Understanding Poetry Ms. Meyer / English 10

2 In poetry the sound and meaning of words are combined to express feelings, thoughts, and ideas. Vivid, strong words are the most important part of a poem

3 Poetry Elements Rhythm Sound Imagery Form Writers use many elements to create their poems. These elements include:

4 Rhythm Rhythm is the flow of the beat in a poem. Gives poetry a musical feel. Can be fast or slow, depending on mood and subject of poem. You can measure rhythm in meter, by counting the beats in each line. (See next two slides for examples.)

5 Rhythm Example When the night begins to fall And the sky begins to glow You look up and see the tall City of lights begin to grow – In rows and little golden squares The lights come out. First here, then there Behind the windowpanes as though A million billion bees had built Their golden hives and honeycombs Above you in the air. By Mary Britton Miller Where Are You Now? The rhythm in this poem is slow – to match the night gently falling and the lights slowly coming on.

6 Sound Rhyme Repetition Alliteration Onomatopoeia Writers love to use interesting sounds in their poems. After all, poems are meant to be heard. These sound devices include:

7 Rhyme Internal rhyme, or middle rhyme, is rhyme that occurs within a single line of verse, or between internal phrases across multiple lines. By contrast, rhyme between line endings is known as end rhyme. Rhyming sounds don’t have to be spelled the same way. (Cloud and allowed rhyme.) A poem does not have to rhyme to be considered poetry, but rhyme is the most common sound device used.

End Rhyme vs. Internal Rhyme End rhyme – look at the last syllables of the verses Ex: Whose woods these are I think I know, His house is in the village, though; Internal rhyme – look at the first and third lines below Ex: I am the daughter of Earth and Water, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. 8

9 Rhyme Scheme A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the end of each line of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme; lines designated with the same letter all rhyme with each other. AABB – lines 1 & 2 rhyme and lines 3 & 4 rhyme ABAB – lines 1 & 3 rhyme and lines 2 & 4 rhyme ABBA – lines 1 & 4 rhyme and lines 2 & 3 rhyme ABCB – lines 2 & 4 rhyme and lines 1 & 3 do not rhyme

10 Repetition Repetition occurs when poets repeat words, phrases, or lines in a poem. Creates a pattern. Increases rhythm. Strengthens feelings, ideas and mood in a poem.

11 Alliteration Alliteration is the repetition of the first consonant sound in words, as in the nursery rhyme “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” The snake slithered silently along the sunny sidewalk.

12 Onomatopoeia Words that represent the actual sound of something are words of onomatopoeia. Dogs “bark,” cats “purr,” thunder “booms,” rain “drips,” and the clock “ticks.” Appeals to the sense of sound.

13 Imagery Five Senses Imagery is the use of words to create pictures, or images, in your mind. Appeals to the five senses: smell, sight, hearing, taste and touch. Details about smells, sounds, colors, and taste create strong images. To create vivid images writers use figures of speech.

14 Figures of Speech Figures of speech are tools that writers use to create images, or “paint pictures,” in your mind. Similes, metaphors, and personification are three figures of speech that create imagery.

15 Forms of Poetry Couplet Sonnet Acrostic Haiku Concrete Poem Free Verse Some poems use stanzas while others do not. There are many forms of poetry including the:

Couplet: A pair of rhyming verse lines Ex: The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. Sonnet: a 14-line poem that expresses a single, complete thought, idea, usually in iambic pentameter. The Italian sonnet has 8 lines (octave) followed by a group of 6 lines (sestet). The English sonnet has 4 quatrains (4-line stanzas) followed by a couplet. 16

Acrostic An acrostic poem is a type of poem where the first, last or other letters in a line spell out a particular word or phrase. The most common and simple form of an acrostic poem is where the first letters of each line spell out the word or phrase. 17

18 Haiku A haiku is a Japanese poem with 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. (Total of 17 syllables.) Does not rhyme. Is about an aspect of nature or the seasons. Captures a moment in time. Little frog among rain-shaken leaves, are you, too, splashed with fresh, green paint? by Gaki

19 Concrete Poem A concrete poem (also called shape poem) is written in the shape of its subject. The way the words are arranged is as important what they mean. Does not have to rhyme.

20 Free Verse A free verse poem does not use rhyme or patterns. Can vary freely in length of lines, stanzas, and subject. Revenge When I find out who took the last cooky out of the jar and left me a bunch of stale old messy crumbs, I'm going to take me a handful and crumb up someone's bed. By Myra Cohn Livingston

21 Tone in Poetry Tone is the attitude that the writer of the poem exhibits toward his subject or audience. This attitude may be expressed in the subject matter of the poem, the poem’s characters, or the particular events that the poem describes. Furthermore, tone is conveyed in the style or manner of how the writer expresses his attitude and may come through in the poem’s structure or vocabulary. In order to figure out the tone of a poem, you should analyze the writer’s attitude just like you would interpret the attitude of someone speaking to you. We know that when others speak to us, their tone of voice suggests a particular attitude either toward us or the subject that they are discussing. Tone can be formal, informal, playful, angry, serious, humorous, etc. You describe tone with an adjective that usually depicts attitude or feeling. Tones can also change throughout a poem.

Analyzing Tone Poetry is already so packed with emotion that seeing a poet swearing right at the start may be a shock, but MacDiarmid does exactly that. He makes the disturbing move of insulting the dead soldiers, calling them "professional murderers." Usually, people try not to speak ill of the dead, but evidently MacDiarmid thinks so little of the mercenaries that he feels justified in insulting them. In the last two lines, he implies that, with such evil men in existence, human goodness persists only "with difficulty." These clues lead you to MacDiarmid's tone and his attitude toward his subject: contempt. Here is MacDiarmid's very angry "Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries": It is a God-damned lie to say that these Saved, or knew, anything worth any man's pride. They were professional murderers and they took Their blood money and impious risks and died. In spite of all their kind some elements of worth With difficulty persist here and there on earth.

Analyzing Tone continued This poem conveys a tone of melancholy : The birds have abandoned the mountains, and the footprints of human beings (which are signs of human presence) have "vanished" from thousands of roads. The old fisherman you see at the end is all alone, and the word "single," used for his boat, conveys loneliness. The last image is wintry indeed, with snow falling all around him. 23 From one thousand mountains the birds' flights are gone; From ten thousand byways the human track has vanished. In a single boat, an aged man, straw cloak and hat, Fishes alone; snow falls, cold in the river.

Contemporary Poetry Taylor Mali’s “What Teachers Make” - SbiVXo0 SbiVXo0 Jesse Parent’s “To the Boys Who May One Day Date my Daughter” - Z1Dth0c Z1Dth0c 24