An Introduction to
Poetry
Mrs. Todd’s Class
What is the difference between Prose and
Poetry
• Prose: Words that are organized into sentences and paragraphs.
Literature
that is not poetry
• Ex. Essays, Short Stories, Novels’, and Plays
• Poetry: Words that are organized into lines and stanzas. A form of
literature that uses rhyme, rhythm, sound or structure to express something
in an artistic way.
What is Poetry?
• At the most basic level, poetry is literature that expresses ideas,
feelings, or tells a story in a specific form(usually using lines(verse) and
stanzas).
• Most of the things that you hear, say, or read in your daily life (including the
words you are reading right now) put more emphasis on meaning than on
sound. Not so with poetry!
• Poetry is an expression and it’s purpose is to communicate an
idea, a sentiment, a concept. Often it takes the form of verse,
but not all poetry has this structure. Poetry is a creative use of
words which, like all art, is intended to stir an emotion in the
audience.
Poetry Terms
The basic unit of poetry is the line.
It serves the same function as the
sentence in prose. Most poems
have a structure in which each line
contains a set amount of rhyme an
rhythm. Some poems do not have
rhyme or rhythm but, they do have
a certain structure.
Lines make the music of the poem.
They function as a skeleton, holding the poem up.
Lines contain every aspect of sound, from how words
sound alike and different to how they reflect
emotion.
The line always means rhythm and sometimes
means rhyme. Even a free verse poem that doesn’t
seem to have a regular rhythm or an obvious rhyme
scheme still has the baseline bones of music.
The line’s music gives us our instinctive understanding
of a poem, even when we can’t articulate it.
Rhyme
Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds.
In poetry, the most common kind of rhyme
is the end rhyme, which occurs at the end
of two or more lines. It is usually identified
with lower case letters, and a new letter is
used to identify each new end sound.
Take a look at the rhyme scheme for the
following poem :
I saw a fairy in the wood,
He was dressed all in green.
He drew his sword while I just stood,
And realized I'd been seen.
The rhyme scheme of the poem is abab.
Rhythm
• Rhythm is quite literally the heartbeat of a
poem and serves as the backdrop from
which the ideas and imagery can flow.
Rhythm creates the pattern of language in a
line of a poem, marked by the stressed and
unstressed syllables in the words. Rhythm is
essential to poetry because it is a mirror of
life. Nature expects a rhythm, as evidenced
by the change from day to night, or the order
of the seasons. This contributes to the
pleasure of the reader; rhythm is what we
expect from music, from nature, and
certainly from poetry
• Meter and Rhythm work together.
Meter
• Rhythm is a natural thing. It's in everything you say and write, even if you don't intend for it to be.
• Traditional forms of verse use established rhythmic patterns called meters (meter means "measure"
in Greek), and that's what meters are — premeasured patterns of stressed and unstressed
syllables.
• Examples
• duh-duh-DUH, as in but of course! duh-Duh! as in success!
• Iambic meter is extremely common in English language poetry. Shakespeare used it in his sonnets and
in his plays. Look at this line from "Romeo and Juliet":
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks
That line consists of five iambs:
but SOFT / what LIGHT / through YON / der WIN / dow BREAKS
Stanza
• The stanza in poetry is equivalent
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
• Example of Stanza:
• Do not go Gentle into that Good
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
or equal to the paragraph in prose.
Often the lines in a stanza will
have a specific rhyme scheme.
Night
by
Dylan Thomas
• Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
• Though wise men at their end know dark is
right,
Because their words had forked no lightning
they
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
S
T
A
N
Z
A
• Dust of Snow
• by Robert Frost
Rhyme Scheme
Rhyme scheme is the pattern of
rhyming words at the end of each
line. Not all poetry has a rhyme
scheme. They are not hard to identify,
but you must look carefully at which
words rhyme and which do not
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And save some part
Of a day I had rued.
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
• Whenever you describe something by
comparing it with something else, you are
using figurative language. Figurative
language is any language that goes beyond
the literal meaning of words in order to
furnish new effects or fresh insights
into an idea or a subject. The most
common figures of speech are simile,
metaphor, imagery or sensory
language and alliteration. Figurative
language is used in poetry to compare two
things that are usually not thought of as
being alike.
• A simile is a figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in
a phrase introduced by like or as.
• The clouds looked like cotton candy.
• Grandpa was as stubborn as a mule
• Tom's head is as hard as a rock.
A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between
two unlike things that actually have something important in common.
• Clouds are cotton candy.
They are fluffy.
• Grandpa was a mule.
They are stubborn
• Tom is a rock.
Rocks are hard
• The use of repeating consonant sounds in a line. Modern alliteration is predominantly
consonantal.
• Example:
• Silvery snowflakes fall silently
• Softly sheathing all with moonlight
• Until sunrise slowly shows
• Snow softening swiftly.
• Imagery or Sensory Language is an appeal to the senses. The poet describes something
to help you to see, hear, touch, taste, or smell the topic of the poem.
• Fog
• The fog comes on little cat feet.
SEE, HEAR
• It sits looking over harbor and city
SEE, HEAR
• on silent haunches and then moves on.
SEE, HEAR, FEEL
•
• Carl Sandburg
Assonance
• Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create
internal rhyming within phrases or sentences.
• Ex.
•
•
•
•
•
We light fire on the mountain.
I feel depressed and restless.
Go and mow the lawn.
Johnny went here and there and everywhere.
The engineer held the steering to steer the vehicle.
MOOD
• READER CENTERED
• This is the over all feeling or atmosphere created by a work of literature.
• (Influenced by the setting)
• The tone of a poem is the attitude you feel in it — the writer's attitude toward the subject or
audience. The tone in a poem of praise is approval. In an antiwar poem, you may feel
protest. Tone can be playful, humorous, regretful, anything — and it can change as the
poem goes along.
• When you speak, your tone of voice suggests your attitude. In fact, it suggests two attitudes:
one concerning the people you're addressing (your audience) and one concerning the thing
you're talking about (your subject). That's what the term tone means when it's applied to
poetry as well. Tone can also mean the general emotional weather of the poem.
• Sometimes tone is fairly obvious. You can, for example, find poems that are absolutely
furious.
• Onomatopoeia describes a word in which the sound of the word
tells the meaning. It makes the sound it represents.
Types of Poems
• We will be studying Free Verse, Rhyming, Epic, Narrative and Lyrical Poems
in the next few weeks. We will be able to identify the poems, their purpose
and identify the structure and elements of the poems.
Free verse is just
what it says it is poetry that is written
without proper rules
about form, rhyme,
rhythm, and meter.
In free verse the
writer makes his/her
own rules. The
writer decides how
the poem should
look, feel, and
sound. It is more
thoughtful and deep.
Rhyming Poetry
Definition of Rhymes
Rhymes are types of poems which
have the repetition of the same or
similar sounds at the end of two or
more words most often at the ends
of lines. This technique makes the
poem easy to remember and is
therefore often used in Nursery
Rhymes. They have a Rhyme
scheme.
Lyric Poetry
• Definition of Lyric Poetry
• Lyric Poetry consists of a poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that
expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. The term lyric is now
commonly referred to as the words to a song. Lyric poetry does not tell
a story which portrays characters and actions. The lyric poet addresses
the reader directly, portraying his or her own feeling, state of mind,
and perceptions.
Example
of Lyric
Poems
Dying
by
Emily Dickinson
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable,-and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
Example Lyric Poem
• You held me down, but I got up (hey!)
Already brushing off the dust
You hear my voice, your hear that sound
Like thunder, gonna shake the ground
You held me down, but I got up
Get ready 'cause I had enough
I see it all, I see it now
• I got the eye of the tiger, the fire
Dancing through the fire
'Cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me
roar
Louder, louder than a lion
'Cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me
roar!
•
Read more: Katy Perry - Roar Lyrics | MetroLyrics
EPIC POETRY
• An epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry originating in Greece.
Traditionally, an epic poem is a long, serious, poetic narrative about a significant
event, often featuring a hero. Before the development of writing, epic poems were
memorized and played an important part in maintaining a record of the great deeds
and history of a culture. Later, they were written down and the tradition for this
kind of poem continued. Epics often feature the following: a hero who embodies
the values of a culture or ethnic group; something vital that depends on the success
of the hero's actions; a broad setting, sometimes encompassing the entire world;
intervention by supernatural beings. Examples of epics include Gilgamesh,
the Odyssey, and Beowulf.
Narrative Poetry
• Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story. In its broadest sense, it includes
epic poetry; some would reserve the name narrative poetry for works on a
smaller scale and generally with more direct appeal to human interest than
the epic.
• Ex. The Raven
OTHER POEMS
• Haiku is one of the most important forms of traditional Japanese poetry.
Haiku is, today, a 17-syllable verse form consisting of three metered lines of
5, 7, and 5 syllables. Each Haiku must contain a kigo, a season word, which
indicate in which season the Haiku is set
• The simplicity of the limerick quite possibly accounts for its extreme
longevity. It consists of five lines with the rhyme scheme a a b b a.
• Concrete poems are poems that don’t have to rhyme but, are written in the
shape of what they are describing.
Examples
• Haiku (theme is weather)
• Hail
They fell in showers.
Like diamonds upon the ground
Big hailstones were found.
• Limerick
• Old Man with a Beard
•
•
•
•
•
•
Edward Lear
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'
A
A
B
B
A
Concrete Poems
WHAT IS A CONCRETE POEM?
Concrete poetry—sometimes also called ‘shape
poetry’—is poetry whose visual appearance
matches the topic of the poem. The words form
shapes which illustrate the poem’s subject as a
picture. Concrete poems do not have to rhyme.
Just think of a topic and then think about what you
love about it and you are on your way.
Some might consider the study of poetry old
fashioned, yet even in our hurried lives we are
surrounded by it: children's rhymes, verses from
songs, trite commercial jingles, well written texts.
Any time we recognize words as interesting for
sound, meaning or construct, we note poetics.