What’s in a Poem?

1. What’s in a Poem?

2. Key Poetry Elements “FIDDS STT” • Figurative Language • Imagery • Diction • Sound • Speaker • Tone • Theme

3. Figurative Language • Describing the ordinary in an unordinary way

4. Figurative Language • Simile: Two unlike things are compared, using “like” or “as.” Example: “My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.” - W.H. Auden

5. Figurative Language • Metaphor Also comparing two things, but does not use “like” or “as.” A simile would say “My love is like a burning flame.” A metaphor would say “The burning flame of my love.”

6. Figurative Language • Personification Giving human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract concepts. Example: Thunder booming “angrily” personifies thunder by giving it emotion. Result: Heightens a reader’s emotional response by giving something human qualities and therefore added significance.

7. Figurative Language • Symbol An object or action that means more or stands for more than just itself. In Macbeth, blood symbolized guilt.

8. Figurative Language • Allusion A reference to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature. Often Biblical, mythological, or from Shakespeare. Effect: A way to include broad, complex ideas or emotions in one quick, powerful image. Example: “She was his Achilles heel.”

9. Imagery • “Word pictures” that appeal to the five senses Technique: List all the images you find in a poem, then consider what ideas they imply or what connotations go with them.

10. Diction • Style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words. Word choice can convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, or suggest values. Example: Are you a kid, student, or a scholar?

11. Sound Devices • Rhyme and rhythm • Rhythm: Created by recurring accent or stress in lines • Rhyme At the end of the lines or inside a line (internal)? Example of internal rhyme (from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”): In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud

12. Sound Devices • Are the rhymes soft vowel sounds or hard consonants? Example: “moo and coo” or “clack and rack” Effect: Soothing, or attention-getting

13. Sound Devices • Alliteration Repetition of consonant sounds in words close together, particularly at the beginning of words or stressed syllables. Example: “Five milesmeandering with a mazymotion" (the river Alph in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”)

14. Sound Devices • Onomatopoeia Word imitating the sound it describes. Examples: “Croak” “Boom” or “Crash”

15. Sound Devices • Repetition of words or phrases Effect: can be for emphasis, rhythm, or contrast Example: “I looked upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away; I looked upon the rotting deck, and there the dead men lay.” (from Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”)

16. Speaker • Not the author. Can be a new identity, or an aspect of the author, a mood or attitude adopted for the purposes of a particular work.

17. Tone • The speaker’s attitude. Is it angry? Adoring?

18. Theme • The main message, idea, or universal truth. Look beyond the literal meaning for a symbolic meaning.

19. Practice • Two poems by William Blake. Blake was a key figure in the Romantic Age for both poetry and visual arts. Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence, written in 1789, included paired poems that illustrate what would become a standard notion in Romanticism: that childhood is a state of protected "innocence," and that "experience" means the loss of childhood vitality, perhaps involving social and political corruption or oppression.

20. "The Chimney Sweeper," from Songs of Experience • A little black thing among the snow,Crying " 'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!"Where are thy father and mother? say?"—"They are both gone up to the church to pray. • "Because I was happy upon the heath,And smiled among the winter's snow,They clothed me in the clothes of death,And taught me to sing the notes of woe. • "And because I am happy and dance and sing,They think they have done me no injury,And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,Who make up a heaven of our misery."

21. "The Chimney Sweeper," from Songs of Innocence • When my mother died I was very young,And my father sold me while yet my tongueCould scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!' "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. • There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his headThat curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said,"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bareYou know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." • And so he was quiet, & that very night,As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack,Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. • And by came an Angel who had a bright key,And he opened the coffins & set them all free;Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run,And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. • Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind.And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,He'd have God for his father & never want joy. • And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,And got with our bags & our brushes to work.Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.