Introduction to Poetry
Adapted by Mr. Griffin
Poetic expression is hard to define
and even harder to label since in
itself it can comprise so many
styles, ideas, lengths and forms.
In this class we will focus on these
poetic aspects:
Idea and Emotion
Type and Form
Style of the Line
Concise Word Choice
Why study poetry?
 Poetry is the most ancient form of keeping
history.
 In ancient times the elders were venerated and
told stories of the tribe, and great people in
their history. Rhyming often made it easier to
remember.
 When we read, recite and write poetry, we are
taking part in one of the oldest traditions in
human history.
 Understanding poetry can also help us write
better in all other forms of writing.
IT is not uncommon for students to
write poetry for their own enjoyment.
Why is this so? Why do some teens
write and/or read poems?
“We don't read and write poetry because it's
cute. We read and write poetry because we
are members of the human race. And the
human race is filled with passion. And
medicine, law, business, engineering - these
are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain
life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these
are what we stay alive for.”
Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the
movie Dead Poet’s Society
Idea and Emotion
Poetry is the one type of writing that truly
comes from an emotional response to an
image, an event or experience, or a memory.
Most poets say they are inspired to write a
poem.
"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness
or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression;
an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where
an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found
the words.”-Robert Frost
“If you know what you are going to write when you’re writing
a poem, it’s going to be average.” –Derek Walcott
Emotion- Some poets begin writing a
poem for an emotional release.
Idea- Some poets begin writing a
poem because they are inspired by
something they’ve experienced.
What are typical emotions and topics
shown in poetry?
Are there bad poetry topics?
Answer on paper: What does a poem
need to look like and contain to be a
poem?
Things to think about in your answer:
Do most poems rhyme?
Are poems about emotions?
Are poems a certain length?
What is the goal of a poem?
Can poets ignore grammar rules like capital letters and punctuation?
Can poems be funny?
What types of word choice or language do you see in poems?
IS THIS A POEM?
A Supermarket In California
by Allan Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15306
Is this a poem?
Coming Up by Ani DiFranco
Our father who art in a penthouse
Sits in his 37th floor suite
And swivels to gaze down
At the city he made me in
He allows me to stand and
Solicit graffiti until
He needs the land I stand on
I in my darkened threshold
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2VYgAm pawing through my pockets
qKWU
The receipts, the bus schedules
The urgent napkin poems
The matchbook phone numbers
All of which laundering has rendered
Pulpy and strange
Loose change and a key
Ask me
Go ahead, ask me if I care
I got the answer here
I wrote it down somewhere
I just gotta find it
Is This A
Poem??
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;
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.
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.
http://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=yG24ohpacDk
Is This A
Poem?
The Road Not
Taken by
Robert Frost
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends
The answer ?
 They are all poems.
 When you write a poem, it should have
a subject, a goal, a tone, and a flow. It
should contain specific, condensed
word choice and literary devices like
metaphor, simile and imagery.
If I asked you to write a poem
right now, how would you write a
poem?
One way is to follow a specific
formula.
Another way is to just write.
On the next five slides pick one
or more pictures and write
what comes to mind. Try to
write it as a poem.
Type and Form
There are MANY different types or forms of
poems. Some fit a specific format and some fit a
specific theme.
Some examples of format poems:
Acrostic: a word or set of words is written down
the page and each line starts with that letter.
Sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter, with a
specific rhyme scheme and intro/conclusion style.
Sestina: Each stanza must use the same end
words as the first stanza, but in a different
pattern each time.
More Formats
Haiku- A three line poem with specific syllable
lengths of 5-7-5.
Limerick- Usually a funny poem with a AABBA
rhyme scheme and specific syllable length.
Villanelle- A poem where certain lines are repeated
to make more of a refrain
Pantoum: Each stanza reuses different lines in a
specific pattern from the previous stanzas.
“Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Haiku:
Falling to the ground,
I watch a leaf settle down
In a bed of brown.
Limerick:
There once was a lady named Cager,
Who as the result of a wager,
Consented to fart
The entire oboe part
Of Mozart's quartet in F-major.
Types of poems written based on themes:
Elegy: A poem about something lost
Ode: A poem celebrating something
Road: A poem about a time of travel
Metaphor: The whole poem is a metaphor
Object Obsession: A poem written about an object
Narrative: A poem that tells a story
Ballad: A narrative poem with a refrain, usually about
love
Prose: A poem written more like a paragraph
O Captain, My Captain – An Elegy
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult Oh shores, and ring Oh bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck by Captain lies,
Fallen Cold and dead
Walt Whitman – Any guesses on who this was about?
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attidude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
John Keats
What does all that mean?
 "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is based on a series of paradoxes and
opposites:
 the discrepancy between the urn with its frozen images and
the dynamic life portrayed on the urn,
 the human and changeable versus the immortal and
permanent,
 participation versus observation,
 life versus art.
Metaphor Poem Master of Puppets
Hatfield/Ulrich (altered)
End of passion play
Crumbling away
I'm your source of self-destruction
Veins that pump with fear
Sucking darkest clear
Leading on your death's construction
Taste me you will see
More is all you need
Dedicated to
How I'm killing you
Come crawling faster
Obey your master
Your life burns faster
Obey your master
Master
Master of puppets
I'm pulling your strings
Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Pain monopoly Blinded by me
You can't see a thing
Just call my name 'cause I'll hear you scream
Needlework the way
Never you betray
Life of death becoming clearer
Ritual misery
Chop your breakfast on a mirror
Taste me you will see
More is all you need
Dedicated to
How I'm killing you
Blinded by me
You can't see a thing
Just call my name 'cause I'll hear you scream
Master, master
Where's the dreams that I've been after?
Master, master
Promised only lies
Laughter, laughter
All I hear or see is laughter
Laughter, laughter
Laughing at my cries
FIX ME!
Master of Puppets analysis
What is the “Master of Puppets” the song
refers to?
Style of the Line
As a poet you want to think about how
you will write your lines:
Are you following a formula?
If not do you want it have a “beat” or
more natural flow?
When will you make a new line?
How will you divide your poem?
Some poems, and especially songs will have a
specific rhythm. You can feel it (like the beat in music).
Many rhyming poems have a rhythm or beat.
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe is an example of a
poem that relies heavily on a specific rhythm and rhyme. It
is also a narrative poem (one that tells a story).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXU3RfB7308
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more.‘
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore Nameless here for evermore.
Poems without a specific rhythm or beat are
called Free Verse.
•Invented in the 1800s by Walt Whitman
•Usually Non-rhyming
•Line breaks and line lengths are up to the poet.
•It is the most popular form used by
contemporary poets today.
From “Song of Myself” from the book Leaves of Grass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm-n9wFZMiE
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
The ideas in a poem are organized by
line breaks and stanzas.
Stanza- is like a poetry paragraph.
Following is an example of a poem
with stanzas
“Momma Chopped Off Her Toe”
By C. S. Griffin
Momma chopped off her toe! what do I do? what should I say?
Well, she's runnin around cussin', I guess she’s okay
I always thought choppin' wood was men’s work anyway
but she said it was America circa ninteen hundred eight two
and whatever a man could do, a woman could certainly do too
So she wore polyester pants, floral blouse and flip flop shoes
She said she could do it, and she proved she really could
A regular lumber-jill she was, out there choppin’ that wood
She looked fine, from in the air conditioning, where I stood.
It’s been three decades or more and I still just don’t rightly know
how a body could let an axe head drop down on their own big toe
From the porch, to the bathroom, to the kitchen I watched her go
I didn’t know what she was doing, but then again, neither did she
it has to be a shock to see linoleum where a toe is supposed to be
"Told you girls don’t chop wood", I managed to say finally
My lashed hide reminds me never to say that again
That day I learned something about women and men
'I told ya so' feels real good; but silence is golden
Lets talk about that
There were six stanzas in this poem
Each stanza all rhymed with each other, though this is not
required of a stanza.
What do you think the author was trying to say with this poem?
Concise Word Choice
“Poets must seek “complex” thoughts and
feelings and compress such complexity into
a single moment.” –Ezra Pound
Some people write out their feelings when
they are having a hard time. Pretend you
can take all of those words and feelings into
your hand. Squeeze them as hard as you
can. What leaks through your fingers is the
essence; that is what you use to write a
poem. -Ms. K
Sensory Language and Visual Imagery
Since most poems express emotions and ideas, a
writer must SHOW what is being written about. Poets
and song writers use visual imagery and sensory
language to show ideas.
Sensory language is using words that appeal to the
five senses. Showing what something sounds, smells,
tastes, looks, and feels like.
Visual imagery is “painting a picture with words.”
Visual imagery uses aspects of sensory language,
specifically sight, to recreate images, ideas and
emotions. Strong verbs and specific adjectives/
adverbs are used.
Example of Sensory Language
and Visual Imagery
“The Round” by Stanley Kunitz
Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked Veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me…
Blue- personification
Gold – visual imagery
The Student by Ted Kooser
The green shell of his back pack makes him lean
Gold- visual imagery
into wave after wave or responsibility,
Red- simile
and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,
paddling ahead. He has extended his neck
to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak,
breaks the cold surf. He’s got his baseball cap on
backward as up he crawls, out of the froth
of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.
My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/18045
Pick one picture and describe it using the five senses:
One of the hardest things about writing poetry is making a
topic that has already been written about seem new. Derek
Walcott helps answer this question.
“Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to
be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his
own.”
Salvatore Quasimodo
Therefore, poetry must come alive in a way that makes
readers feel as if they are experiencing events and emotions
for the first time. Everyone has had relationship troubles,
mourned the death of a loved one, or witnessed injustice. How
do you write about your experience so the reader sees it as
their own?
Showing
VS.
Telling
If your emotion is sadness, how do you
show us?
If your emotion is happiness, how do
you show us?
Girlfriend
My girlfriend broke my heart.
She crushed my soul.
She destroyed my being.
Is this a good poem?
She is with another.
She has betrayed me.
I wish she could see,
How miserable she has made me.
How can it be made
better?
She will never know,
What I can show,
She will be lost someday
Knowing that what we had will not stay.
I want her back
But understand our relationship would lack.
Someday,
She will know.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines
By Pablo Neruda
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
http://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=zX
HPk-ctoYY
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
Puedo escribir los
versos más tristes esta
noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo :
'La noche está
estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los
astros, a lo lejos'.
El viento de la noche
gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los
versos más tristes esta
noche.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her void. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Lonely
I wish I wasn’t lonely.
I wish I could escape my loneliness.
I would run fast.
I would leave
And my loneliness wouldn’t be able to find
me.
IS THIS A GOOD POEM?
What would you add or change to make it
better?
“The Rider” by Naomi Shihab Nye
A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,
the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.
What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.
A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.
I feel pain.
I wish to sleep forever.
I wish I could go on.
I want to be strong, but can’t.
I will tell myself to keep going.
My heart has been crushed.
It is in little pieces.
All I feel is darkness.
My life is empty.
Can you show me the way?
Is this a good poem?
How can it be made better?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere/strand.html
Lines for Winter
by Mark Strand
for Ros Krauss
Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
Figurative Language
Poetry and songs frequently use
figurative language. Figurative
language uses comparisons,
description, and explanation to help the
reader understand. There are many
types of figurative language. The most
common forms found in poetry and
songs are:
Simile
Metaphor
Personification
Simile
Using like or as to compare
two different things.
Examples:
Her hair was as orange as a
carrot
Life is like a box of chocolates…
He would stride off, sending
patterns of frosty air before him
like the smoke of a cigar.
Apply Yourself! by Kathy Appelt
“Apply yourself!” was all he ever heard,
as if he could wrap himself around his homework
like a Band-Aid around a cut
as if he could glue his fingers to his Spanish
vocabulary words,
paper feathers on his fingertips
as if he could nail his palms to Economics
as if he could plug his whole being into the good grade
machinery
as if he could tape his head to the linoleum
as if he could paste his butt to the desk
as if he could spread his gray matter onto the test sheet
like peanut butter on toast
as if algorithms and battles and presidents and
theorems and scales and pep rallies and
maps and cosines and Bunsen burners and
hurricane charts and bills of rights and
dangling participles and dress codes and
all that filled his notebook could stick to his thin body
like flies to flypaper, his fragile wings
pinned to the poisonous strip
as if all that matters and will matter
is to add it all up and fill out the application…
as if that mattered at all, as if that mattered
at all…or all at once…
as if that was all that mattered.
The Derelict by Sharon Olds
He passes me on the street, his hair
matted, skin polished with grime,
muttering, suit stained and stiffened—
and yet he is so young, his blond beard like a
sign of beauty and power. But his hands,
strangely flat, as if nerveless, hands that
flap slightly as he walks, like hands of
someone who has had polio, hands,
that cannot be used. I smell the waste of his
piss, I see the ingot of his beard,
and think of my younger brother, his beauty,
coinage and voltage of his beard, his life
he is not using, like a violinist whose
hands have been crushed so he cannot play—
I who was there at the crushing of his hands
and helped to crush them.
Orange- simile
HELLO, I MUST BE GOING by Ms. Klanderman
When we finally took her cigarettes away
Nana tried to smoke chicken bones, lighting
each gnarled end with matches we forgot to
check her pocket for. “You’re a sweetie” was
her mantra, repeated like her old blue parakeet
she forgot to feed, and it died slowly, like the
smile from her face as she sat in
the blue velour chair, staring out the front window
like she was watching a Garbo movie.
When we came to bring her groceries,
those bags like birthday presents,
she would hike up her sweat pants
like an umpire contemplating a play and
wander to the kitchen, her fingers playing with the
edge of her t-shirt, and peer through
blue eyes, as clean as a slate, as we pulled
cans of fruit cocktail and snack cakes magic-like from
brown paper sacks. She had the looks of Marilyn,
never left the house in any shoes but heels, even
ironed Boompa’s boxers until her mind moved on and
forgot to leave a note. When we came over today
she looked through me like I was a pane of glass. My
face like one she saw once in a magazine ad,
or in the crowd at St. John’s Sunday mass.
She asked me who I was, her voice like the hello you
speak into the phone, distant and hollow like she
was across a lake. The glimmer of recognition in
her face like a dying ember stoked for the last time
before burning out altogether. She put her hands
up to her ashen face, devoid of the makeup she
caked on like Tammy Faye, and felt for her once pretty
eyes, that broke a hundred hearts, as they betrayed
her with tears, splashing down her face, surprising her
like rain on someone else’s cheeks.
Orange- simile
Now practice your own similes:
The dog wagged his tail like…
The tree swayed in the wind like…
The night was as dark as…
The music from the fifth grade band concert sounded like…
The girl’s face was red as a….
His legs moved as fast as…
Metaphor
A direct comparison between
two things. A is B.
Examples:
The stars are eye candy.
Freedom is a breakfast food.
Their love is the slap of a baseball
in a mitt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdrCalO5BDs
“All I Need” By Radiohead
This song uses metaphors.
I'm the next act
Waiting in the wings
I'm just an insect
Trying to get out of the night
I'm an animal
Trapped in your hot car
I only stick with you
Because there are no others
I am all the days
That you choose to ignore
You are all I need
You're all I need
I'm in the middle of your picture
Lying in the reeds
You are all I need
You are all I need
I'm in the middle of your picture
Lying in the reeds
I'm a moth
Who just wants to share your light
It's all wrong
It's all right
It's all wrong
Sometimes they are written directlyLife is a rollercoaster
Life= A
is
Rollercoaster= B
Sometimes the form of “is” is left out.Her face,a picture of bliss, gazed at the ocean.
Face=A
Picture of bliss=B
Night Letter to the Reader by Billy Collins
I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,
a bird leaving its nest,
a snail taking a holiday from its shell,
but only to stand on the lawn,
an ordinary insomniac
amid the growth systems of gardens and woods.
If I were younger, I might be thinking
about something I heard at a party,
about an unusual car,
or the press of Saturday night,
but as it is, I am simply conscious,
an animal in pajamas,
sensing only the pale humidity
of the night and the slight zephyrs
that stir the tops of trees.
The dog has followed me out
and stands a little ahead,
her nose lifted as if she were inhaling
Pink - metaphor
the tall white flowers,
visible tonight in the darkened garden,
and there was something else I wanted to tell you,
something about the warm orange light
in the windows of the house,
but now I am wondering if you are even listening
and why I bother to tell you these things
that will never make a difference,
flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.
But this is all I want to do—
tell you that up in the woods
a few night birds were calling,
the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,
and that at one point, the moon,
looking like the top of Shakespeare’s
famous forehead,
appeared, quite unexpectedly,
illuminating a band of moving clouds.
Orange- Simile
Poems for Blok, 1
by Marina Tsvetaeva
Your name is a—bird in my hand,
a piece of ice on my tongue.
The lips' quick opening.
Your name—five letters.
A ball caught in flight,
a silver bell in my mouth.
A stone thrown into a silent lake
is—the sound of your name.
The light click of hooves at night
—your name.
Your name at my temple
—shrill click of a cocked gun.
Your name—impossible—
kiss on my eyes,
the chill of closed eyelids.
Your name—a kiss of snow.
Blue gulp of icy spring water.
With your name—sleep deepens.
Now try writing a metaphor sequence:
Complete the following in your journal.
Pick a noun:
Your name is….
Your face is…
Your car is…
Your dog is…
Your mom is…
Your friend is…
Now try to write FIVE metaphors that directly
compare your noun to another noun.
Personification
Comparing the action/idea/emotion
etc. of something non-human to
something human.
Examples:
The podium proudly stood in front of the
class room.
The fire rushed back into every closet and
felt of the clothes that hung there.
Under the Harvest Moon
by Carl Sandburg
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
Blue = personification
Apple Pies b - Klanderman
I like how she could peel
the skin of each apple
so it came off in one
long crimson strand
like Christmas ribbon,
and the way the kitchen walls
clung to the cinnamon smell
three days later,
and the way the oven sighed
the breath of the baking crust
I’d see her roll out to the thickness
of the old silver dollars
she kept in the jewelry box
next to her bed.
She’d scoop the sliced apples
each shaped in a fruity grin
wet with sugar
into the tin bed of the pan
and cover it with a blanket of dough,
then tuck it in slowly
turning and pinching
until it was sealed,
her tongue stuck into
the corner of her mouth,
flour like a line of latitude
printed across the front of her red sweatshirt.
I like how she’d bend her knees,
those knobby bumps poking from cut-offs,
as she watched her creation born
through the thick glass of the oven door.
Orange= simile
Blue= personification
Green= sensory detail and/or
visual imagery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj-4t9drUlM
“ACROSS THE UNIVERSE” by THE BEATLES
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind
Possessing and caressing me
Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing's gonna change my world x4
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe
Jai Guru Deva OM
Nothing's gonna change my world x4
Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing through my open ears
Inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on, across the universe
Jai Guru Deva OM
“Fog” by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes out
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
The easiest way to add personification is:
1. To give the non-human thing an emotion, state of being or quality that
humans have
From “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury
The clock screamed its morning alarm as if it were afraid nobody could hear
it.
From “The Victims” by Sharon Olds
The black noses of your shoes with their large pores.
From “How it Is” by Maxine Kumin
The dog at the center of my life recognizes/ you’ve come to visit, he’s
ecstatic.
From “Feeding Time” by Maxine Kumin
Horses are waiting./Each enters his box/in the order they’ve all/agreed
on,…cat supervises from the molding cove.
2. Make it do something it cannot (use an action
verb)
From “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
From “Lines for Winter” by Mark Strand
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
From “The Round” by Stanley Kunitz
I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
From “Across the Universe” by Lennon/McCartney
Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing through my open ears
Inciting and inviting me
3. Imbed it in a simile or metaphor
From “Across the Universe” written by Lennon and
McCartney
Thoughts meander like a restless wind (simile)
From “Under the Harvest Moon” by Carl Sandburg
Death, the gray mocker, (metaphor)
From “The Derelict” by Sharon Olds
blond beard like a sign of beauty and power.
(simile)
From “Under a Harvest Moon” by Carl Sandburg
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers. (metaphor)
Symbols as thematic word
choice
Symbols are words, ideas etc. used to
represent something else or an idea.
Symbols are used often in poetry. A word, a
phrase or the whole poem could be a
symbol.
Cough - C.S. Griffin
I see trachea, bronchus, bronchioles’
Towering over me, full of nests
Ancient oak, earth’s breathing apparatus
I’m a parasite under my mother’s breast
Chop down her lungs one at a time
Like a killing cancer, deep in her chest
I’m human; I see it, by right its mine
To reap and use as I see best
Festering for years, I wonder if there will be a time
When I am coughed up, and spit out.
Do trees look like lungs (trachea,
bronchioles, bronchus)?
 In this poem, what are humans symbolic of?
 What could the ‘cough’ be symbolic of?
 Why does the author not rhyme the last line?
The Cure by Ginger Andrews
Lying around all day
with some strange new deep blue
weekend funk, I'm not really asleep
when my sister calls
to say she's just hung up
from talking with Aunt Bertha
who is 89 and ill but managing
to take care of Uncle Frank
who is completely bed ridden.
Aunt Bert says
it's snowing there in Arkansas,
on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been
able to walk out to their mailbox.
She's been suffering
from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.
The cure for the mulleygrubs,
she tells my sister,
is to get up and bake a cake.
If that doesn't do it, put on a red dress.
(mulleygrubs=depression)
Look at the similes in this poem.
What do you think the similes
represent about
the symbolism in this poem?
“A Dream Deferred”
by
Langston Hughes
What happens to a
dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten
meat?
Or crust and sugar overlike a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Answer this question :
“A Dream Deferred”
symbolizes…
Look at the similes, imagery and
metaphors in this poem.
What do you think they
represent about
the symbolism in this poem?
The Guild by Sharon Olds
Every night, as my grandfather sat
in the darkened room in front of the fire,
the liquor like fire in his hand, his eye
glittering meaninglessly in the light
from the flames, his glass eye baleful and stony,
a young man sat with him
in silence and darkness, a college boy with
white skin, unlined, a narrow
beautiful face, a broad domed
forehead, and eyes amber as the resin from
trees too young to be cut yet.
This was his son, who sat, an apprentice,
night after night, his glass of coals
next to the old man’s glass of coals,
and he drank when the old man drank, and he learned
the craft of oblivion—the young man
not yet cruel, his hair dark as the
soil that feeds the tree’s roots,
that son who would come to be in his turn
better at this than the teacher, the apprentice
who would pass his master in cruelty and oblivion,
drinking steadily by the flames in the blackness,
that young man my father.
Answer this question
“The Guild” symbolizes…
Sounds of Poetry as word choice
Poets can pick certain words to make their poetry
sound a certain way.
Alliteration- Repetitive consonant sounds at the
beginnings of words
Examples: Peter Piper picked a peck…
Lazy living led Leonard to loath labor…
Purpose: gives words “pep and pop” by
emphasizing their sound
Assonance- Repetitive vowel sounds within
words
Examples: Avid fan in the grand stand…
Tony dropped a bowling ball on his toe.
Purpose: helps making your words flow
in a musically pleasing way.
Onomatopoeia- Words that sound like what
they are describing
Examples: splash, splat, pop, woof, meow…
Purpose: It realistically describes the sound
using the real sound.
Rhyme-The repetition of the accented vowel
sounds and all succeeding sounds
Examples- mouse/house, basement/casement,
June/spoon
Purposes- Rhyme gives specific flow, can connect
ideas together. Typically seen in children’s poetry,
humor or light verse (Hallmark cards).
Rhyme Scheme:
A way to label a pattern of rhyme occurring throughout a
poem.
The cat was really big.
He ate lots of mice.
He liked to wear a wig.
He chewed on some dice.
A
B
A
B
Some poems require a certain rhyme scheme (limericks
and sonnets for example.)
Rhymezone.com is website for rhyming.
Examples of Rhyming Poems
Ogden Nash-The King of funny rhyme
“Celery”
Celery, raw
Develops the jaw,
But celery, stewed,
Is more quietly chewed.
“The Wasp”
The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with
prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.
“Whatif” by Shel Silverstein
Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb in school?
Whatif they've closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there's poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grow taller?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won't bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!
End of Unit Test
 There are two options for this test.
 You may write a poem, or take the test