What Is Poetry?

No, no, a thousand Smurf times, NO!!!

How did he breathe in this thing?

Adrienne Rich “Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.” “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”

Poetry may be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language.

Practical language helps us with the ordinary business of living. For example, let’s say you wanted to learn about eagles.

Wrong eagles.

Wow. You’re actually getting colder.

THERE you go! Okay, how do you find information about these eagles?

The language of poets is concerned with experience, specifically creating significant new experiences for readers.

Literature can be used as a gear for stepping up the intensity and increasing the range of our experience and as a glass for clarifying it. This is the literary use of language, and it allows us imaginatively to participate in the experience. This can happen by either broadening or deepening our experience.

The four dimensions of poetry 1.Intellectual dimension 2.Sensuous dimension 3.Emotional dimension 4.Imaginative dimension

“The moral of the poem is…” Two false approaches often taken to poetry can be avoided: 1.Always looking for a lesson or moral instruction. 2.Always expecting poetry to be beautiful.

“Mr. Reiff? I am so lost.” “No, you’re not.”

“The Eagle” He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls. Alfred, Lord Tennyson ( )

How to read poetry 1.Read a poem more than once. 2.Keep a dictionary by you and use it. 3.Read the punctuation correctly. 4.Read so as to hear the sounds of the words in your mind. 5.Always pay careful attention to what the poem is saying. 6.Practice reading poems aloud.

First question Who is the speaker? “Duh, Mr. Reiff. The speaker is the poet.” “Leave my classroom. Now.”

The speaker Always assume that the speaker is someone other than the poet. Even when poets do speak directly and express their own thoughts and emotions, they usually do so as representative human beings. In order to determine the speaker, ask yourself this: “What persona is the author creating or inhabiting?”

Second question What is the central purpose of the poem? Is the speaker telling a story, revealing human character, imparting a vivid expression of a scene, expressing a mood or emotion, or conveying some idea or attitude? Whatever the answer, determine it for yourself and define it as precisely as possible.