SOME TYPES OF
POETRY THAT WE
WILL BE STUDYING
NARRATIVE POEMS
 Are longer and tell a story, with a
beginning, middle, and end.
 Are generally longer than the lyric styles of
poetry because the poet needs to establish
characters and a plot.
Example: “The Legend” by Garrett Hongo
NARRATIVE POEMS in songs
 http://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=00WCEb
KM_SE
 Identify the following
– Description of scene
– Characters
– What happened
– Important sensory
images
– My thoughts and
feelings about the
event
– Central message
“The Legend” page 552
 Identify the following
– Description of scene
– Characters
– What happened
– Important sensory images
– My thoughts and feelings about the event
– Central message
Analyzing a narrative
 Describe the poem’s setting by identifying the
sensory details that describe it.
 What images does Hongo use to help you feel as
though you were an eyewitness to the setting, the
characters, and the event?
 How would you describe the poem’s tone?
 List some of the details and words the poet uses to
create the tone.
Ballads
 A song/narrative poem transmitted
orally that tells a story
 Focuses on one incident
 Begins in the midst of a crisis (in
medias res)
 Proceeds to the resolution with little
background information, character
development, or descriptive detail
Practice
 http://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=85jKDa2z
pus
 Analyze the ballad
using the following
criteria:
– Rhyme scheme used?
– What was the
conversation or
narrative?
– What were the plot
details?
– What was the ending
or resolution?
Practice
 http://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=m1UqKjoet0
 Analyze the ballad
using the following
criteria:
– Rhyme scheme used?
– What was the
conversation or
narrative?
– What were the plot
details?
– What was the ending
or resolution?
Example: “Man in ‘hugging’
lion video reveals its secrets”
 Summary: A man and a lion met in Africa and hugged each other. The
man, Rendall, had bought the cub from Herrods in London when he
visited after graduating from college. They raised the cub in a London
apartment where they never restrained him, gave him the whole
basement to play in, and allowed him to ride in the backseat of their
Bentley. For exercise, they played soccer with him in a large, walled-in
garden.
 After a year, the lion became too big to live with them, so they moved
him to an animal sanctuary in Kenya.
 A year after their separation, Rendall went back to visit the lion,
Christian, and it approached, slowly at first, and then with great speed,
leapt up, and hugged his long-time friend.
Example: “Man’s New Best Friend”
 Ballad:
It happened in Kenya one sunny day,
A man and his friend met in an unusual way.
A lion came up to the man in the field,
But claws and fangs he did not yield.
The lion was a long-lost friend,
Whose undying affection could not end.
The man had raised him as a cub,
And the result was their undying love.
The lion grew big as lions do,
So the man had to make himself say “adieu”
To an animal sanctuary they went,
And with a heavy heart, Rendall left.
But true friendship can never end
And the lion and man were life-long friends.
When Rendall went back to check on his cub,
He was greeted with an unusual hug.
FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE
SIMILE
 Comparison of two unlike things using “like”
or “as”
Friends are like chocolate cake,
you can never have too many.
Chocolate cake is like heaven always amazing you with each taste or feeling.
Chocolate cake is like life
with so many different pieces.
Chocolate cake is like happiness,
you can never get enough of it.
- “Chocolate Cake” by Anonymous
EXTENDED SIMILE
 Continues for several lines or possibly the
entire length of a work.
Life is like a river.
It starts off young and full of energy
like a babbling brook.
In the end it snakes lazily and slowly
along like the mighty Mississippi
until eventually, like emptying into the sea,
our body once again becomes
one with nature.
“The River of Life” by Heather Newbury
METAPHOR
 Comparison of two unlike things where one
word is used to designate the other (one is
the other)
A spider is a black dark midnight sky.
Its web is a Ferris wheel.
It has a fat moon body and legs of dangling string.
Its eyes are like little match ends.
- “Spider” by Anonymous
EXTENDED METAPHOR
 Continues for several lines or possibly the
entire length of a work
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over the harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then, moves on.
- “Fog” by Carl Sandburg
PERSONIFICATION
 A non-living or non-human thing given
human, life-like qualities
Hey diddle, Diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
-from “The Cat & the Fiddle” by Mother Goose
In your groups, identify the
following…
Literary Element
Speaker
Person addressed
Similes
Metaphors
Personification
Central message
Speaker’s tone (feelings)
Your poem’s title _________________________
LYRICAL POEMS
 Short poem (only a few lines, 1-2 stanzas)
 Usually written in first person point of view
 Expresses an emotion or an idea, or
describes a scene
 Does not tell a story and are often musical
 Many of the poems we read will be lyrical
IMAGERY
 Language that provides a sensory experience
using sight, sound, smell, touch, taste
Soft upon my eyelashes
Turning my cheeks to pink
Softly falling, falling
Not a sound in the air
Delicately designed in snow
Fading away at my touch
Leaving only a glistening drop
And its memory
- “Crystal Cascades” by Mary Fumento
HYPERBOLE
 An intentional exaggeration or
overstatement, often used for emphasis
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world
-from "The Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
LITOTE
 Intentional understatement, used for humor or irony
(Example- naming a slow moving person “Speedy”)
Lyrical poem example:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iK9PL
dVXK4
SONNETS
 A very structured form of lyrical poetry.
 The poets known for popularizing the
sonnet were
Shakespeare (an English poet)
Petrarch (an Italian poet)
Sonnet Form
 A sonnet has 14 lines.
 A sonnet must be written in iambic pentameter
 A sonnet must follow a specific rhyme scheme,
depending on the type of sonnet.
 A sonnet can be about any subject, though they are
often about love or nature.
 A sonnet introduces a problem or question in the
beginning, and a resolution is offered after the turn.
Iambic Pentameter
 A line of Iambic Pentameter is a line with
ten beats.
 An “Iamb” is two beats, or one “foot.”
 “Penta” is five (line has five “feet”).
 “Meter” is the rhythm of the poem.
 A “foot” is made of an unstressed syllable
and a stressed syllable (in that order).
English Sonnet
 An English Sonnet is also called a
Shakespearean Sonnet.
 It includes three quatrains (groups of four
lines) and a couplet (two lines).
 The rhyme scheme is always abab cdcd efef
gg.
 The turn is either after eight lines or ten
lines.
Italian Sonnet
 An Italian Sonnet is also called a Petrarchan
Sonnet.
 It includes an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six
lines).
 The rhyme scheme must begin with abbaabba, and
can conclude with any variation of c, d, and e
(cdecde, cdcdee, etc.).
 The turn must occur between the octave and the
sestet.
“Shall I Compare Thee to a
Summer’s Day”
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 wand'rest 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.
Sonnet Analysis:
Stanza
Analysis
Quatrain 1:
Main point:
Quatrain 2:
Main point:
Quatrain 3:
Main point:
Couplet:
Summation:
Sonnet Analysis:
Stanza
Analysis
Quatrain 1:
Main point: The speaker says the object of his affection is more
beautiful than a summer’s day.
Quatrain 2:
Main point: Ordinary beauty fades, but the speaker’s love’s
beauty will not fade.
Quatrain 3:
Main point: Death will never claim his love or his love’s beauty.
Couplet:
Summation: He has captured his love’s beauty in the poem, and
so it will live on forever.
How does the speaker reject his
own question in line 2?
How does the speaker reject his
own question in line 2?
The speaker says that the object of his love is
more beautiful than a summer’s day, so it isn’t
a fair comparison.
Explain the metaphor and
personification in lines 5-8.
Explain the metaphor and
personification in lines 5-8.
The speaker is saying his love’s beauty is
nature and heaven’s beauty. He gives heaven
a face by describing its eyes and complexion.
What do lines 7-8 say can happen
to any kind of beauty?
What do lines 7-8 say can happen
to any kind of beauty?
The speaker says all beauty fades.
A paradox is a statement that seems selfcontradictory, but is true. How is the final couplet a
paradox?
A paradox is a statement that seems selfcontradictory, but is true. How is the final couplet a
paradox?
The speaker says the object of his love’s
beauty will live after s/he dies. He has
captured his love’s beauty in the poem, and as
long as his poem exists, so will his love’s
beauty.
Write a Shakespearean sonnet
in response to Shakespeare’s
“Shall I Compare Thee to a
Summer’s Day”
• Choose your tone
• Use an ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme
scheme
• Keep all lines in iambic pentameter (10
syllables)
Example
“Shall I Compare Thee to a Winter’s Day”
Shall I compare thee to a winter’s day?
Thou are as cold and bleak as fallen snow.
How disgusted I am, I cannot say.
If you ask me out, my answer is no.
Your poem was too much; it creeps me out.
Who puts their love into a sonnet form?
“A Summer’s Day”? What is that all about?
Write a poem to me? That is not norm.
If you want to talk, you just had to ask.
I thought that I liked you before all this.
But to date a poet is quite a task,
And a poet is not someone I’d kiss.
Please lose my number; I do not like you,
The sonnet you wrote made me feel like poo.
Example
“I am just not that into you right now”
I am just not that into you right now,
But if you want to date later, that’s fine.
Perhaps one day, you won’t smell like a cow,
But for today you have crosséd the line.
Your poem made me not want to date you,
An attraction for you, I do not own.
To my word, I shall stick, for this is true:
But for now, you will stay in the friend zone.
I am not quite ready for commitment
Your sonnet could have been a lot better,
It has only spawned a pure resentment.
I don’t know if to you I could fetter.
April Fools! You really aren’t such a tool.
Just kidding, you remind me of my stool.
Sonnet Format
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G
ODES
 A traditional ode is a long lyric poem about
a serious subject, written in a dignified
style.
 These were often sung in ancient Greece to
celebrate an Olympic triumph.
MODERN ODES
 From 1954 to 1959, the Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda published four volumes of odes to
such unconventional objects and
experiences as soap, onions, love, summer,
the color green, French fries, corn, bees—
and a pair of socks using effective similes,
metaphors, extended similes, and extended
metaphors.
MODERN ODE EXAMPLE:
 http://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=j1FGaCN
N1aw
 Identify what similes
and metaphors exist in
this ode.
Read “Ode to My Socks”
Pages 578-579
Complete the chart below:
Literary Term:
Similes
Extended Similes
Metaphors
Extended Metaphors
Example:
YOUR TURN!!!
Write an ode to an object you see every day. Start by
observing the object closely and making some notes
about how it looks, what it resembles, and how it makes
you feel. What tone will you give your ode?
Ode to My _______________________
How it looks:
Use a minimum of four similes or metaphors
What it resembles:
Use a minimum of four similes or metaphors
How it makes me feel:
Use a minimum of four similes or metaphors