Common Core Performance Coach

Lesson 2

Poetry is a special type of writing that uses words to create a strong feeling, image, or message through meaning, sound, and rhythm.

Poetry has a special structure. It is usually made up of lines, which are rows of text. Lines may or may not be complete sentences.

The poem may be broken into groups of lines called stanzas. In most poetry, stanzas are used the way paragraphs are used in stories or articles. The stanzas fit together to provide a poem’s overall structure.

Read the following excerpt from Lord Alfred Douglas’s “In Winter.” How many lines does it have? How many stanzas are shown?

Oh! for a day of burning noonAnd a sun like a glowing ember,

Oh! for one hour of golden June,In the heart of this chill November.

Poems are meant to be read aloud. Poets think carefully about the sounds of the words they choose and how the words work together to create rhythm, rhyme, and meaning.

Rhythm is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line.

Rhythm creates the “beat,” or meter of a poem.

To hear a stressed and an unstressed syllable, say the word poem aloud. You can hear that the first syllable is stressed, or said more strongly, and the second syllable is unstressed: PO-em.

Read aloud Edward Lear’s “There Was a Young Lady Whose Chin.” Can you hear rhythm? Read it again, using your finger to tap along to the rhythm. You tend to tap on the stressed, or stronger, syllables.

There was a Young Lady whose chinResembled the point of a pin;So she had it made sharp,And purchased a harp,And played several tunes with her chin.

Rhyme describes words with the same ending sound. Many poems have lines that end with words that rhyme.

Poems that rhyme may have rhyme scheme in which the last words of certain lines follow a clear pattern.

A rhyme scheme is shown by a sequence of letters, such as aabb.

For example, the letters aabb stand for a four-line stanze in which line 1 and line 2 rhyme (a) and line 3 and line 4 rhyme (b).

Reread “There Was a Young Lady Whose Chin.” Underline the words that rhyme. Write the letter a or b at the end of each line to show the poem’s rhyme scheme.

There was a Young Lady whose chinResembled the point of a pin;So she had it made sharp,And purchased a harp,And played several tunes with her chin.

Repetition is the repeating of words or lines in poetry. Poets often use repetition to help unify a poem or to emphasize the meaning or theme.

Read this excerpt from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself.” Circle the words that are repeated.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good

belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear

of summer grass.

Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant sound.

Reread the excerpt from “Song of Myself” above. Circle the initial consonants whose sounds are repeated.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good

belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear

of summer grass.

Poets choose words to create pictures in the reader’s mind. They use both literal language and figurative language.

Literal language is language that means exactly what the words say.

Figurative language does not always mean what the words say. It has a deeper meaning.

Four kinds of figurative language are: Similes Metaphors Allusions Personification

A simile is a comparison that use the words like or as.

Read the simile. What two things are being compared? Circle them.

Kris got caught in the rain and looked like a wet rat.

A metaphor is a comparison that does not use the words like or as. It says that one thing is another.

Read the metaphor. What two things are being compared? Circle them.

I can always depend on Patel. He is a rock.

An allusion is a reference to a person, place, event, or work of literature, such as a myth.

Knowing what an allusion refers to can help you understand its meaning.

Often, some words in an allusion are capitalized. This can help you spot the allusion. Then, you can use context clues or look it up to find its meaning.

What is the allusion in this sentence? What does it mean?People said that the millionaire had the

Midas touch because every business

Personification is the giving of human qualities to nonhuman things.

What human quality is the wind given in this sentence?

The wind whistled through the trees.

In poetry, point of view refers to the speaker of the poem.

The speaker is the voice of the poem and acts like a narrator does in a story.

The point of view in the poem may reflect the poet’s thoughts and feelings or those of another person or character.

Often, the speaker in a poem reflects on a topic, revealing the poem’s theme.

The theme is the message the poet wants to share with the reader.

A theme may be about human nature or society.

Read the excerpt from Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers.” Which lines reveal its theme?

“Hope” is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all.

Kind of Poem Definition

Lyric poem A short poem that is like a song and usually deals with the speaker’s thoughts or feelings

Epic poem A long poem that tells about the adventures of a hero or historic event, such as a great military victory

Narrative poem A poem that tells a story

Limerick A humorous five-line poem that rhymes

Free verse A poem that does not follow any fixed rules of rhythm or rhyme or traditional structure

Haiku A very short poem with three lines and just seventeen syllables; Haiku do not rhyme and are usually about nature

Ode A poem that includes two or more stanzaas with similar structures; each line must rhyme with another line in the same stanza; usually a serious poem about a meaningful topic

Many words in English come from Greek or Latin. These word parts are called root words.

Knowing the meanings of Greek and Latin roots can help you figure out the meanings of some words in English.

Look at these examples. Autograph = auto + graphAuto = selfGraph = writeAutograph: a person’s handwritten signature

Thermometer = thermo + meterThermo = heatMeter = to measureThermometer: a tool used to measure heat

What other words can you think of with the roots auto and meter? How can you use what you know about roots to understand the meanings of those words?

Now, let’s read the poem “Escape at Bedtime” by Robert Louis Stevenson.

1. The poem mentions the Dog, the Hunter, and Mars in the night sky. These names relate to characters in Greek and Roman myths.

Based on this information, what is the best conclusion you can draw?

A. The Dog, the Hunter, and Mars are constellations.

B. The Greeks and Romans saw the same objects in the sky.

C. Many planets and constellations got their names from characters in myths.

D. The words dog, hunter, and Mars are from the Greek and Roman languages.

Hint: Recognizing references to myths and mythological characters can help you better understand the meaning of the poem.

2. Read this line from the poem.

They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,

Explain what this line reveals about the speaker of the poem.

Hint: Notice the pronouns the speaker uses. Does it seem like he is an outsider describing events that happen to someone else?

3. Which of the following is true about the first stanza? Choose all that apply.

A.Lines 1 and 3 rhyme. Lines 2 and 4 rhyme.B.All the lines have the same number of

stressed syllables.C.The first stanza has 8 lines.D.Lines 1 and 2 rhyme. Lines 3 and 4 rhyme.E. Lines 2, 4, and 6 have the same number

of stressed syllables.F. The first stanza has 5 lines.

4. Read the lines from the poem and the question that follows.

As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,

And that glittered and winked in the dark.

What kind of figurative language is this.A. AllusionB. MetaphorC. PersonificationD.Simile

Explain what the poet means by this description.