Poetry: Versification: The Principles and Practice of Writing Verse Poetry Unit English 1A 2010

What is a poem? Take 2 minutes and jot down all the elements that a work must include to be considered a poem? What is the length? What is the point of view? Etc.

A Poem A poem is a composition written for performance by the human voice. Simultaneous engagement of eye and ear What must your eye be attentive to? Your ear? What a poem says or means is the result of how it is said.

My Papa’s Waltz By Theodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scarped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

Classification Poetry can be classified into 3 broad categories: Epic: a long narrative poem, frequently extending to several “books” or sections John Milton’s Paradise Lost Homer’s The Odyssey

Classification Dramatic: Poetry, monologue, or dialogue, written in the voice of a character assumed by the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess

Classification Lyric: originally, a song performed in ancient Greece to the accompaniment of a small harplike instrument called a lyre. The term is now used for any fairly short poem in the voice of a single speaker, although that speaker may sometimes quote others. “I” in the poem is not necessarily the author.

Rhythm The sequence of syllables (stressed and unstressed) What we hear when we read the poem aloud

Meter If a poem’s rhythm is structured into a recurrence of regular/approximately equal units, we call it meter Accentual-syllabic meter: most common metrical system in English poetry Iambic: an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable It was/ the best/ of times/ it was/ the worst/ of times Trochaic: a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable London/ bridge is/ falling/ down

Meter Anapestic: two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable The Assyr/ ian came down/ like the wolf/ on the fold Dactylic: a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables Woman much/ missed, how you/ call to me, call to me

Meter Spondaic: two successive syllables with approximately equal strong stresses Listen!/ you hear/ the grat/ in roar Pyrrhic: two successive unstressed or lightly stressed syllables

Meter: Line Lengths Monometer: one foot Diameter: two feet Trimeter: three feet Tetrameter: four feet Pentameter: five feet Hexameter: six feet Heptameter: seven feet Octameter: eight feet

Varying the Pattern of Poetry An important factor in varying the pattern of a poem is the placing of its pauses, or caesurae End stopped Run-on lines Enjambment: the thrust of the incompleted sentence carries on over the end of the verse line

Rhyme End rhyme Internal rhyme Slant rhyme Eye rhymes Vowel rhyme (assonance)

Poetic Form Blank Verse: unrhymed iambic pentameters; standard meter for Elizabethan poetic drama; no verse form is closer to the natural rhythms of spoken English Couplet: two lines of verse, usually coupled by rhyme Tercet: a stanza of three lines linked with a single rhyme

Poetic Form Quatrain: a stanza of four lines, rhymed or unrhymed The Sonnet: a poem of fourteen iambic pentameters linked by an intricate rhyme scheme Villanelle: a French verse; five tercets rhyming aba followed by a quatrain rhyming abaa