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Reading Poetry

Reading Poetry. A Very Basic Introduction. Poetry Defined. Poetry is Literature written in Verse Verse is language that is an arrangement of words in regularly measured, patterned, or rhythmic lines

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Reading Poetry

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  1. Reading Poetry A Very Basic Introduction

  2. Poetry Defined • Poetry is Literature written in Verse • Verseis language that is an arrangement of words in regularly measured, patterned, or rhythmic lines • Poetry relies on exacting attention to the sounds, denotations, and connotations of individual words, phrases, lines, and stanzas • Poetry condenses complex ideas, experiences, and/or emotions into the smallest literary units possible

  3. Tools of Poetry • Figurative Language: Any language that is not literal. The most important type of figurative language is the metaphor • Metaphor: Equating to unlike things to highlight some unique quality that they both share • Diction: Word choice. In poetry, we want to examine why the poet chose particular words or types of words he/she did. Looking for patterns in diction is often fruitful. We usually speak of a poem using a “type” of diction, like “formal diction”, “religious diction”, “sexual diction”, etc.

  4. Tools of Poetry • Syntax: Sentence Structure. Poets use sentence length, shape, style, and order to help their readers feel or notice particular things. For instance, a writer may use a periodic sentence to build tension if they want you to feel tension. • Example of a Periodic Sentence: "In the almost incredibly brief time which it took the small but sturdy porter to roll a milk-can across the platform and bump it, with a clang, against other milk-cans similarly treated a moment before, Ashe fell in love."(P.G. Wodehouse, Something Fresh, 1915) • Note the way you feel tension as you read because you have to wait until the very end for the meaning of the sentence to become clear.

  5. Tools of Poetry • Syntax (Continued) • Poets also use Syntax to create a particular rhythm / meter. This may mean inverting the syntax – reversing the normal order of words in a sentence. • Inverted Syntax: Normally (in English, at least), a sentence will have this basic structure: Subject Verb Object, as in The dog ate gerbils. • Subject=The dog Verb=ateObject=gerbils. • But, a sentence with inverted syntax would change this to read: • Gerbils the dog ate • It still makes syntactic and semantic sense, but seems odd to us, which gets our attention, which is often the point.

  6. Tools of Poetry • Pattern: poets love to use patterns. Sometimes they do this for rhythm and consistency, sometimes for emphasis, and often so that they can BREAK the pattern at a key point so that you notice it more. • Patterns can be created through repetition, rhyme, line length, stanzas, types of diction, types of syntax, and pretty much anything else you can imagine • Rhyme: words that have matching end sounds. • End rhyme: words at the ends of lines that rhyme • Internal rhyme: words within a line that rhyme • Slant rhyme (near rhyme): words that almost rhyme • Rhyme Pattern: identifying which lines have end rhymes that match – usually marked with letters denoting each rhyme type

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