What is Poetry?

Poetry is the most compact form of literature. It is a language that says more,
and says it more intensely. Paul Valery, a French poet, compared prose to
walking and poetry to dancing.

“Poetry is the spontaneous outflow of powerful feelings.”

- William Wordsworth

In poetry, ideas and emotions are tightly compressed into a package where
everything – the meanings and sounds of words, the line breaks, even empty
spaces – is designed to create an effect or to convey a message or an
experience.

Despite vast differences in style, all poems contain some or all of these elements:

A. SOUND – Poetry is meant to be spoken! When one reads a poem, one should pay
attention not just to the meaning but the actual sound spoken. To be fully
enjoyed as a worthwhile exercise, poetry should be spoken aloud.

Among important sound devices used in poetry writing include:

Onomatopoeia – the use of words that sound like what they refer to. Words such
as hiss, buzz, and crack are onomatopoeic in nature.

The moan of doves in immemorial elms

And murmuring of innumerable bees

Alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds ( “All the awful auguries”;
“Bring me my bow of burning gold”) and sometimes the prominent repetition
of a consonant ( “after life’s fitful fever”)

Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words

(“ Some ship in distress, that cannot live”) – the vowel sound i is assonantal in
this line ( as seen in the words ship, distress and live)

“I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night” – The words I, arise and night all contain the
“ai” vowel sound
- The words dreams, thee and sweet all
have the long “e” sound
Consonance – the repetition of similar consonant sounds but different vowel
sounds within or at the end of words

The r and d sounds in “ But the father answered never a word”

The ll sounds in “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.”
The l sounds in “I fail to feel for you my friend.”

Rhyme – the similarity of sounds at the end of words.

This maybe internal rhyme (when one of the rhyming words occur within
the line)

“ Each narrow cell in which we dwell”

Or it maybe an end rhyme

Tiger, tiger burning bright

In the forests of the night.

End rhymes usually come in predictable patterns. Such regular patterns of

rhyme are called rhyme schemes. Letters are assigned to particular
sounds to help name the rhyme scheme.

Whose woods these are I think I know, (a)

His house is in the village though; (a)
He will not see me stopping here (b)
To watch his woods fill up with snow (a)

(The rhyme scheme of the previous stanza is aaba)

In what distant deeps or skies (a)

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? (a)
On what wings dare he aspire? (b)
What the hand dare seize the fire? (b)

(The rhyme scheme of the previous stanza is aabb)

Some poems don’t follow any predictable rhyme scheme. These poems are
called free verse.

Free verses have rhythmical lines varying in length, adhering to no fixed metrical
pattern. The pattern is often largely based on repetition and grammatical
structure. An excellent example is T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Rhythm refers to the pattern of sound created by the arrangement of stressed
and unstressed syllables in a line. In some poems, the lines have a repeated
rhythmic pattern called a meter.

x x x x
As virtuous men pass mildly away
x x x x
And whisper to their souls to go
x x x x
While some of their sad friends do say
x x x x
The breath goes now, and some say, no:

A metrical foot, or simply foot refers to the pairing of accented and unaccented
syllables in a line of poem.

There are several kinds, although in here we will only cover two basic types.

1) iamb (iambic foot) – consists of two- syllables, the first is unaccented, the
second is accented
Ex.
x x x x x
That time / of year / thou may’st / in me / behold
x x x x x
When yel / low leaves, / or none, / or few, / do hang

2) trochee (trochaic foot) – consists of two-syllables, the first is accented, the

second is unaccented
Ex.
x x x x
Piping / down the / valley / wild,
x x x x
Piping / songs of / pleasant / glee,

To describe the metrical foot of a poem, the reader must note how many feet
(accented and unaccented syllables) there are in a line.

Example:

A line with only one metrical foot is called a monometer

x
Thus / I
Passe / by
And / die;
As / one
Un / known,
And / gone;
- Robert Herrick, Upon His Departure Hence
(This is an example of an iambic monometer)
A line with two feet is called a dimeter
x x
Razors / pain you;
Rivers / are damp;
Acids /stain you
And drugs / cause cramp.
- Dorothy Parker, Resume
(This is an example of a trochaic dimeter)

A line with three feet each – trimeter

Go, soul, / the bod / y’s guest,
Upon / a thank / less errand;
Fear not / to touch/ the best;
The truth / shall be / thy warrant.
- Walter Raleigh, The Lie

A line with four feet – tetrameter

How vain / ly men/ themselves / amaze
To win,/ the Palm, /the oak, / or bays
And their / inces / sant la / bors sede
Crowned from / some sin / gle herb / or tree
- Andrew Marvell, The Garden

A line with five feet - pentameter

Not mar / ble, nor / the gild / ed mon / uments
Of princes, / shall out / live this / power / ful rhyme;
But you / shall shine / more bright / in these/ contents
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 55

A line with six feet – hexameter

So wild / that eve /ry ca / sual thought / of that / and this
Vanished, / and left / but mem / ories, that / should be / out of / season
With the / hot blood / of youth, / of love / crossed long / ago;
- W.B. Yeats, The Cold Heaven

A line with seven feet – heptameter

High on / a broad / unfer /tile tract / of for/ est-skirt /ed Down,
Nor kept / by Na /ture for /herself, / nor made / by man / his own,
- William Wordsworth, The Norman Boy

A line with eight feet – octameter

Once up / on a / midnight / dreary / while I / pondered / weak and /
weary
Over / many/ a quaint / and cur / ious vol / ume of / forgot /ten lore,
While I / nodded / nearly / napping, / sudden / ly there / came a
/tapping
As of / someone / gently / rapping, / rapping / at my / chamber door.
 - Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

B. FORM – The way the poem is physically laid on paper has significant importance in
understanding the poem. The spacing between stanzas
And the lines themselves also speak a lot.

Lines of poetry are commonly arranged in a rhythmic unit called a stanza.

A stanza is sometimes called a verse. Usually lines express a complete
though although occasionally the thought is continued in a succeeding
line. This technique is called enjambment.

A stanza of two lines, usually but not necessarily with end-rhymes is called
a couplet.

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

A three-line stanza is called a tercet, usually with one rhyme

Whenas in silk my Julia goes

Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes

A four-line stanza whether rhymed or unrhymed is dubbed a quatrain.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

Here are the terms for other line assignments per stanza
five lines – quintain seven lines - septet
six lines - sestet eight lines - octave

C. Meaning – Poetry is an intensified use of language. As such meaning is

communicated with the use of words. Thus, poetry makes use of figurative
language and imagery.

“Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and
meaning another.”
- Robert Frost
Figurative Language is the intentional use of language by deviating from its
intended meaning to intensify, clarify and embellish written as well as spoken
speech.

Most Common Types of Figurative Language :

sIMILE – renders likenesses between unlike object more explicitly by using

terms like or as.

“Oh my love is like a red red rose;

That’s newly sprung in June
My love is like a melody
That sweetly played in tune.”

Metaphor – transfers qualities and associations from one word directly to

another.

What he said left a bad taste in my mouth.

All this paper has in it are raw facts, half-baked ideas and warmed over
theories.
I just can’t swallow that claim.
We don’t need to spoon-feed our students.
In her beauty, she is a phantom of delight.

Personification - consists in giving the attributes of a human being to an

animal, an object or a concept.

Mirror
By Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is unmisted by love or dislike.

To Autumn
by John Keats

Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

SYNECDOCHE – the use of a part for the whole (and vice-versa). It includes
the substitution of a part of an object for the whole.

“Great minds have sought you.” – Ezra Pound

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” – Goethe

 “Malt does more than Milton can / To justify God’s ways to man.”
- A.E. Housman

Metonymy – the use of something closely related for the thing actually
meant.

“ As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling.” – Robert Frost

“ Scepter and crown must tumble down

And in the dust be equal made” - James Shirley

We answer to no one but to the Crown.

Yesterday Washington declared a statement concerning the Iraq
invasion.

Apostrophe – invokes a personified meaning by addressing an abstract

thing, natural object, creature, or even a departed figure from the past as
present in human terms.

“ O Rose, thou art sick.” – William Blake

“Death, be not proud!” – William Wordsworth
“O West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead,
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Irony – a situation or a use of language involving some kind of incongruity or

discrepancy.

Verbal Irony – What is meant if the opposite of what is said

“Boy, you really are a genius washing the wall dry with paint!”

Dramatic Irony – A device by which the author implies a different

meaning from that intended by the speaker (or by a speaker) in a
literary work.

Romeo hurries to the Capulet tomb assuming Juliet is dead and as

he dies, Juliet awakes from the effects of the potion she took and
watches her lover die.

Situational irony – it occurs when a discrepancy exists between the actual

circumstances and those that would seem appropriate or between
one anticipates and what actually happens.
 A firehouse catches fire.
An accomplished thief had his wallet stolen.
Paradox – a statement that seems to imply an apparent contradiction

“Whoever will save his life will lose it; but whoever will lose his
life for my sake, the same shall save it.”
“The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

Oxymoron – the contradiction at the level of a phrase;

a mute cry deafening silence

cruel kindness foolish wisdom

hyperbole – a form of irony that expresses an exaggeration; an

overstatement

“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
- Lady Macbeth
“But I shall love thee still my dear, when all the seas gang dry.”
- Robert Burns
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence.”
- Robert Frost

Prepared by E.P. Salazar

06-24-08