Poetry Terms

Poetry Terms and Techniques Ms. Aixa Rodriguez Belmont Preparatory High School ESL/ELA

So.. you think you know

All about poetry?

Let’s see!

Yes, you must take notes!

I am not kidding!

Types of Poetry

Narrative Poetry- a narrative poem is one that tells a story. Types of narrative poetry include ballads and epics.

Lyric Poetry- a highly musical verse that expresses the emotions of the speaker. Common types are sonnets, odes, free verse and elegies.

Dramatic poetry- a dramatic poem is a verse that relies heavily on dramatic elements such as monologue, or dialogue. Two types of dramatic poetry are dramatic monologue and soliloquy.

What’s a Ballad?

Come on… I know you can guess…

Ballad : a narrative poem, sometimes sung, that tells a dramatic story.

What about….

An acrostic poem?

What’s that?

Acrostic poem: The first letters of the lines in an spell a word, often the subject of the poem .

A nother very incredibly

I ntelligent and intuitive

X ena type warrior princess teacher with

A n attitude.

Domo arigato gozaimashita

Ok hotshots!

What’s an epic poem?

Epic : a long narrative poem centering on a heroic figure who represents the fate of a nation.

Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, Grendel's mother; and, later in life after becoming a king, an unnamed dragon.

Ah…Obi-wan has taught you well. The force is with you young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet. - Darth Vader

Define concrete poem.

Concrete poem is written in a shape that adds meaning to the poem.

A little too easy…- Darth Vader

Define free verse..

Free verse : poetry with no set rhythm or rhyme.

Ha! Impressive… most impressive..- Darth Vader

A challenge you say!

Here you are! Define blank verse!

Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter.

A bit of tutoring you need hmmm..- Yoda

And if a person is to become one with the force….what type of poem shall we write for them hmmmm?

Elegy or Elegiac poem: a meditative poem mourning the death of an individual.

What’s a …

Dramatic Monologue?

Soliloquy

Dramatic monologue : a poem in which a character addresses an audience.

A fictional character, at a critical or dramatic point in life, addresses a particular “audience”, which his identifiable but silent. In the course of the monologue, we learn a great deal, often ironically, about the character who is speaking and the circumstance that have led to the speech.

Soliloquy

A form of monologue found most often in drama. It differs from a dramatic monologue in that the speaker is alone, revealing thoughts and feelings to or for oneself that are intentionally unheard by other characters in Shakespeare’s plays for example the principal characters’ reflections on how to act or questions of conscience are revealed in their soliloquies. “To be or not to be…” (Shakespeare’s Hamlet )

See if you can get this clue…

The next poem rhymes with the last word in the above sentence. It originated in an archipelago famous for natural disasters, especially tsunamis and earthquakes.

Haiku: a three-line poem usually about nature, with this syllable pattern: 5,7,5. This style originated in Japan.

The old bicycle leaning against the lamp post Will it fall over?

Alright poetic geniuses…

What is another poem similar to haiku but longer?

Tanka: a five-line poem usually about emotions with this syllable pattern: 5,7,5,7,7.

The tanka poem is very similar to haiku but tanka poems have more syllables and it uses simile, metaphor and personification.

There are five lines in a Tanka poem.

Line one - 5 syllables Beautiful mountains

Line two - 7 syllables Rivers with cold, cold water.

Line three - 5 syllable White cold snow on rocks.

Line four - 7 syllables Trees over the place with frost.

Line five - 7 syllables White sparkly snow everywhere.

Tanka poems are written about nature, seasons, love, sadness and other strong emotions. This form of poetry dates back almost 1200 years.

Ok champs.. Lets see you get this one…

???: a meditation or celebration of a specific subject.

Ode: a meditation or celebration of a specific subject.

Excerpt from

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

By John Keats

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Let’s see if you get this one….

___________ : a poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter.

Sonnet: a poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter.

The New Colossus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, (a) With conquering limbs astride from land to land; (b) Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand (b) A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame (a) Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name (a) Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand (b) Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command (b) The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. (a)

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she (c) With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, (d) Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, (c) The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. (d) Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, (c) I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (d)

Emma Lazarus, 1883

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a) Admit impediments. Love is not love (b) Which alters when it alteration finds, (a) Or bends with the remover to remove. (b) O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c) That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d) It is the star to every wand'ring barque, (c) Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d) Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e) Within his bending sickle's compass come; (f) Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e) But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (f) If this be error and upon me proved, (g) I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)

A quick quiz: Do you know…

Stanza_________________

Rhyme ________________

Rhyme scheme ______________

Stanza: grouping of lines within a poem.

Rhyme: repetition of the same sound.

Rhyme scheme: a regular pattern of end rhyme in a poem.

Ok, so lets now go over common

FORMS OF STANZA!

What’s a couplet?

What’s a couplet?

Je nais se pas!

Couplet: two lines of poetry that usually rhyme.

Avocado Girl

By: Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez

I am an ahuacatl of ancient days,

Of both past and present ways.

I am an aguacate of a familiar green,

A nuyorbronxrican Queen.

I am an avocado with rough Bronx skin,

both Latina and American.

Not bad.. Not bad..

How about a tercet? Or triplet?

Triplet or tercet : any three lines of poetry, whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or unrhymed, metered or unmetered. I am a yellow dog who wishes he was a purple-spotted frog.

You are getting it!

And now.. a quatrain?

Q uatrain: four lines of poetry that usually have a rhyme scheme.

A quatrain is a poem, or a stanza within a poem, that consists always of four lines. It is the most common of all stanza forms in European poetry. The rhyming patterns include aabb, abab, abba, abcb.

Example: aabb (from William Blake, "The Tyger")

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

A cinquain? A quintain? It’s driving me insane!

You can do it!

USE THE FORCE!

Cinquain: a five-line poem

In summertime on Bredon

The bells they sound so clear;

Round both the shires they ring them In steeples far and near,

A happy noise to hear.

-A.E. Houseman, “Bredon Hill”

Does it ever end?

Sestet: six lines

O, young Lochnivar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war.

There never was knight like the young Lochnivar.

- Sir Walter Scott, “Lochnivar”

Nope….

Heptastich: seven lines

The flower that smiles today

Tomorrow dies;

All that we wish to stay

Tempts and then flies;

What is this world’s delight?

Lightning, that mocks the night,

Brief even as bright.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mutability”

Last one! I promise!

Octave: eight lines

Labor is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?

O body swayed to the music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

- William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children”

Quick quiz

Sestet: _________________________

Heptastich: ______________________

Octave: _________________________

Ok.. now Rhythm and Rhyme!

Techniques of Poetry: Sound

End Rhyme- the use of rhyming words at the ends of lines.

Internal rhyme: use of rhyming words within lines

Slant Rhyme- use of rhyming sounds that are similar but not identical, as in rave and rove or rot and rock. (consonance is a type of slant rhyme).

Rhyme

Ok, ok… how about

Alliteration and consonance?

Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds.

S ometimes s ome s tudents de cid e to s tand in st ead of s itting, to s peak when s omeone i s s peaking and s imply act s illy.

Consonance : same consonant sound

Avocado Girl

By: Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez

I am an ahuacatl of ancient day s ,

Of both past and present way s .

I am an aguacate of a familiar gree n ,

A nuyorbronxric an Quee n .

I am an avocado with rough Bronx sk in ,

both Latina and Americ an .

Ok keep it clean…

What is assonance?

Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds among words that begin or end with different consonants.

"D o y ou like bl ue ?".

H o w n o w br o wn c o w

Hear the m e llow w e dding b e lls.

— Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells"

Meter and rhythm: movement and pattern in a poem.

Metrical verse follows a set rhythmical pattern. Free verse or vers libre , does not.

The meter of a poem is its rhythmical pattern.

English verse is made of rhythmical units called feet. A foot is made up of weakly stressed ( ˘) and strongly stressed (/) syllables.

Poetry has feet? unbeliev able ˘ ˘ Pyrrhee or pyrrhic foot baseball / / Spondee, or spondaic foot feverish / ˘ ˘ Dactyl, or dactylic foot in a flash ˘ ˘/ Anapest, or anapestic foot freedom / ˘ Trochee, or trochaic foot afraid ˘ / Iamb, or iambic foot Example Pattern Type of Foot

How many feet does your poem have? A perfect knight he was, that all could plainly see. six feet hexameter That time of year thou may’st in me behold five feet pentameter O saddle up my milk white steed four feet tetrameter In the midst of mourning three feet trimeter After autumn Comes the winter two feet dimeter And I Shall fly away one foot monometer Example Number of feet Term

Iambic pentameter: ten syllables with 2nd, 4th 6th, 8th, 10th syllables accented.

Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter.

Techniques of Poetry: Meaning

Image- language that creates a concrete representation of an object or an experience.

Objective correlative- group of images that together create a given emotion in a reader or listener.

Figure of speech or trope is an expression that has more than a literal meaning.

Hyperbole- an exaggeration made for rhetorical effect.

Metaphor- figure of speech in which one t thing is spoken or written about as if it were another.

Tenor of the metaphor is the writer’s actual subject.

The vehicle of the metaphor is the other thing to which the subject is compared or likened.

Personification and similes are types of metaphor.

Techniques of Poetry: Meaning cont’d

Metonymy- the naming of an object associated with a thing instead of the name of the thing itself. Ex: The White House for the President, or The Crown for the King.

Simile- a comparison using like or as.

Synaesthesia- a figure of speech that combines in a single expression images related to two or more different senses. Ex. Singing light.

Synecdoche- a figure of speech in which the name of a part of something is used in place of the name of the whole or vice versa. Ex. Hired hands = laborers

Rhetorical techniques

Rhetorical techniques are extraordinary but literal use of language to achieve a particular effect.

Antithesis- a rhetorical technique in which words, phrases or ideas are strongly contrasted often by repeating a grammatical structure. Ex; to err is human, to forgive divine.”

Apostrophe- rhetorical technique in which an object or person is directly addressed.

Catalog- a list of people or things

Chiasmus- a rhetorical technique in which the order of occurrence of words or phrases is reversed. Ex.: we can weather changes but we can’t change the weather.

Parallelism- a rhetorical technique in which a writer emphasizes the equal value or weight of two or more ideas by expressing them in the same grammatical form, as in the phrase “with hope, with joy, and with love.”

Repetition- writers conscious reuse of a sound, a word, phrase sentence or other element.

Rhetorical question: a question asked for effect but not meant to be answered because the answer is clear from the context.

Structure and Language in Poetry

Allegory- a narrative in prose or verse, in which abstract ideas, principles human values or states d of mind are personified. The purpose of the allegory is to illustrate the significance of the ideas by dramatizing them. Parable and fable are kinds of allegory in which a moral I illustrated in the form of a story.

Allusion

A reference to a historical event, to Biblical, mythological or literary characters and incidents with which the reader is assumed to be familiar. Allusion may , with few words, enrich or extend the meaning of a phrase or idea or image, Allusion may also be used for ironic effect. In his poem Out Rober frost expects the reader to recall from Macbeth’s final soliloquy the line “Out out brief candle “ Such expressions as “ a Herculean task” or “Achilles heel” are also forms of allusion.

Ambiguity

Denotes uncertainty of meaning. In literature and especially poetry, we speak of intentional ambiguity, the use of language and images to suggest more than one meaning at the same time.

Connotation

The feelings attitudes images and associations of a word or expression. Connotations are usually said to be “positive’ or “negative”

Denotation

That which a word actually names, identifies, or “points to” Denotation is sometimes referred to as “the dictionary definition” of a work.

Figurative Language

The intentional and imaginative use of words and comparisons that are not literal but that create original, vivid, and often unexpected images and associations .

Hyperbole

An exaggerated expression also called overstatement, for a particular effect, which may be humorous, satirical, or intensely emotional. Hyperbole is the expression of folktales and legends.

Ex. I have mountains of work to do.

Irony

In general a tone or figure of speech in which there is a discrepancy a striking difference or contradiction between what is expressed and what is meant or expected. Irony maybe used to achieve a powerful effect indir4ectly. In satire, for example it may be used to ridicule or criticize.

Metaphor

Form of analogy or comparison where the author finds and expresses similarity between dissimilar things.

Onomatopoeia

The use of words or phrases that sound like the things to which they refer. Examples include the words meow, clink, boom, and mumble.

Oxymoron

Related to paradox, oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory or sharply contrasting terms are paired fro emphasis or ironic effect. Students favorite examples include “jumbo shrimp” and “army Intelligence.” Poets have written of the “wise fool” “ Joyful sadness” or and “eloquent silence.”

Paradox

An expression concept of situation whose literal statement is contradictory , yet which makes a truthful and meaningful observation. “ Less is more”

Satire

A form or style that uses elements of irony, ridicule, exaggeration , understatement, sarcasm, humor or absurdity to criticize human behavior or a society.

Simile

An expression that is a direct comparison of two things using words as like a s as if seems and appears.

“ I wandered lonely as a cloud” (William Wordsworth

Speaker

The narrative voice in a poem. Also the character who speaks in a dramatic monologue

Symbol

Anything that stands for or suggests something else.

Understatement

Expression in which something is presented as less important or significant than it really is. Understatement is often used for humorous, satiric or ironic effect.