Poetry

1. Poetry

2. Stanzas • A grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a set pattern of meter and rhyme • Usually share common rhyme scheme (pattern of end rhymes) Couplet: Two lines that usually rhyme and have the same meter Tercet: Three-line stanza; triplet: three-lines rhyming Quatrain: four-line stanza, various rhyme schemes

3. Couplet • Any 2 lines that work as a unit, whether they make a single stanza or are part of a larger stanza, most rhyme. Example: “Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.” "Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human, to forgive, divine.“ "’Tis education forms the common mind,/Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined."

4. Quatrain • a stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines of verse. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

5. Graphical Elements and Structure • Number and Length of Lines • Word Position: Centered? Left? Right? Spacing? • Stanzas • Verses • “Shape” of a poem and its visual presentation • How does the poem’s appearance on the page affect its interpretation?

6. Rhyme Scheme • the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem Bid me to weep, and I will weep A While I have eyes to see; B And having none, and yet I will keep A A heart to weep for thee. B

7. Fixed Form • Poems that follow a prescribed model • Follows a pattern of lines, meter, rhyme, and stanza • Fixed form poems do not always fit models precisely; writers sometimes work variations on traditional forms to create innovative effects.

8. English Sonnet • A.K.A. Shakespearean Sonnet • Usually written in iambic pentameter with 14 lines Sonnet 18 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 dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou owest;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this and this gives life to thee. --William Shakespeare

9. Italian Sonnet 14 lines, divided into 2 parts • first 8 lines (octave) usually rhyme abbaabba • last 6 lines (sestet) rhyme will vary: cdecde, cdcdcd, and cdccdc Very often, the octave presents a situation that the sestet resolves. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I beenWhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure sereneTill I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

10. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good 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 theyDo not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.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.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on that 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. Villanelle • 19 lines of any length divided into 6 stanzas: • 5 tercets with aba rhyme scheme • a concluding quatrain with abaa rhyme scheme • Line I repeats as lines 6, 12, and 18 • Line 3 repeats as lines 9, 15, and 19

11. Sestina by Algernon Charles Swinburne I saw my soul at rest upon a dayAs a bird sleeping in the nest of night,Among soft leaves that give the starlight wayTo touch its wings but not its eyes with light;So that it knew as one in visions may,And knew not as men waking, of delight.This was the measure of my soul’s delight;It had no power of joy to fly by day,Nor part in the large lordship of the light;But in a secret moon-beholden wayHad all its will of dreams and pleasant night,And all the love and life that sleepers may.But such life’s triumph as men waking mayIt might not have to feed its faint delightBetween the stars by night and sun by day,Shut up with green leaves and a little light;Because its way was as a lost star’s way,A world’s not wholly known of day or night.All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of nightMade it all music that such minstrels may,And all they had they gave it of delight;But in the full face of the fire of dayWhat place shall be for any starry light,What part of heaven in all the wide sun’s way?Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.For who sleeps once and sees the secret lightWhereby sleep shows the soul a fairer wayBetween the rise and rest of day and night,Shall care no more to fare as all men may,But be his place of pain or of delight,There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.Song, have thy day and take thy fill of lightBefore the night be fallen across thy way;Sing while he may, man hath no long delight. Sestina • 39 lines of any length divided into 6 six-line stanzas • 3-line concluding stanza called an envoy • Repeated 6 words at the ends of the first stanza’s lines at the ends of the lines in the other five 6-line stanzas • Those words must also appear in the final three lines, where they resonate important themes.

12. Epigram • Brief, pointed, and witty poem. • Most rhyme and often are written in couplets • No prescribed form • Typically polished bits of compressed irony, satire, or paradox “Coward” by A. R. Ammons Bravery runs in my family “Epitaph on a Waiter” by David McCord By and by God caught his eye.

13. Limerick Short five-lined humorous poems Usually anapestic lines rhyming aabba There once was a man from Nantucket Who kept all his cash in a bucket; But his daughter, named Nan, Ran away with a man, And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

14. Haiku • Japanese poetry and usually deals with intense emotion or naturewhich leads to spiritual insight • Consists of 17 syllables: 3 lines with three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables “Under cherry trees” by Matsuo Bashō Under cherry trees Soup, the salad, fish and all . . . Seasoned with petals.

15. Elegy for Jane (My Student, Thrown by a Horse) By Theodore Reothke I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile; And how, once started into talk, the light syllables leaped for her. And she balanced in the delight of her thought, A wren, happy, tail into the wind, Her song trembling the twigs and small branches. The shade sang with her; The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing, And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose. Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth, Even a father could not find her: Scraping her cheek against straw, Stirring the clearest water. My sparrow, you are not here, Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow. The sides of wet stones cannot console me, Nor the moss, wound with the last light. If only I could nudge you from this sleep, My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon. Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love: I, with no rights in this matter, Neither father nor lover. Elegy • A lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead • Expresses the speaker’s melancholy thoughts • No longer conforms to a fixed pattern of lines and stanzas

16. “Home Movies: A Sort of Ode” by Mary Jo Salter Because it hadn't seemed enough, after a while, to catalogue more Christmases, the three-layer cakes ablaze with birthday candles, the blizzard Billy took a shovel to, Phil's lawnmower tour of the yard, the tree forts, the shoot-'em-ups between the boys in new string ties and cowboy hats and holsters, or Mother sticking a bow as big as Mouseketeer ears in my hair, my father sometimes turned the gaze of his camera to subjects more artistic or universal: long closeups of a rose's face; a real-time sunset (nearly an hour); what surely were some brilliant autumn leaves before their colors faded to dry beige on the aging film; a great deal of pacing, at the zoo, by polar bears and tigers caged, he seemed to say, like him. What happened between him and her is another story. And just as well we have no movie of it, only some unforgiving scowls she gave through terrifying, ticking silence when he must have asked her (no sound track) for a smile. Still, what I keep yearning for isn't those generic cherry blossoms at their peak, or the brave daffodil after a snowfall, Ode it's the re-run surprise of the unshuttered, prefab blanks of windows at the back of the house, and how the lines of aluminum siding are scribbled on with meaning only for us who lived there; it's the pair of elephant bookends I'd forgotten, with the upraised trunks like handles, and the books they meant to carry in one block to a future that scattered all of us. And look: it's the stoneware mixing bowl figured with hand-holding dancers handed down so many years ago to my own kitchen, still valueless, unbroken. Here she's happy, teaching us to dye the Easter eggs in it, a Grecian urn of sorts near which—a foster child of silence and slow time myself—I smile because she does and patiently await my turn. • Lengthy lyrics that often include lofty emotions conveyed by a dignified style • Characterized by serious topics like: truth, art, freedom, justice, and the meaning of life • Formal tone • No prescribed formal pattern, but some repeat stanzas or new patterns • Often use apostrophe

17. Parody A Visit from St. Sigmund By X. J. Kennedy T’was the night before Christmas, when all through each kidNot an Ego was stirring, not even an Id.The hangups were hung by the chimney with careIn hopes that St. Sigmund Freud soon would be there. . . . • Humorous imitation of another, usually serious work. • Fixed or open form because parodists imitate the tone, language, and shape of the original • It is a complement to have one’s poem parodied because that indicates a well-known work has become institutionalized in our culture and fair game for some fun

18. “In Medias Res” By Michael McFee His waist,like the plot,thickens, weddingpants now breathtaking,belt no longer the cinchit once was, belly's cambiumexpanding to match each birthday,his body a wad of anonymous tissueswung in the same centrifuge of yearsthat separates a house from its foundation,undermining sidewalks grim with joggersand loose-filled graves and familiesand stars collapsing on themselves,no preservation society capableof plugging entropy's dike,under the zipper's sneera belly hibernation-soft, ready forthe kill. Picture Poem • poems form pictures both by word choice and the way the words are arranged on the page. • A.K.A. Concrete Poems

19. Open Form • A.K.A. Free verse which has no regular beat and usually no rhyme • No fixed or predominant meter • Rely on an intense use of language to establish rhythms and relations between meaning and form • Derive rhythmic qualities from the repetition of words, phrases, or grammatical structures; the arrangement of words on the printed page; or some other means

20. O Captain! My Captain! By Walt Whitman O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:But O heart! heart! heart!O the bleeding drops of red,Where on the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead.O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;Here Captain! dear father!This arm beneath your head;It is some dream that on the deck,You've fallen cold and dead.My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!But I, with mournful tread,Walk the deck my Captain lies,Fallen cold and dead. The Red Wheelbarrow By William Carlos Williams so much dependsupon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the whitechickens.

21. Order in the Streets By Donald Justice (From instructions printed on a child’s toy, Christmas 1968, as reported in the New York Times) I. 2. 3. Switch on. Jeep rushes to the scene of riot Jeep goes in all directions by mystery action. Jeep stops periodically to turn hood over Machine gun appears with realistic shooting noise. After putting down riot, jeep goes back to the headquarters. Found Poem • Unintentional verse discovered in a nonpoetic context, such as a conversation, news story, or an advertisement • Playful reminders that the words in poems are very often the language we use every day.

22. Poetry Genres • Epic • Lyric • Narrative: tell a story • Dramatic • Satirical • Elegy • Prose • Speculative

23. Nonsense Verse Light, often rhythmical verse, often for children, depicting peculiar characters in amusing and fantastical situations. It is whimsical and humorous in tone and tends to employ fanciful phrases and meaningless made-up words 'Twasbrillig, and the slithytovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the momerathsoutgrabe. --“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll

24. Tools of the Poet’s Trade

25. Word Choice • Diction: a writer’s choice of words. • Words call attention to themselves. • Poems are usually briefer than other forms of writing, functioning in a compressed atmosphere. • The words must convey meanings gracefully and economically. • Readers have to be alert to the ways in which those meanings are released.

26. Poetic Diction • Use of elevated language over ordinary language “disporting with pliant arms o’er a glassy wave” vs. a boy “enjoying a swim”

27. Formal Diction • Dignified, impersonal, and elevated use of language “In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.”

28. Middle Diction • Less formal level of diction • Spoken by most educated people “You could be sitting now in a carrel Turning some liver-spotted page, Or rising in an elevator-cage Toward ladies’ Apparel.” The wit of the speaker’s description lessens the formality.

29. Informal Diction • A conversational manner that may include slang or colloquial expressions not used by the culture at large “When getting my nose in a book Cured most things short of school, It was worth ruining my eyes To know I could still keep cool, And deal out the old right hook To dirty dogs twice my size.”

30. Informal Diction • Dialect: spoken by definable groups of people from a particular geographic region, economic group, or social class • Jargon: a category of language defined by a trade or profession

31. Denotations • The literal, dictionary meanings of a word • Bird: a feathered animal with wings

32. Connotations • Associations and implications that go beyond a word’s literal meanings Bird Hawk Crow Pigeon Vulture Owl Chicken Connotative meanings allow poets to be economical and suggestive simultaneously. Emotions and attitudes are woven into the texture of the poem’s language.

33. Persona • A speaker created by the poet The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner By Randall Jarrell From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. The speaker in this poem is clearly not the poet but a disembodied voice that makes the gunner’s story all the more powerful.

34. Ambiguity • Allows for two or more simultaneous interpretations of a word, phrase, action, or situation, all of which can be supported by the context of a work. From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

35. Word Order • Syntax: the ordering of words into meaningful verbal patterns • A poet can manipulate the syntax of a line to place emphasis on a word Emily Dickinson wrote in A Narrow Fellow in the Grass: “His notice sudden is”

36. Tone • The writer’s attitude toward the subject, the mood created by all the elements in the poem. • Serious/Light • Sad/Happy • Private/Public • Angry/Affectionate • Bitter/Nostalgic • Any other attitude or feeling that a human experiences How does the poet’s tone contribute to the poem’s meaning?

37. Sound Devices

38. Rhyme • A repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words Example: Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning --Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”

39. End Rhyme • Any rhyme at the end of a line; perfect rhyme Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. --Robert Frost, "Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening"

40. Internal Rhyme • Rhyme within the same line of verse Example: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary --Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”

41. Slant Rhyme • Imperfect rhyme that usually has the same end consonant sound but not the same vowel sound • Half Rhyme Example: Found, Kind Grime, Game Ill, Shell Dropped, Wept

42. Eye Rhyme • Two words are used with similar spellings but different sounds Example: Laughter, Slaughter

43. Repetition • The same sound, word, phrase, or line is repeated throughout a poem • For emphasis or unity to reinforce meaning and create an appealing rhythm Example: Frederick Douglass repeats bloody imagery throughout his narrative because he wants to emphasize how brutal the life of a slave really was.

44. Anaphora • repeating a sequence of words at the beginnings of neighboring clauses for emphasis We passed the school where children played,Their lessons scarcely done;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun. --“Because I Could Not Stop For Death” By Emily Dickinson

45. Epiphora • repeating words at the clauses' ends. “Only this, and nothing more.” “Nameless here, forever more.” “This is it, and nothing more.” “Perched, and sat, and nothing more.” “Quoth the raven, Nevermore.” --“The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe

46. Alliteration • The repetition of the beginning sound of two or more adjacent words or stressed syllables Example: furrow followed free “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge

47. Assonance • The repetition of vowel sounds within a short passage or verse of prose Example: And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride. --”Annabel Lee,” by Edgar Allan Poe

48. Consonance • The repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession Example: “all mammals named Sam are clammy”

49. Onomatopoeia • The use or words that sound like what they mean Bam! Hiss! Rat, tat, tat! Buzz Purr

50. Rhythm and Meter • There are five standard metrical units, each identified by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. • An unstressed syllable is represented by a “da” • A stressed syllable is represented by a “DA.”