Analyzing Poetry Perrine’s Literature

What is poetry?  Language that says more –Provides information –Concerns experience –Persuades  Language that allows readers to participate in experiences

What is poetry NOT?  A moral, lesson or sermon  Beautiful

Reading a poem  Read more than once  Use a dictionary  Listen to the words in your mind  Pay attention to what the poem says  Look at the grammar  Read aloud

Reading aloud Don’t  Read in a monotone voice  Over read  Add emotion  Read too fast  Read too slow  Drop your voice at the end of a line Do  Read with rhythmical patterns  Stop at grammatical marks  Pause slightly or hold a word a little longer at the end of a line without punctuation

Understanding Poetry  Paraphrase- restate in plain and direct language –Maybe longer or shorter –Clarifies main idea –Makes theme accessible, not a moral  Three important questions: 1. Who is the speaker? 2. What is the occasion? 3. What is the POEM’S central purpose?

SPEAKER Not necessarily the poet, more often not. May have bearing on the poet’s life but not be about the poet. CENTRAL PURPOSE Relate purpose and details to judge the poem’s value Understand by what means the purpose is achieved.

Denotation & Connotation The average word has three parts: 1. Sound 2. Denotation 3. Connotation

Denotation Dictionary meaning of a word Multiple meanings allow poets to use various ideas with one word

Connotation Suggested meanings of words Allows the poet to enrich the meaning of his words and therefore his poems

Imagery  A way of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching something through the words of a poem.  Vividness depends on detail  Used to –Convey emotion –Relate experience –Suggest ideas

What is figurative language? Language that should not be taken seriously

What is a figure of speech? A way of saying something and meaning something else

Figurative Language 1  Simile-expressed comparison  Metaphor-created comparison (there are 4 forms)  Personification-sub-form of metaphor in which the figurative element is always human

 Apostrophe-addressing something nonhuman or someone absent or dead  Metonymy-use of something closely related for the thing actually meant  Synecdoche-use of part for the whole  Dead metaphor-metonymy or synecdoche so overused it no longer seems figurative

Effectiveness of figurative language  Provides pleasure in imagination  Adds to sensory images of poetry  Adds emotion to statements of poetry  Says much in a smaller space

Deciding what figures of speech are meant to accomplish  What use is being made of the figure of speech?  How does the figure of speech contribute to the poem?

Figurative Language 2 Symbol and Allegory

Symbol  Something that means more than what is says  Something that functions figuratively and literally at the same time

Problems with symbols  Most symbols are so general to suggest a variety of meanings  We can’t make a symbol mean anything we choose  Symbol must be tied to the facts of the poem  Better to miss a symbol that try to find one on every line

Allegory  A narrative or description that has a second, more important, meaning beneath the surface  Meanings tend to be more definite than symbols are

Figurative Language 3 Paradox, Hyperbole, Understatement & Irony

Paradox  Apparent contradiction that is somehow true  Value of paradox is shock value  Impossibility startles then absurdity reveals a truth.

Overstatement or Understatement  Overstatement is the same as hyperbole  Exaggeration in the service of truth  Adds emphasis  Misused it can become ridiculous  Understatement is simply saying less than you mean  Importance is in what is said and also HOW it is said

Irony  Verbal irony is saying the opposite of what is meant  Sarcasm – verbal irony that is meant to wound  Satire – verbal irony that is meant to ridicule human folly in the hope of reform

Dramatic/Situational Dramatic  Discrepancy between what the speaker says and means  Conveys attitude  Illuminates character Situational  Discrepancy exists between the actual circumstances and those that seem appropriate or what actually happens

Allusion  Reference to something in history or literature  Suggests more than what it says  Reinforces emotion  Main sources- Bible and mythology

Meaning and Idea Meaning  Total meaning is the experience the poem communicates  Prose meaning is like a prose paraphrase Idea  Concerned with story, description, emotion, character or a combination  Only part of the total experience of the poem  Good idea alone does not make a good poem

Tone: the poet’s attitude toward the subject  Harder to determine when written rather than spoken; must rely on  Connotation  Imagery  Metaphor(figures of speech)  Irony & understatement  Sentence construction

Musical Devices  Alliteration  Assonance  Consonanc e  Rhyme  Repetition

Repetition  An essential element in all music  Of initial consonant sounds is alliteration  Of vowel sounds is assonance  Of final consonant sounds is consonance  Of accented vowel sound or successive consonant sounds is rhyme

3 questions for evaluation  What is the poem’s central purpose? (understanding)  How fully has this purpose been accomplished?  How important is this purpose?

How fully has the poem’s purpose been accomplished?  Judges perfection  No excess words  No words that do not contribute to the experience  No words just used to fulfill meter  Each word is the best for meaning  Sounds and organization are the best

Excellence in poetry  Combination of thought, emotion, language and sound are original  Three ways to fail at excellence –Sentimentality –Rhetorical –Didactic

Sentimentality  More emotion than needed  “tear-jerker” literature  Emotion over experience

Rhetorical poetry  Language without emotion  Artificially eloquent  Superficial and trite  General

Didactic poetry  Purpose is to preach or teach  Communicates moral or lesson without the experience of the poem