Introduction to the Aspects of Poetry

1. Introduction to the Aspects of Poetry

2. Anything typed in red is something you need to write down in your notes.

3. 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

4. When students tell me they write for their own enjoyment, most students tell me they like to write poetry. Adiscuss: Why is this so? Why do some teens write and/or read poems?

5. “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’.

6. 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

7. 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.

8. Answer the following questions in your notes: What are typical emotions and topics shown in poetry? Are there bad poetry topics?

9. Discussion Questions; 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?

10. 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

11. Is this a poem?

12. Coming Up by Ani DiFranco Our father who art in a penthouseSits in his 37th floor suiteAnd swivels to gaze downAt the city he made me inHe allows me to stand andSolicit graffiti untilHe needs the land I stand onI in my darkened thresholdAm pawing through my pocketsThe receipts, the bus schedulesThe urgent napkin poemsThe matchbook phone numbersAll of which laundering has renderedPulpy and strangeLoose change and a keyAsk meGo ahead, ask me if I careI got the answer hereI wrote it down somewhereI just gotta find it Is This A Poem?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2VYg-qKWU

13. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fairAnd having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn 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 sighSomewhere 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

14. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein There is a place where the sidewalk endsAnd 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 blackAnd the dark street winds and bends.Past the pits where the asphalt flowers growWe shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,And watch where the chalk-white arrows goTo 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 knowThe place where the sidewalk ends

15. 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.

16. If I asked you to write a poem right now, how would you write a poem?

17. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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.

24. “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.

25. 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 fartThe entire oboe partOf Mozart's quartet in F-major.

26. 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

27. A Metaphor Song: “TIME” by Pink Floyd Ticking away the moments that make up a dull dayYou fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand wayKicking around on a piece of ground in your home townWaiting for someone or something to show you the wayTired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rainYou are young and life is long and there is time to kill todayAnd then the one day you find ten years have got behind youNo one told you when to run, you missed the starting gunAnd you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinkingAnd racing around to come up behind you againThe sun is the same in the relative way, but you're olderAnd shorter of breath and one day closer to deathEvery year is getting shorter, never seem to find the timePlans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled linesHanging on in quiet desparation is the English wayThe time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

28. 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?

29. 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 borrowFrom 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. The ideas in a poem are organized by line breaks and stanzas. Stanza- is like a poetry paragraph. The next slide will show you examples of stanzas.

33. “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide. or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, Or walk inside the poems’ room And feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to water-ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdAOjATmusc

34. 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.

35. Blue- personification Green- visual imagery Example of Sensory Language and Visual Imagery “The Round” by Stanley Kunitz Light splashed this morningon the shell-pink anemonesswaying on their tall stems;down blue-spiked Veronicalight flowed in rivuletsover the humps of the honeybees;this morning I saw light kissthe silk of the rosesin their second flowering,my late bloomersflushed with their brandy.A curious gladness shook me…

36. The Student by Ted Kooser The green shell of his back pack makes him lean Green- 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.

37. 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 pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother's countenanceCould not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wristWas battered on one knuckle;At every step you missedMy right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my headWith a palm caked hard by dirt,Then waltzed me off to bedStill clinging to your shirt. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/18045

38. Pick one picture and describe it using the five senses:

39. 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 your own?

40. Showing VS. Telling If your emotion is sadness, how do you show us? If your emotion is happiness, how do you show us?

41. Girlfriend My girlfriend broke my heart. She crushed my soul. She destroyed my being. She is with another. She has betrayed me. I wish she could see, How miserable she has made me. 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. Is this a good poem? How can it be made better?

42. Tonight I can write the saddest lines By Pablo NerudaTonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example,'The night is shatteredand the blue stars shiver in the distance.'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 armsI 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. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXHPk-ctoYY 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.

43. 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 armsmy sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.Though this be the last pain that she makes me sufferand these the last verses that I write for her.

44. 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?

45. “The Rider” by Naomi Shihab Nye A boy told meif he roller-skated fast enoughhis loneliness couldn’t catch up to him, the best reason I ever heardfor trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonightpedaling hard down King William Streetis if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your lonelinesspanting behind you on some street cornerwhile you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,pink petals that have never felt loneliness,no matter how slowly they fell.

46. 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

47. 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.

48. 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.

49. The Derelict by Sharon Olds Orange- simile 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.

50. 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.