Intro to Poetry

1. The Elements of Poetry
Poetry is hard to define. Even poets argue among themselves about
what makes a poem a poem. There are some common
characteristics, however, that we can use to help us differentiate
between poetry and prose. (1) It should look like a poem, meaning
that lines don’t run to the margins. Some lines are not even
sentences. (2) There are usually some musical devices that give
the poem a song-like, lyrical quality. (3) Images are conveyed
through sensory details and figurative language. (4) The poem has
some form to hold it together. Some poems actually have a
prescribed form like haikus and sonnets. (5) The poem has some
meaning, image or emotion it wants to share with the reader.
These three things are shown by the above four. That makes a
poem!

2. To critically analyze a poem, we must look at its elements and see
what they are doing to the poem. Then we can infer a meaning to it.
The following slides will take us through the elements so that we
can recognize them, and then we will try to put it all together and
analyze the meaning of the poem.

3. Imagery
• Imagery is the senses the poem evokes in the
reader. Imagery puts the reader in the poem. It
helps the reader to “see” the poem.
• The tools of imagery are
– Senses : sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, and emotion.
– Figurative language : metaphor, simile, personification,
hyperbole, etc.
– Contrast

4. Sensory details
Sensory details touch the five senses. They
make the poem vivid to the reader.
Let’s look at the sensory details in the poem
“Those Winter Sundays.”

5. Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Robert Hayden

6. In “Those Winter Sundays” Hayden has caused us to experience
several senses. “…[B]lueblack cold” certainly makes us feel how
cold it was. When the father’s hands are described as “cracked
hands that ached” we can feel the roughness. He describes the cold
“splintering and breaking.” We can hear the trees and ice crack.
And then the rooms “were warm” when the boy got up. We know
how that feels on a cold day. When the boy fears “the chronic
angers of that house” and when he speaks “indifferently to him” we
know what emotions the boy is feeling.
Hayden has caused us to feel cold, cracked hands and warm rooms.
We hear splintering and breaking and feel anger and indifference.
These sensory details make the poem come alive to us and help us to
feel what the boy felt on those winter Sundays.

7. Figurative Language
• Figurative language is words not meant to be
taken literally. The words are symbolic. We know
these images as metaphor, simile, personification,
hyperbole, and others. Because the poet is
comparing a less familiar object to a common one,
the comparison makes the familiar image stronger.
• The next slides will give examples of each type of
image.

8. Metaphor/Simile
Metaphors and similes compare something in
the poem to something familiar outside the
poem. Making the connection requires
background knowledge for the
metaphor/simile to be meaningful to the
reader.
Look at the metaphors in the poem, “frost.”

9. Frost
How does
The plain
Transparency
Of water
Sprout these
Lacy fronds
And plumes
And tendrils?
And where,
Before window-
Panes, did
They root
Their lush forests,
Their cold
Silver jungles?

10. The author of this poem compared the frost on a window to the
lacy fronds, plumes, and tendrils of a fern. In the last stanza she
has expanded the comparison to “crystal forests” and “silver
jungles.” Let us picture that in our minds. Can we “see” the frost
on the window?

11. Personification
When an author uses personification, he gives
human characteristics to a non-human object.
Look at the human characteristics used by Howard
Nemerov in his poem “The Vacuum.” Also notice
how personification reveals the speaker’s attitude
toward housekeeping.

12. The Vacuum
The house is quiet now
The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,
Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth
Grinning into the floor, maybe at my
Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.
I’ve lived this way long enough,
But when my old woman died her soul
Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear
To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust
And the woolen mice, and begin to howl
Because there is old filth everywhere
She used to crawl, in corner and under the stair.
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on and howls, biting at air.

13. Hyperbole/ Exaggeration
The poet uses hyperbole to overstate
something to reveal the truth.
In a poem called “Sow” Sylvia Plath
describes how much the sow eats. She
writes, “Of kitchen slops and, stomaching
no constraint,/ Proceeded to swill/ The
seven seas and every earthquaking
continent.”
How much did the sow eat?

14. Contrast
Poets use contrast to further show images. Antithesis
strengthens the differences of the image.
In the next poem Ms. Piercy describes the
ambivalence of the speaker’s love relationship by
writing these contrasting images: “…cold and hot
winds of our breath,/ as we make and unmake in
passionate/ diastole and systole the rhythm/ of our
unbound bonding…”

15. Music
The poet uses musical devices to make the
poem song-like. In fact, some poems
are/were songs.
The musical devices we will discuss, and be
responsible for, are onomatopoeia, rhythm,
rhyme, letters, repetition, pause, and
enjambment.

16. Onomatopoeia
We are familiar with onomatopoeia even if we don’t
understand the word. When two cars collide, what
sound do they make? Crash! That is
onomatopoeia – words that make the sound they
are imitating.
Here is a poem by Eve Merriam appropriately titled
“Onomatopoeia.” See how many sounds are
heard.

17. Onomatopoeia
The rusty spigot
sputter,
utters
a sputter,
spatters a smattering of drops,
gashes wider;
slash,
splatters,
scatters,
spurts,
finally stops sputtering
and plash!
gushes rushes splashes
clear water dashes.

18. Rhythm
Rhythm is the beat of a poem. It is the pattern
of stressed and unstressed syllables. There
are several rhythm patterns in poetry which
we will not go into in this presentation
which will be shown later.
Let’s look at the following poem and see if
we can identify the pattern of stressed and
unstressed beats.

19. Counting-Out Rhyme
Silver bark of beech , and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.
Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apples,
Bark of popple.
Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and bran-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.
Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.

20. Rhyme
Exact rhyme are words that have the exact
same-sounding ending, like cat and hat
Slant rhyme words sound similar, but aren’t
exact, like one and down.
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming
words.
Look at the following poem and identify the
rhyme scheme.

21. Reapers
Jean Toomer
Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground, I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.

22. Letters
Repetitive initial consonant sounds in a poem are
called alliteration.
Repetition of other consonant sounds is called
consonance.
Repetitive vowel sounds are called assonance.
The following poem has many examples of each.
See how many you can find. Also notice what
other element of poetry you can find.

23. Fueled by Marcie Hans
Fueled
by a million
man-made
wings of fire –
the rocket tore a tunnel
through the sky –
and everybody cheered,
Fueled
only by a thought from God –
the seedling
urged its way
through the thickness of black –
and as it pierced
the ceiling of the soil –
and launched itself
up into outer space –
no
one
even
clapped.

24. Repetition
• Poems also create music through the
repetition of words and lines.
• Look at the poem “One Perfect Rose” by
Dorothy Parker. One line is repeated three
times. Notice how the meaning of the line
changes by the third repetition.

25. One Perfect Rose
by Dorothy Parker
A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure with scented dew still wet –
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the flowerlet;
“My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.”
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

26. Pause
When we read poetry, we must be careful to read it
with the punctuation the author provided. Our
tendency is to pause at the end of each line when
we should pause at the punctuation marks.
When pauses come in the middle of the line, we call
it a caesura. When the line continues to the next
line we call it enjambment.
The next slides show examples of each.

27. Enjambment
We Real Cool
by Gwendolyn Brooks
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June.

28. Notice that the enjambment forces you to pause before the end of the
line. The word we is emphasized and gives the poem a syncopated
rhythm, similar to the rhythm in jazz. This is appropriate since the poem
is about the period of the 30’s when Prohibition was in effect and jazz
was king.

29. Caesura
The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town.
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
This is only the first stanza of the poem, but you can see how effective the caesura is in creating
the sound of the waves.

30. Form
• Form is the structure of the poem. Any type
of writing must have something to hold it
together.
The structure can be created through many
means: meter, stanza, rhyme scheme, or set
patterns of poetry like sonnet, haiku ,
concrete, and others.

31. Meter is the set pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. The
main meter patterns are
Iambic -- U/ (one foot)
Trochee - /U
Anapest -- UU/
Dactyl -- //U
Meter

32. Iambic
Iambic is the most common pattern of meter since it is the way we
generally talk . It is the unstressed/stressed syllable pattern.
Here is an example of iambic lines:
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, (/U|U/|U/|U/)
The bridal of the earth and sky; (U/|U/|U/|U/)
The dew shall weep thy fall to night, (U/|U/|U/|U/)
For thou must die.(U/|U/|) (from “Virtue” by George Herbert)

33. Trochee
Trochee is the reverse of an iamb. It is a stressed/unstressed
pattern like in this line:
Piping down the valleys wild, (/U|/U|/U|/)
Piping songs of pleasant glee, (/U|/U|/U|/)
On a cloud I saw a child, (/U|/U|/U|/)
From “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake

34. Anapest
Anapest is a meter pattern that sounds like
hoof-beats. UU/|UU/
A tutor who tooted the flute (/|UU/|UU/|/)
Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.

35. Stanza
• A stanza in poetry is like a paragraph in
prose. The author divides the poem by
grouping words into stanzas. We can often
see the structure of the poem by the
author’s use of stanza.

36. Rhyme Scheme
• Having a certain rhyme scheme also is a
way to give structure to poetry.
• Look at the rhyme scheme in the poem
“Cross” by Langston Hughes. See how it
holds the poem together. Also notice the
use of stanzas. Why did Hughes put these
words in the stanza?

37. Cross
Langston Hughes
My old man’s a white old man
And my old mother’s black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I’m sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I’m gonna die
Being neither white or black?

38. Pattern
• Some poems are written in a set form like
sonnets, haikus, pantoums, limericks,
concrete, etc.
These patterns sometimes require a regular
rhyme scheme or meter; or number of
syllables or lines.
Look at the following examples:

39. Sonnet
• The sonnet is the requirement of every
experienced poet. You must write one!
• It is fourteen lines of rhymed iambic
pentameter.
• The first 12 lines pose a problem, ask a
question, or set up a situation.
• The couplet at the end solves the problem,
answers the question or settles the situation.

40. Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s
Day? – William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? a
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: b
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, a
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: b
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, c
And often is his gold complexion dimmed: d
And every fair from fair sometime declines, c
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed; d
But thy eternal summer shall not fade, e
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; f
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, e
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: f
So long as men can breathe, or eye can see, g
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. g

41. The previous sonnet is a famous one by
William Shakespeare. It follows exactly the
sonnet pattern. Iambic pentameter means that
it has five feet of iamb meter (U/). The rhyme
scheme is called Shakespearen because
Shakespeare used it in all his sonnets.
Look back at the poem and notice the
rhyme and meter. Then see what the first four
lines are talking about and how the couplet at
the end completes it.

42. Haiku
Haiku is an ancient Japanese pattern. It is
three lines of seventeen syllables separated
into 5 syllables in the first line, 7 syllables
in the second, and 5 in the last. But a haiku
is much more than that. Look at the
following haiku written by Mike Reiss.

43. Haiku
Any moron can
Write haikus. Just stop at the
Seventeenth syllab

44. I think he was trying to be funny. Did you laugh?
Real haiku also have other characteristics besides
syllables.
1. Haiku depend on imagery.
2. Haiku are condensed; the poet leaves out all
unnecessary words.
3. Haiku are concerned with emotions; nature reflects
these emotions.
4. Haiku rely heavily on the power of suggestion or
connotation.

45. Here is a real Japanese haiku written by Japanese writer
Kobayashi Issa.
A gentle spring rain
Look, a rat is lapping
Sumida River.
Here is one by American author Richard Wright.
Over spring mountains
A star ends the paragraph
Of a thunderstorm.
Finally, one by a former student, Jonathan Martin.
Praying like a priest
Then snapping with God’s power,
The mantis chews love.

46. Pantoum
• A pantoum is an old Malaysian form of
poetry that repeats certain lines. You start
off with 8 original lines and repeat certain
ones to complete 16 lines. Look at the
pattern in the next poem.

47. Deserted House
Robert King
Questions linger in the tall grass. Over the long abandoned house
The clouds pile up, filling the skythe night birds veer and dart away
without an answer to the grass reflected in broken windows
or the last sunlight slanting low. and we are alone by the house.
The clouds pile up, filling the skyThe night birds veer and dart away.
over the long abandoned house Questions linger in the grass
with the last sunlight slanting low and we are alone by the house
reflected broken windows. without an answer to the grass.

48. Limerick
• The limerick has a strict pattern of five lines
in an anapestic meter with a rhyme scheme
of aa, bb, a. The limerick is almost always
a light, humorous poem. Here is an
example:

49. I sat next the Duchess at tea.
It was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were simply abominable
And everyone thought they were me!
-Anonymous

50. Concrete poetry
Some poetry takes the shape of what the poem is about. Here is
one called Poem by Philip G. Tannenbaum:
Ido Can you figure out what this is about?
Ntl
Ike
Tel
Eph
One
Boo
ths

51. Putting it all Together
or how to analyze a poem
• Now that we have discussed the poetic
tools, let’s apply them in the discussion of a
poem. The main tools the poet uses are
imagery, music and form. Look for these
elements in the last poem of the
presentation. Discuss how the poet creates
and effect by the use of these tools.

52. IIntroduction to Poetry -ntroduction to Poetry -
Billy CollinsBilly Collins
I ask them to take a poemI ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the lightand hold it up to the light
like a color slidelike a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poemI say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's roomor walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterskiI want them to waterski
across the surface of a poemacross the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to doBut all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with ropeis tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hoseThey begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.to find out what it really means.

53. First Verse Paragraph: “I ask them to take a poem”
In the first verse paragraph, consisting of three lines, the speaker
who is beginning a lesson on poetry announces that he “ask[s]
[the students] to take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a
color slide.” Metaphorically, the speaker/teacher is implying that
a poem contains images that may be viewed if light is passed
through it.
“Light” refers to the simple act of using the eyes to read the poem
closely, as one would look closely when peering through a “color
slide.” He also implies that the poem has color, but again the
student must look closely to see it.

54. Second Verse Paragraph: “or press an ear against its hive”
The second verse paragraph consists of only one line, but it shifts
it metaphor from the eyes looking through a color slide to the ears
“press[ing] against” a beehive. He asks the students to listen to the
poem carefully, as they would do if they were curious to hear the
humming of bees busy inside their hive making honey.
The teacher/speaker is thus averring that poetry holds sweetness
that can be heard, as well as colorful images that can be seen, and
he encourages his students to look and listen carefully in order to
perceive these pleasurable realities.

55. Third Verse Paragraph: “I say drop a mouse into a poem”
Then the speaker/teacher becomes a science teacher instructing
the students to place a rodent inside the poem, as one would do in
a maze, and then see how the mouse behaves. The “mouse” is the
initial interpretation that the student will venture: what if such
and such means such and such, then what happens.

56. Fourth Verse Paragraph: “or walk inside the poem's room”
Then the speaker offers another trick for teasing out an
interpretation; he asks the students to “walk inside the poem's
room / and feel the walls for a light switch.” They are to
immerse their minds fully in the words to try to detect the
connection that reveals the poem’s meaning.

57. Fifth Verse Paragraph: “I want them to waterski”
The speaker/teacher then explains that he wants his students “to
waterski / across the surface of a poem / waving at the author's name
on the shore.” He wants them to continue playing with the poem,
giving perhaps a bit of recognition to the poet, but not allowing the
poet to dictate how the poem will click inside the student’s head.

58. Sixth Verse Paragraph: “But all they want to do”
Then the speaker laments that instead of these colorful and useful
ways of looking at and engaging a poem, “all they want to do / is
tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of
it.” The students seem to think that the poem is a thief or other
culprit that deliberately tries to thwart their understanding.

59. Seventh Verse Paragraph: “They begin beating it with a hose”
This attitude is so pervasive that the speaker reiterates this
belligerent strategy. Once they have the poem tied to the chair,
they begin “beating it with a hose,” to try to get it to yield up the
bounty that would be graciously offered, if only they would treat
the poem with gentle playfulness and loving attention.