Diction, Word Choice, and Word Order; Imagery

1. Diction, Word Choice, and Word Order; Imagery The Way They Work in Poetry

2. Diction Register: • Formal • Informal • Neutral Content: • Figurative (connotative) • Literal (denotative) Diction is based on vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and other stylistically marked choices. Helps to establish tone.

3. Leonard Cohen (b.1934) • Canadian poet, singer-songwriter, musician, novelist. • Quote: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ”

4. Word Choice Words could be: • Concrete (tangible entity) • Abstract (intangible idea) • Specific (particular item) • General (entire group) Words have sound, visual form, and meaning. Words have denotation (literal meaning) and connotation (implied meaning)

5. Word Order “I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge

6. Word Order • Direct word order: He knew little about them. • Inverted word order: Little did he know about them. • In a poetic text, inversion can be used for creating emphasis.

7. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) • English Renaissance poet. A type of a sonnet and a type of a stanza are named “Spenserian” after him. • Most famous works: Allegorical epic poem The Faery Queen; poetic cycle Amoretti

8. Imagery Imagery: the means used in a poem (or other artistic work) to evoke mental pictures in a reader. Imagery appeals to our senses, imagination, and experience. Imagery allows poets to convey complex ideas in concise form. “It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.” Ezra Pound

9. Ezra Pound (1885 –1972) • American Modernist poet and critic, founder of the Imagism movement. • Lived mostly in Europe. • Helped many poets (i.e., T.S.Eliot, Robert Frost) to launch literary careers. • Translator of Chinese poetry. • Convicted for association with fascism.

10. Ezra Pound. “Epitaphs” Fu IFu I loved the high cloud and the hill,Alas, he died of alcohol.Li PoAnd Li Po also died drunk.He tried to embrace a moonIn the Yellow River.

11. Imagery is highly subjective,both when created and when perceived by readers.

12. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) • Anglo-Irish poet, journalist, and playwright. • Proponent and practitioner of the philosophy of aesthetism (L'art pour l'art). • Famous for his aphoristic style and witty paradoxes. • Notorious for a same-sex scandal. A gay rights icon/martyr.

13. Oscar Wilde. “Symphony in Yellow” An omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly, And, here and there, a passer-by Shows like a little restless midge. Big barges full of yellow hay Are moored against the shadowy wharf, And, like a yellow silken scarf, The thick fog hangs along the quay. The yellow leaves begin to fade And flutter from the temple elms, And at my feet the pale green Thames Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

14. Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011) • Canadian poet, novelist, essayist, and literary critic. • Called by critics "Mr. Canadian Postmodern.” • Quote: “In ways the North is a beautiful blank page that invites our scribbling. Then one looks more closely and discovers many tracks that preceded our own.” See Tom Thompson’s Paintings.