Poetry

POETRYReferences :
Adventure in Reading by Fannie Safier
Introduction to English Literature by Sunardi, S.S.,
M.Hum

Definition
Poetry:
•is composed of carefully chosen words expressing
great depth of meaning.
•uses specific devices, such as connotation, sound
and rhythm, to express the appropriate combination
of meaning and emotion.
•a form of writing that uses not only words, but also
form, patterns of sounds, imagery, and figurative
language, to convey the message.

Poetic Devices
•The speaker
•Diction
•Imagery
•Figurative language
•Sound Patterns
•Structures
•Tone

The speaker
• The created narrative voice of the poem (i.e.
the person the reader is supposed to imagine
is talking)
• One aid to understanding a poem is to identify
its speaker. The knowledge of who or what
the speaker is will help us to understand
other things about the poem:
*where and when the poem is set,
*what situation it describes,
*what story it tells.

Diction
• Is about choice of words
• In their diction, poets aim for the clearness
and effectiveness
• The poets must consider a word’s:
– Denotation: a word’s literal, its definition
according to dictionary
– Connotation: the additional meanings a
word gains because of its association.
For example, springtime has connotation of
youth, rebirth, and romance

Imagery
• Words and phrases used specifically to help
the reader to imagine each of the senses:
smell, touch, sight, hearing, and taste.
• Two types of imagery:
– Visual imagery:
“…masses of flowers load the cherry branches and
color some bushes yellow and some red…” (The
Widow’s Lament in Springtime by William Carlos
Iliams)
– Auditory imagery:
“Listen! You hear the grating roar of pebbles which
the waves draw back, and fling. … with tremulous
cadence slow, and bring the eternal of sadness in”
(Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold)

* Imagery
Poets attempt to share their
experiences with us by appealing
to our imaginations.
One way in which a poet makes
an experience seem real, vivid,
and fresh to us is through the
skillful use of imagery

Let’s try to enjoy
Langston
Hughes’s poem
Dream Deferred
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 a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load
Or does it explode?
For his poetry, Hughes
drew on modern folk
and jazz rhythms, the
kind of speech and
music he heard in the
black community.
Hughes’s work, down-
to-earth, distinctly
American kind of poetry.

Figurative language
• Language that represents one thing in terms
of another.
• We may describe an action or a feeling by
comparing it to something else, for example:
~I felt like a worm
~We ate like kings
• Expression that describe one thing in terms
of another are called figures of speech.
• Figures of speech help to make language
richer in meaning and more imaginative.

• Emily Dickinson, describing a violent storm,
uses this figure of speech :
There came a wind like a bugle
to evoke the sound of a shrill wind
• Through figurative language poets can
express fresh, exciting, or unusual
relationships between things, and so give us
new insights into what we see and feel.

The basic figures of speech are:
1. Simile
~is a direct or explicit comparison between two,
usually unrelated things, indicating a likeness or
similarity between some attribute found in both things.
~a comparison using like or as.
~ The dawn comes up like thunder
2. Metaphor
~is an implied comparison between two, usually
unrelated things, indicating a likeness or analogy
between attributes found in both things.
~unlike the simile, a metaphor does not use like or
as to indicate the comparison.he road was a ribbon
of
~Your eyes are a ocean I could swim in.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight.
• Your eyes are a ocean I could swim in.

3. Personification
 When a lifeless object or idea is given human
characteristics or qualities and spoken of as if alive –
gives personality to it.
 The attribution of human characteristics to an
inanimate object.
 An object, emotion or abstract quality can be
personified.
 Gentle waves crept up the beach whispering quietly to
the sand.
The sun beat mercilessly down.
4. Synecdoche
 The technique of mentioning a part of something to
represent the whole.
 All hands on deck! (hands=sailors)

5. Metonym
~is the substitution of a word naming an object for
another word closely associated with it.
~Pay tribute to the crown. (crown=king)
The White House has decided(White House=President)
6. Symbolism
~The consistent use throughout a literary work of an
object to refer to a concept.
~The word or image signifies something other than
what it literally denotes.
~The practice of representing things by symbols, or of
giving things a symbolic meaning.
~TS Eliot’s use of ‘the river’ to symbolise life
The sun is often used as a symbol for light,
warmth and clarity.

Sound Patterns
• Poets, like musician, are sensitive to the
effect of sound. By varying rhythms, they can
excite different emotions in the reader.
• They may use harsh or melodious sounds to
convey a particular mood.
• In combination, rhyme and other devices of
repetition can give a poem a rich texture of
sound, which is pleasurable in itself and
which also enhances the poem’s meaning.

1.Rhythm
• The pattern of beats or stresses in a poem.
• Poets use patterns of stressed and unstressed
syllables to create a regular rhythm.
• Try beating out the rhythm with a finger as you read
these lines:
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was
more than love –
I and my Annabel Lee;
2. Rhyme
• The repetition of the same or similar sounds,
usually in stressed syllables at the ends of
lines, but sometimes within a line.
• Internal rhyme (rhyme occurs within a line of
poetry)
The splendor falls on castle walls

3. Onomatopoeia
• Sound is matched to meaning of the words.
• The word sounds like the action – resembles the sound
it describes.
• Words which imitate natural sounds.
• “Buzz”, said the bee
4. Alliteration
• The repetition of the same consonantal sound in
several words placed close together or stressed
syllables e.g. on the same line of a poem to create an
image and sound effect, either gentle or harsh.
• Word group where most of the words start with the
same sound.
• Six small sausages smeared with sauce.

5. Assonance
• The echoing or repetition of vowel sounds – a e i o u
(rather than consonants) to create an image.
• The creation of a sound effect by combination of vowel
sounds.
• feet, need, week.
• day, shape, wake
• The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains.

Assignment:
• Find one poem and analyse by using three
kinds of poetic devices.
• Add your impression about the poem and the
message that you find in the poem.
• Write in 2-3 pages, times new roman, font 12,
space 1,5, paper A4.
• Submit the assignment on Monday, 28th
Sept
2015 in my locker.
Happy Idul Adha,
May God always bless us all

STRUCTURES
• The basic unit of structure in most poems is the
stanza.
• A stanza is:
 Any group of lines that forms a division of a poem.
 It may be based on:
o the number of lines
o rhyme scheme
o rhythm
o or other devices of repetition
 A new stanza generally marks a division in thought, so
that each one works something like a paragraph.

• One of the most popular poetic
forms is the sonnet.
• Sonnet is:
a fourteen-line poem with a
traditional rhyme scheme.
for example:
 The Petrarchan sonnet
 The Shakespearean sonnet

• Free verse has become a popular form in
20th
C:
 It is called free verse because no set pattern controls
it
 It may rhyme in some places, and not in others or not
rhyme at all
 Its lines may be of different lengths
 It may have no dominant rhythm, or it may switch
rhythms as it progresses
• Free verse enable poets to create effects that
are not possible within the restrictions of a
set pattern
• Poets are freer to fit sounds and rhythms
more closely to the meaning of a poem

TONE
• Tone:
 Shows the speaker’s mood, the emotion
behind the words.
 Shows its speaker’s attitude toward the
subject as well as toward the audience
 Results from all the different parts of the
poem working together.
• Although there may be shifts of mood
within a work, poets generally aim for
uniformity of tone.

TYPES OF POETRY
1. Lyric
 generally short poems that express an intense emotional
response of the speaker to some person, place, object or
idea.
 the examples are:
a. Simple Lyric :
embraces a wide variety of poems and is characterized by subjectivity, imagination,
melody and emotion.
b. Song :
short lyric poem which has a specific melodious quality and is intended to be sung
c. Sonnet :
a poem expressing of 14 lines with a formal rhyme
d. Elegy :
a poem expressing lament or grief for the dead.
e. Ode:

2. Narrative
 It tells a story
 It includes:
a. Ballad:
short simple narrative poem composed to be sung and is orally told
from one generation to another
b. Metrical Romance:
a long rambling love story in verse which is centered around the
adventures of knights and lords, and their royal ladies during the
age of chivalry.
c. Epic:
a long, majestic narrative poem which tells the adventures of a
traditional hero and the development of a nation.

3. Dramatic
 Present characters who speak to other
characters or to an implied audience.
 May be in the form of a dialogue between two or
more people, or the speaker may be talking to
someone who does not answer but whose
presence is understood.

Poetry

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