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What is Poetry? What is poetry? What is a poem? How can you tell the difference between poetry and prose? I usually try to provide a definition, knowing that the definition is little more than a simplified starting point for this elusive and irresistible genre. I developed this one collaboratively with my colleague at TCC, Stan Barger, who team-taught English 112 with me several summers: Poetry is the concentrated, rhythmic, verbal expression of observations, perceptions, and feelings.
Poetry looks different from prose on the page. In prose, the words go to the margin without regard to position in space. In poetry, ends of lines depend on sound, meaning, and appearance. Often, lines begin with capital letters even when they are neither the beginnings of sentences nor proper nouns.
These conventions make poetry instantly recognizable. Reading a variety of poems will help you understand both individual poems and the concept of poetry. Poetry Guidelines: Reading and Writing for Understanding is intended to give you some strategies for understanding poems. Dona Hickey at the University of Richmond and I developed Poetry Portals, a resource list of poems, poetry scholarship, poetry classes, and poetry zines, for our students and for other teachers at workshops we conduct on using computers for poetry instruction. Other collaborators recommended sites for us to include.
If you suggest sites that we use, well add your name to the credits. Don Maxwell at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond has been teaching a poetry writing class, for which he has posted some electors on poetry that I recommend. Here you can read a local poets explanation of What Makes a Poem a Poem? and The Sound of Poetry, including a poem by and picture of Emily Dickinson, one of the United States earliest and best poets.
Top of Page Glossary of Poetry Terms Concentrated diction and syntax: highly selective language uses few words to express many thoughts and feelings, depends on suggestions as well as conventional meanings Diction: choice of words denotation: basic dictionary definition connotation: attitudes and meanings suggested through usage or tradition or context, for example, landlord has one connotation to an upper middle class family, quite another to a slum family barely able to scrape together the rent; in Ulysses the speaker uses mete and dole rather than distribute Usage levels Slang, colloquialisms, and other informal usages Standard usages that are acceptable in formal speech and writing Elegant poetic diction that may seem pretentious to 20 th century readers Imagery: words and phrases that appeal to the emotions, intellect, or senses concrete or abstract concrete: appeals to senses (visual, auditory / aural , olfactory, gustatory, tactile + kinetic, synesthesia) abstract: appeals to imagination and intellect (brutal armies) literal or figurative literal images mean what they seem to mean figurative images are not literal; they depend on comparisons and relationships Rhythm: patterns of stresses and silences in language Syntax: arrangement of words in intentional rather than accidental patterns for sound effects (to make particular rhythmic or rhyming patterns) for meaning: to create units of expression other than standard sentences Prosody: the study of the rhythms and other sound patterns of poetry Observations, perceptions, and feelings: ideas, attitudes, opinions, feelings, stories, interpretations, explanations of aspects of the human condition Nature of these perceptions Personal: based on individual experience and reflection on that experience Cultural: experiences or feelings common to a group of people Universal: experiences or feelings common to all human beings Subjects: the literal and particular surface matter that can be summarized or paraphrased Speaker: the persona adopted by the poet to sing the poem; a sort of narrative voice that may be identifiable only slightly or very precisely Situation: similar to plot and setting in narratives, the situation involves the entire context of the poem: physical, mental, emotional, cultural, and spiritual elements Tone: authors attitude or speakers attitude or both Primary genres Narrative poems emphasize the telling of stories: conflict, action, dialogue Lyric poems emphasize deeply felt emotions Individuals perspective, usually first person speaker Personal feelings, highly subjective, even intimate (often love or death, often misery) Short Musical rhythms (from lyre) Themes: meanings that can be expressed as a generalized statement about the subject or subjects of the poem. Themes may be new angle of perception or new insight or philosophical position. A statement about a poems themes can and should be stated as a complete sentence that generalizes beyond the particulars of the individual work, stating not that this speaker is fretting about his life being too short to enjoy cherry blossoms but generalizing that for human beings life is short and should be enjoyed as much as possible during the time available as exemplified by life being too short to enjoy cherry blossoms. Top of Page Tone Tone is the expression of the poets attitude or the speakers attitude toward subject, theme, or audience.
Some examples are anger, joy, despair, reverence, objectivity, irony, satire, amusement, affection. Irony: presentation of elements which involve a discrepancy or contrast between apparent meaning and actual meaning Situational irony: outcome very different from normal expectations or from what text leads readers to anticipate Verbal irony: words suggest the opposite or something quite different from what they seem say or literally mean Dramatic (tragic) irony: words of a speaker in a drama are understood quite differently by the audience than by the speaker as in Oedipus references to avenging Los as if he were his own father Ambiguity: expression of an idea in language that suggests more than one plausible meaning but which enriches the possibilities of meaning (not the same as obscure) Satire: criticism of behavior or institutions through amusement or laughter, ridiculing the human condition in order to show the need for reform Horatian: gentle Juvenalian: biting (invective is malicious) Top of Page Imagery An image is a word or phrase that appeals to the senses or the intellect or imagination. 1. Abstract images appeal to the imagination or intellect while concrete images appeal to the physical senses. 2. Imagery refers to the collection of images within a given work or portion of a work. Senses: visual, auditory (aural), gustatory, olfactory, tactile (touch), thermal (temperature), kinetic (movement through sight and sound), tactile (touch nerve endings) plus synesthesia (appeal to more than one sense at the same time or description of one sensation in terms of another, for example, blue black cold in Those Winter Sundays) Literal imagery: an actual sensation and sensory response is evoked, for example, the sky is blue, the silver bells jingle, and the moon is round and full tonight Figurative imagery or figures of speech These non literal sensory appeals present one element in terms of another to increase and limit understanding serving to enrich meaning and heighten sense perceptions allegory: extended metaphor in which objects and characters in a narrative represent specific abstract concepts or qualities. Typically, abstractions are personified through characters, and the plot and setting dramatize the relationship among the abstractions allusion: brief, usually indirect reference to another work or to a real or historical event or person, traditionally as a way of drawing connections between those elements and enriching the meaning of the current work through associations with the other.
Allusions imply a shared cultural experience and shared knowledge. anadiplosis (the last word of a sentence or clause repeated at the beginning of the next sentence or clause): Time article Americans are eating out more than ever, and more than ever they are eating fast food (26 Aug. 1985: 60). Top of Page analogy: comparison typical of formal argument in which acceptance of one item as true implies acceptance of the other; in analogy the elements being compared usually have some obvious points of literal similarity antimetabole (repetition of words in reverse order): Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil (Isiah 5: 20) antithesis: close placement of strongly contrasting words, phrases, or ideas in balanced structures (Man proposes, God disposes) apostrophe: direct address to an absent, abstract, invisible or nonexistent element as if it were real and capable of hearing and responding: O death, where is thy victory? Hail to thee, Blithe Spirit) conceit: sometimes called metaphysical conceit, is an extended metaphor or simile, usually of strikingly different elements yoked together (S. Barger) such as salvation to the making of clothing in Jonathan Edwards Huswifery or the breaking in of a car to a first sexual experience in e. e.
cummings she being brand epistrophe: repetition at the beginning or the end of successive sentences or clauses: from a Newsweek ad for Bryant's National Gas Company Call us, buy us. Bill us. epithet: an adjective or adjective phrase or adjective-noun phrase used together so that they become closely associated and one suggests the other (rosy-fingered dawn; the trumpet of the dawn; the wine-dark small Homeric) hyperbole: exaggeration of characteristics (Lady Macbeth's my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine / Making the green one red) litotes: form of understatement in which something is affirmed through the statement of the negative of its opposite (If this be not true, and upon me proved, / I never writ nor no man ever loved; This is no small problem) meiosis (understatement): language that suggests something is less important than it really is metaphor: assertion of similarity as an indirect comparison between unlike elements so that the characteristics of the second element become associated with the first element (the moon is a pink balloon) implied metaphor: does not mention the second item in the comparison, for example, Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul bu Emily Dickinson does not mention a bird metonymy: use of a word or phrase to represent or substitute for a closely related object or concept (White House or Oval Office for President; scepter and crown for king or queen) Top of Page oxymoron: phrase which pairs contradictory or opposite terms in a phrase (wise fool; cheerful pessimist; authentic reproduction) paradox: apparent contradiction in which what appears to be untrue or absurd is revealed as true and significant (for example, Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage) periphrasis: circumlocution personification or prosopopoeia: attribution of lifelike traits to things which are not alive or attribution of human traits to animals (the pitiful trees moaned or the fog crept in on little cat feet) prolepsis: foreshadowing a future event as is it were already influencing the present prose poem: concentrated use of imagery and figurative language without the standards of verse, line, and meter typical of poems. One handbook says, In forfeiting verse rhythms, the prose poem directs more attention to the poets vision and less to the language itself. The result is an unusually private and ethereal form, more like an interior monologue than an intentional revelation.
pun or paronomasia: play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word or similar senses or sounds of differing words simile: direct comparison between unlike elements in which a comparative term signals the similarity and in which characteristics of the second item apply to the first item. Typical comparative terms are like, as, seems, resembles, than, and appears, for example, My cats eyes glow like free coals or like a thunderbolt he falls or the moon is like a pink balloon. Literal comparisons are analogies, not similes: My cousin is as tall as your cousin or My house is dirtier than yours symbol: element that has a literal meaning in its own right plus special usually abstract meanings and associations that evolve from the way that element is presented in the work or genre, for example, bats in horror movies, the rug in Barn Burning. Some symbols are traditional and universal, for example, the egg for fertility, thorns on the rose for the problems of love or the defects in all beauty synecdoche: a variation of metonymy in which the whole represents the part or the part represents the whole but involving a significant part (The sail flows into the harbor; the strong arm of the law) Top of Page Prosody: Sound and Meaning To supplement the excellent information on the sounds of poetry in your textbook and in other resources on poetry and prosody, this section suggests additional resources and offers some notes and examples for understanding the sounds of poetry. You should read poems aloud and listen to others read poetry aloud. Tapes and CDs and videos about poets lives and works often include readings.
And some online resources include readings. Here are a few. If necessary, download RealAudio Player to listen to them; its free. Please let me and your classmates know if you find others to recommend.
The Sound of Poetry: Don Maxwells Notes on Prosody and Reading of I Like To Hear It Lap the Miles web Contemporary Poets Read: Internet Poetry Archive at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill web Prosody is the system of principles of versification in poetry: aspects of rhyme, rhythm, stanza patterns, and other sound devices. Rhythm is the pattern of sound, stress and silence in language, including syllable length. Meter (metrics) describes and identifies the units of rhythm; each unit is called a foot. The metric feet are listed here with some examples. A represents an unstressed syllable. a / represents a stressed syllable.
IAMB / Begone you ghost of night That time of year thou mayst in me behold TROCHEE / Happy days are here again ANAPEST / Like a ghost from the tomb / He floats through the room DACTYL / Bring me a rose and a lily too SPONDEE / / and know not me PYRRHUS rare to have two unstressed syllables PAEON rarer to have three AMPHIBRAC rocking foot / AMPHIMACE Scansion To scan is to identify the rhythmic patterns (noun scansion) and count the metric feet per line. manometer 1 dimeter 2 trimeter 3 tetrameter 4 pentameter 5 hexameter 6 heptameter 7 octameter Sound Devices rhyme: repetition of identical or similar sounds in stressed syllables in corresponding positions, usually at ends of lines. Earliest poetry did not rhyme but depended on alliteration, rhythm, syllabication, epithets (e. g. Homer, Beowulf) end rhyme: ends of lines internal rhyme: within lines masculine rhyme: final accented syllable (night, fight, light, tonight, polite) feminine rhyme: 2 consecutive syllables, second being unstressed (lighting, fighting: fellow, bellow) triple rhyme: correspondence in 3 consecutive syllables (glorious, victorious) most commonly used in humorous or satirical verse alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds in proximity (usually successive or closely associated words or syllables: , usually but not always initial consonant: The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, /The furrow followed free; The moan of doves in immemorial elms, /And murmuring of innumerable bees. assonance: repetition of same or similar vowel sounds between differing consonants: lake, fate, steak, haven consonance: repetition of ending consonant sounds preceded by differing vowel sounds (bolt, welt; cake, folk), also called half rhyme or slant rhyme onomatopoeia: sound that echoes sense or meaning: hiss, whisper, buzz, The wren whistles from the garden/And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
caesura: a silence rather than a sound but it affects the perception of sound and rhythm; usually a pause or break in the metrical pattern of a verse, often signalled by punctuation or syntactical unit such as prepositional phrase, subject-verb inversion; noted by double diagonal // end-stopped line: syntactical pause at end of line enjambment / run -on line: syntactical sense carries over to next line Diction and syntax affect sound as well as meaning: monosyllabic words have different sound and rhythm than polysyllabic words even when meter is same. wandering is dactylic and wanders (meandering meanders) run for it is also dactylic but includes pauses that make it a less gentle and flowing phrase than wandering Take her up // tenderly (Thomas Hood) is dactylic dimeter; first dactyl seems to have a different rhythm from the second because of a combination of sounds Stanza Patterns couplet: two-lines, frequently a rhyming pair heroic couplet: rhymed iambic pentameter unit of thought, syntactically complete tercet / triplet : AAA quatrain: 4 lines ballad stanza: alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter ABCB heroic quatrain: iambic pentameter ABAB blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (19 th century dramatic monologues, Shakespeare's plays) free verse / vers libre: irregular rhythm and rhyme, often unpredictable or absent patterns, characterized instead by repetition of sounds, words, phrases, images parallel grammatical structure significant line length and arrangement other sound devices: alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, sprung rhythm (see Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gods Grandeur) non metrical cadences Free Verse (open form): Free verse has predecessors in the non metrical rhythms of Greek poetry, the cadences of the King James Bible Psalms, Milton's poetry; however, the true ground breaker for free verse rhythms was Americas Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century Some Familiar Fixed (Closed) forms Sonnet Villanelle Venus and Adonis stanza: ABABCC (see Puritan poetry) Closed couplets Terms rima: ABA BCB CDC (Acquainted with the Night)
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Research essay sample on Iambic Pentameter Emily Dickinson
