Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry English 9 Ms. Marshall 2011-2012

What is Poetry? • ”The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” - Wordsworth • "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry" – Emily Dickinson • "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing.” - Dylan Thomas

What is Poetry? Poetry is the imaginative expression of a feeling or experience through vivid imaged, meanings, sound, and rhythmic language.

Why Read Poetry? • Record of the human experience • Poetry helps us to understand what people thought and felt in different times, places and circumstances. • Poetry helps us understand complex ideas, difficult emotions, and ourselves

Reading Poetry There is no such thing as CAN’T There is NO code or super-secret method you need to understand to read poetry.

Reading Poetry • The same reading you do when you read a novel or a newspaper… • You try to understand what is being said, who is saying it, how it is being said, why it is being said, and what interpretation you can draw from it… • Reading a poem is hard work • It takes practice and patience

Things to remember while reading… • The speaker is NOT the poet • Poems use structure to convey meaning • Poems need to be read and re-read • Poems have multiple interpretations • Poems are meant to be read out loud **Poetry can be tricky, but stick with it. The rewards of reading poetry are endless!**

What is Poetry? W. S. Merin “Separation” Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. What makes this a poem rather than prose?

In Your Journals… • Paraphrase the poem in your own words. • Then answer this question…How would you feel if I sent this poem home to you with your absent work? Explain why!

Poet’s Language • Using words, the poet has brought something - moment or experience – into focus. • Poets use imagery, figurative language, and symbols to convey meaning

Literary Term! Figurative Language - uses “figures of speech.” A way of saying something that uses words that go beyond their ordinary or literal meaning. You have to think beyond the usual meaning of the words. Metaphor, simile, personification, etc…

Put on Your Thinking Cap! Think about the author’s message, purpose, and audience... • Pack a WHOLE lot of meaning into a small space. Each word has to represent a lot of meaning. • NEVER over-look a word • ALWAYS look for a deeper meaning

Denotative meaning A word’s literal “dictionary” meaning. (ex: springtime means the season between winter and summer)

Connotative meaning The additional meanings a word gains because of its associations. Springtime has connotations of youth, rebirth, and romance

A Dream DeferredBy 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 over – Like syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load Or does it explode?

Considering the Poem What words are used in the poem to convey meaning? How do these words make you feel? What words have a connotative meaning?

What are You Sensing? • Image – a picture we see with the minds eye • How the poem appeals to the eye AND your other senses • Images in a poem appeal to your senses – making you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch

Imagist Poetry • Focused on the idea of creating an image for the reader • Force the reader to focus on moments, people, things and really SEE them • Uses imagery to make an experience seem read, vivid and fresh

Visualization Activity • Have a blank sheet of paper and pencil ready • Close your eyes and listen carefully as I read the next poem. • As you listen, try to engage all five of your senses

Visualization Activity Without talking or discussing anything with anyone, draw/describe exactly what you saw/felt/tasted/heard/smelled while the poem was being read.

The Plumby Nan Fry Dark globe that fits easily into the palm, Your skin is speckled with pale galaxies, an endless scattering. Everywhere Adam and Eve are leaving the Garden. You are the fruit we pluck and eat. We need no serpent to urge us, drawn as we are to your swelling, your purple shading to rose, your skin that yields to the touch, to the teeth: All the world’s waters and all its sweetness rolled into fruit that explodes on the tongue. We eat and drink flesh the color of garnets, rubies, wounds/ It is bitter just under the skin.

Considering Images • What did you draw? • Why? • What words or phrases bring the plum to life? • Are any words or phrases unusual/striking? • Why does Fry Mention Adam and Eve?

Literary Term! Allusion – a brief word, name or phrase that calls up a whole story/activates a whole network of memories.

Sunday at the Apple Marketby Peter Meinke Apple-smell everywhere! Haralson McIntosh Fireside Rome old ciderpress weathering in the shed old ladders tilting at empty branches boxes and bins of apples by the cartload yellow and green and red piled crazy in the storehouse barn miraculous profusion, the crowd around the testing table laughing and rolling the cool applechunks in their mouths dogs barking at children in the appletrees couples holding hands, so many people out in the country carrying bushels and baskets and bags and boxes of apples to their cars, the smell of apples making us for one Sunday afternoon free and happy as people must have been meant to be.

Considering the Poem Take some time to answer the questions on your hand-out. You will have 10 – 15 minutes. Use your time wisely.

Let’s Discuss… We will now discuss the questions as a class. Feel free to share your answers, ask questions, and add to your handouts!

Can You Feel It? • Poetic images can stir our emotions • If we read closely, we can find ourselves sharing in the feelings of the speaker

Literary Term! Tone – attitude the work’s words suggest toward the subject or toward the reader

MayBy Bruce Weigl I wanted to stay with my dog when they did her in I told the young veterinarian who wasn’t surprised. Shivering on the chrome table, she did not raise her eyes to me when I came in. Something was resolved in her. Some darkness exchanged for the pain. There were a few more words about the size of her tumor and her age, and how we wanted to stop her suffering, or our own, or stop all suffering from happening before us and then the nurse shaved May’s skinny leg with those black clipper; she passed the needle to the doctor and for once I knew what to do and held her head against mine. I cleaved to that smell and lied into her ear that it would be all right. The veterinarian, whom I’d fought about when to do this thing said through tears that it would only take a few minutes as if that were not a long time but there was no cry or growl, only the weight of her in my arms, and then on the world.

Metaphor • A metaphor is a brief comparison that talks about one thing as if it were another. • It is implied and comes without warning (no like or as)

Metaphors in Poetry • Can be easy to understand, or very difficult • Remember the iceberg? • Most metaphors in poetry will not be that familiar. They will be NEW, FRESH, THOUGHTFUL Love is a territory more mysterious the more it is explored

Metaphors in Poetry • Both images and metaphors appeal to/trigger our visual imagination. • Metaphor makes us visualize something we can not actually interact with or see. The strawberry leaves are a green hand spread open

Literary Terms! Extended metaphor – a metaphor that goes beyond a single word. It is carried out throughout the entire poem.

Angerby Linda Pastan You tell me that it’s all right to let it out of its cage, though it may claw someone, even bite. You say that letting it out may tame it somehow. But loose it may turn on me, maul my face, draw blood. Ah, you think you know so much, you whose anger is a pet dog, its canines dull with disuse. But mine is a rabid thing, sharpening its teeth on my very bones, and I will never let it go.

Drawing the Metaphor • Draw the metaphor described in the poem • Your image MUST thoroughly and accurately depict/describe the metaphor. • Provide at LEAST THREE (3) quotes that justify what you have draw. • Write a one paragraph rationale for what you have drawn

“Hope” is the Thing With Feathersby Emily Dickinson “Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul- And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all – And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm – I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of Me.

Simile • A simile is exactly like a metaphor… • Not implied, but directly stated • May be easier to spot, but still tricky to truly understand • Can you identify a metaphor from a poem we have already read?

Symbols • What is a symbol? • Poets use traditional symbols, but they will also give new symbolic significance to objects and events. We have to read the meaning of the symbol out of the poem.

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigersby Adrienne Rich Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band Sits heavily upon her hand. When aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. The tigers in the panel that she made Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

Visualization Activity • In your groups, make a word web for your assigned symbol • Then, draw the meaning of the symbol • Incorporate three quotes into your drawing • Write a one paragraph rationale for what you drew

Poetic Form “Remember: Our deepest perceptions are a waste if we have no sense of form” - Theodore Roethke

Focus on Form • Poetry moves between two poles of form • Traditional form – shaped by features like rhyme, meter, and stanza • Open form - (more modern) Abandons the rules of traditional rhyme, meter, and stanza. Each poem has its own unique pattern and rhythm.

Stanzas • Poems often broke up into stanzas (not always) • Sets of lines following a similar pattern • Often repeats and elaborate rhyme scheme

Introduction to Poetry