Introduction to Poetry “The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.” ~Jean Cocteau “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” ~W. H. Auden

Introduction to Poetry POEM: a work of literature in verse that often, but not necessarily, employs meter, rhyme, or figurative language in an attempt to communicate an aesthetic experience or statement which cannot be fully paraphrased in prose.

Poetic Devices Speaker- voice behind the poem establishing a point of view (can be a persona) Situation- circumstances surrounding the poem Diction- choice of words Syntax- grammatical order of words

Poetic Devices Imagery- verbal expression of a sensory detail Irony- contradiction of expectation (verbal, situational, or dramatic) Symbol: an object or action that stands for something beyond itself Rhythm: The metrical flow of sound determined by the placement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

Metaphor: A comparison that does not use like or as. Example: Her hands are slow blue rivers. Personification: giving inanimate objects or abstract concepts animate or living qualities. Simile: comparison between two essentially unlike things using words such as "like," as," or "as though“

Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words Example: ". . . like a wanderer white" Assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds Example: "I rose and told him of my woe“ Consonance: repetition of similar consonants

Rhyme: When the final vowel and consonant sounds of words are the same (i.e., mouse/house, low/toe). End – ends of words match exactly (moon/spoon) Slant – words rhyme approximately (majority/society) Internal – words within the lines of poetry

Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter Enjambment: when lines of poetry spill over into the next line without punctuation. Stanza: unit of a poem often repeated in the same form throughout a poem; a unit of poetic lines ("verse paragraph") Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter Free verse: lines with no prescribed pattern or structure .

Couplet: a pair of lines, usually rhymed Sonnet: fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject is traditionally that of love.

Elizabethan (Shakespearean) Sonnet: A sonnet probably made popular by Shakespeare with the following rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet: A form of sonnet made popular by Petrarch with the following rhyme scheme: abbaabba cdecde OR cdcdcd Haiku – Eastern poetic form that has 3 lines and 17 syllables (5,7,5)

Read the poem out loud (and re-read it again!) The sound of a poem is really important to it’s meaning—the poet made deliberate (purposeful) choices about how he or she wrote the poem Hearing the poem read out loud will help you to get the rhythm of the poem (the beat or how the poem “flows”)

Consider the audience and purpose of the poem: Look for punctuation: Poetry doesn’t follow the same rules as other forms of writing—the punctuation may be in odd places or not there at all Consider the audience and purpose of the poem: The audience is the person (or people) the poem was written for (this can be the poet themselves or others). The purpose of the poem may be to entertain, inform, or persuade (convince).

Consider whether or not the poem is meant to be performed: A poem will have a very different impact (how it affects the audience) depending on whether or not it is meant to be read or performed There may be more than one speaker or narrator in a poem. The speaker or narrator is the “person” whose point of view or “voice” is saying/telling the words