1. Poetry Notes

2. What is poetry?
Poetry (noun) - writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.

3. POINT OF VIEW IN POETRY POET The poet is the author of the poem.
SPEAKER
The speaker of the poem is the “narrator” of the poem.

4. POETRY FORM FORM LINE STANZA when we were still first rate
ANIMALS
Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth
it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners
the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water
I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days
Frank O’hara

5. KINDS OF STANZAS Couplet = a two-line stanza
Triplet (Tercet) = a three-line stanza
Quatrain = a four-line stanza
Quintet = a five-line stanza
Sestet (Sextet) = a six-line stanza
Septet = a seven-line stanza
Octave = an eight-line stanza

6. RHYTHM
The beat created by the sounds of the words in a poem

7. METER A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
when the stressed and unstressed syllables of the words in a poem are arranged in a repeating pattern.
When poets write in meter, they count out the number of stressed (strong) syllables and unstressed (weak) syllables for each line.

8. METER cont. FOOT - unit of meter.
A foot can have One, two or three syllables.
Usually consists of one stressed and one or more unstressed syllables.

9. METER cont. TYPES OF FEET (cont.) Iambic - unstressed, stressed
Trochaic - stressed, unstressed
Anapestic - unstressed, unstressed,
stressed
Dactylic - stressed, unstressed,
unstressed

10. FREE VERSE POETRY
does NOT have any repeating patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Does NOT have rhyme.
very conversational -
A more modern type of poetry.

11. Types of Rhyme:
Words sound alike because they share the same ending vowel and consonant sounds.
Internal rhyme: A word inside a line rhymes with another word on the same line.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.” – E.A. Poe
Activity: Rhyme group game

12. END RHYME
A word at the end of one line rhymes with a word at the end of another line
I wandered lonely as a cloud A
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, B
When all at once I saw a crowd, A
A host, of golden daffodils; B
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, C
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. C

13. NEAR RHYME
The words share EITHER the same vowel or consonant sound BUT NOT BOTH
ROSE
LOSE
Different vowel sounds (long “o” and “oo” sound)
Share the same consonant sound

14. ONOMATOPOEIA Words that imitate the sound they are naming
e.g. buzz, plop, moo, etc.

15. ALLITERATION
Consonant sounds repeated at the beginnings of words
All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain
- preface to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
Activity: Alliteration group game

16. CONSONANCE Similar to alliteration EXCEPT . . .
The repeated consonant sounds can be anywhere in the words
“silken, sad, uncertain, rustling . . “

17. ASSONANCE Repeated VOWEL sounds in a line or lines of poetry.
(Often creates near rhyme.)
“on a proud round cloud in white high night”
What vowel sounds are repeated in this e.e. cummings’ line?

18. “Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep.”
ASSONANCE cont.
Examples of ASSONANCE:
Which is the bliss of solitude
And dances with the daffodils
They stretched in never-ending line
William Wordsworth
“Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep.”
- Shakespeare

19. REFRAIN A sound, word, phrase or line repeated regularly in a poem.
“Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

20. Allusion
Allusion – a reference, explicit or implicit to something in literature or history
“and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or”
- This is an allusion to the French artist Marcel Duchamp's iconic painting.

21. Diction: Denotation vs. Connotation
Denotation: the dictionary meaning of a word.
Connotation: emotional associations of a word to transcend the dictionary definition

22. Caesura:
Caesura: a strong pause within a line of verse that usually occurs in the middle of a line
“And they are right, I think.”
- Phillip Larkin

23. End-stopped lines:
A metrical line ending with a dash or closing parenthesis
Then say not man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault;
 Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought:
 His knowledge measur’d to his state and place,
 His time a moment, and a point his space.

24. Enjambment:
A run-on line that grammatically continues into the following line (antithesis of an end-stopped line).
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now...

25. Metonymy:
A figure of speech in which a closely related term is used to replace the object or idea
(e.g. the crown when speaking of the Queen of England – “We have always remained loyal to the crown.”

26. Euphony and Cacophony
Euphony or euphonic diction: pleasant-sounding diction predominates
Cacophony: unpleasant-sounding diction predominates the line, stanza, or entire poem.

27. Tone:
The attitude of the poet toward the reader, audience, or subject matter of a literary work.
_______________ yet ________________

28. Shift or “Volta”
a turn or change in the poem; this could be the speaker’s attitude or any other change detected in the poem.