,
Homework’s looking bleak;
PROCRASTINATE can wait a bit,
I’ll look it up next week.
Lyric Poem: expresses a speaker’s emotions or
thoughts and does not tell a story.
One Perfect Rose
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
•
Dorothy Parker
English Sonnet
also called Shakespearean Sonnet
Lyric poem
14 lines
iambic pentameter
3 quatrains
1 couplet
Rhyme Scheme:
abab cdcd
efef
gg
English sonnet
• Each quatrain makes a point or gives an
example.
• The couplet sums it all up
Iambic pentameter
-poetry that consists of 5 iambic feet
- Each foot contains an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable
= 10 syllables
=
5 iambs
( ~ /)
The evil that men do lives after them.
The good is oft interred with their bones;
Julius Caesar Act V
English Sonnet:
Sonnet LXXIII
That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed by that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
Italian Sonnet
• Lyric poem
• 14 lines
• Iambic pentameter
• 1 octave
• 1 sestet
• Rhyme scheme: abba abba cde cde
Italian Sonnet
"Sonnet LXXI"
Who will in fairest book of Nature know
How Virtue may best lodged in Beauty be,
Let him but learn of Love to read in thee,
Stella, those fair lines, which true goodness show.
There shall he find all vices' overthrow,
Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty
Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly;
That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.
And not content to be Perfection's heir
Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move,
Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair.
So while thy beauty draws the heart to love,
As fast thy Virtue bends that love to good.
"But, ah," Desire still cries, "give me some food."
by Sir Philip Sidney,
Rhythm: musical quality in language, produced by
repetition.
•
From The Splendor Falls
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory;
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying dying,
Meter: a generally regular pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables in poetry.
from Next!
by Ogden Nash
I thought that I would like to see
The early world that used to be
That mastodonic mausoleum
The Natural History Museum.
On iron seat in marble bower,
I slumbered through the closing hour.
At midnight in the vasty hall
The fossils gathered for a ball.
Trochaic meter
• trochaic =
(
~)
• 2 syllables = stressed + unstressed
ONE FISH TWO FISH RED FISH BLUE FISH
Copyright 1960 Beginner Books
One fish two fish
Red fish Blue fish.
Black fish Blue fish
Old fish New fish
This one has a little star.
This one has a little car.
Say! What a lot of fish there are.
Anapestic meter
anapestic = ( ~ ~
)
3 syllables = unstressed + unstressed +stressed
Twas the night before Christmas and all
through the house
Not a creature was stirring not even a
mouse.
dactylic = ( ~ ~ )
3 syllables = stressed + unstressed + unstressed
Eve By Ralph Hodgson
Eve, with her basket, was
Deep in the bells and grass,
Wading in bells and grass
Up to her knees,
Picking a dish of sweet
Berries and plums to eat,
Down in the bell and grass
Under the trees.
Mute as a mouse in a
Corner the cobra lay,
Circled round a bough of the
Cinnamon tall. . .
Spondaic meter
• spondaic = (
)
• 2 syllables = stressed + stressed
Break, break,
Break On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
Tanka
A Japanese poetic form, dating back to the
7th century.
5 unrhymed lines
31 syllables
Lines 1 and 3 have five syllables
Lines 2, 4, and 5 have seven syllables
Evokes a strong feeling with a single image
Tanka
5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllable
7 syllables
7 syllables
Beautiful mountains
Rivers with cold, cold water.
White cold snow on rocks
Trees over the place with frost
White sparkly snow everywhere.
Aru toki wa
hana no kazu ni wa
taranu domo
chiru ni wa morenu
Tomoday Kimpei
In life I never was
among the well-known flowers
and yet, in withering
I am most certainly
Tomoda Kimpei.
Blank Verse
• A poem with ten-syllable lines, five accents in
each, and no end rhyme
(unrhymed iambic pentameter)
I’m a Myna
I mimic noise, I imitate a voice,
I copy chat exactly as it is,
And when I shout: “ROLL OVER! SIT! LIE DOWN!”
a furry-one-with-fleas will leap about.
I love to tock to Clock and rap with Tap
who thrums his water fingers in the sink.
I’m like a magpie storing shiny things
for I collect the glitterings of sound.
Free Verse: poetry that does not have a regular meter or
rhyme scheme.
I Dream'd in a Dream
by Walt Whitman
I DREAM'D in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
whole of the rest of the earth,
I dream'd that was the new city of Friends,
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
And in all their looks and words.
Figurative Language
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Simile
Metaphor
Direct Metaphor
Indirect Metaphor
Extended Metaphor
Personification