Poetry Notes (359)

What is Poetry?

Poetry is a way of expressing thoughts and feelings in an imaginative, suggestive language.

Poets often try to capture in words what painters and photographers can achieve with shapes and colors.

Guidelines for Close Reading of Poetry

Read the poem out loud at least once.

Follow punctuation

Look for key words and descriptions

Write paraphrases of lines in your mind to determine meaning.

Find it’s central idea or meaning.

Autumn Chant

Look at the readers response for an idea of how to read the poem.

Why are the ladders leaning among the fruit trees?

What kinds of things to lines 7-8 suggest?

Speaker

When you read a poem ask yourself who is speaking.

The speaker in a poem may be the poet, the voice in the poem could be a fictional character or an object.

In a a dramatic poem their may be more than one speaker.

Running pg. 364

Who is the speaker in the poem?

What line tells you who the speaker is?

What words and phrases does he use to create vivid pictures of motion?

Why do you think this particular run makes the speaker think of happiness?

Mirror pg. 365

Who is the speaker of the poem?

What clues reveal what the speaker is?

What does the mirror mean when it says it is not cruel, only truthful?

Why does the mirror call the moon candles liars?

Diction:

The words a poet chooses and the way he or she arranges the words to express a thought are referred to as the poet’s diction.

In poetry every word must relay exactly the right emotional meaning so the words you choose are very particular.

Poets often invent or coin words to relay an intended meaning. (poetic license)

Woman

The first five lines of the poem contain words that are often used to describe men. What words does the poet choose to convey the strength of the women in her mother’s generation.

What words or phrases in the poem suggest war?

What feeling does the poem suggest through the use of word emphasis?

One Perfect Rose

What words or phrases in the poem strike you as “romantic”?

How does the speakers diction change in the 3rd stanza?

Imagery

To help us as an audience to participate in certain experiences, poets will create images that are used to put our senses to work.

Images are mostly visual but can sometimes help us to hear something, sell, or taste and feel texture or temperature.

North County

The freeway is described as a river in the poem. How does the image of the river change in the first stanza of the poem?

Oxymoron – when words with opposing or contradictory meanings are linked together.

The word droning literally means “making a low humming sound”. Sound cannot be part of silence, yet the poet uses the words “droning silence”. What feelings are suggested by this oxymoron? What silent sounds is the poet suggesting?

Boy With His Hair Cut Short

What details reveal that this boy is looking for work?

What details suggest that the boy and his sister do not have much money?

The sister speaks cheerfully in stanza 4. What words in stanza 5 reveal that she does not believe what she says.

What specific words and images reveal that the poet sympathizes with these people and wants use to see their dignity?

Figurative Language

The use of language to describe one thing in terms of something else.

Example:Lips as cherries

Sun as the eye of heaven

World as a stage

Lake as slurping monster

Types of Figurative Language

Metaphor – more powerful figure of speech: it omits the specific word of comparison and directly identifies the two unlike things.

My love is a red, red, rose.

Personification: when an inanimate object thing or an animal is given human qualities.

Symbol – an object, a person, an action, or an event that stands for itself and for something more than itself as well.

Dreams pg. 388

A simile compares two unlike things using a specific word such as like or as. A metaphor does not use like or as and makes a comparison directly. What is life compared to in the two metaphors in the poem?

How do the metaphors suggest a life that is not free, or that is empty and dead?

Explain what the poet means by the word dreams.

She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms

What words reveal that the subject is the setting sun?

Which metaphors here are based on the ordinary details of domestic life?

Tone

Think of all the ways you can “Good Morning”.

The tone of how something is said can change it’s meaning.

Poets too communicate meaning through tone- or through the attitudes they take toward their subject matter or audience.

Three poets can write on the same topic; one might be serious, one sarcastic, and one light and humorous.

Transit

Which words in the first stanza are associated with the skier’s age?

Which words or phrases in the first stanza convey an image of the skier’s movement and energy?

What is the speakers attitude toward the skier?

The word pass appears five times in the second stanza. Why does the speaker give this word so much emphasis?

Ex-Basketball Player

How does Flick himself contrast with his setting, as described in the second stanza.

Flick is described from the outside POV except for the last line. At the end of the poem we are given a glimpse into Flick’s mind. Why does this image make such a powerful comment on Flick’s life?

How would you describe the tone of the poem; that is, what is the speaker’s attitude toward the ex-basketball player?

Rhythm and Meter

Associated with the music of poetry is rhythm.

The term rhythm refers to the recurrent flow of motion or sound.

In music rhythm = beat

In speech rhythm = natural rise and fall of language.

The alternating between stressed an unstressed syllables of words.

Two Bodies

Answer the 3 questions below.

Poetry Quiz Tomorrow!For study & Discussion

Speaker: (pg. 364) Questions 1 & 2 (pg. 365) Questions 1,2,4

Diction (pg. 368) Questions 1,3 (pg. 372) Question 2,3,

Imagery (pg. 379) Questions 1, 3 (all parts) (pg. 384) Questions 1,2

Figurative Language (pg. 392) Questions 1,2,3

Tone: (pg. 409) Questions 1,2,4 (pg. 411) Questions 4

Sea Fever

Label rhythm using A,B,C, method.

What specific images help you see, hear, and feel what life on the sea is like?

Masefield has used words that suggest certain sounds. What repeated consonant sound in lines 3,7,and 10 might suggest the sound of wind.

Calvary Crossing a Ford

Free Verse: not controlled by a definite metrical pattern, nor by an definite pattern of rhyme.

Strong beats are used in each line of the poem.

Varied line length is also a characteristic of free verse.

What images does the poet use to help you see and hear the cavalry as it crosses a ford in the river?

List the colors that are used in this poem?

Structure: Stanza

A poem’s structure is the form or pattern a poet chooses for the arrangement of thoughts.

A stanza: is any group of related lines that forms a division of poem.

They usually mark the division of thought in the poem.

Structure: Sonnet

A sonnet is 14 lines, and the lines are usually written in iambic pentameter.

Each line would have 10 syllables and every second syllable is accented.

Structure : Quatrains

Quatrains are groups of 4 lines followed by a concluding couplet.

A Couplet are two rhyming lines.

Octave – Eight lines

Sestet – Six lines

Structure: Verse Paragraph

When units of thought are divided into verse paragraphs of varying length rather than fixed stanza’s.

Sonnet 71

What idea is presented in each quatrain of the poem?

What conclusion is drawn in the couplet?

What is the speakers tone in the poem?

Does the speaker really believe the world is “wise”?

Types of Poetry: Narrative

Narrative poem: A poem that tells a story

Epic poem: a long poem celebrating the deed of a society’s hero.

Ballad: a short poem originally meant for singing.

Oranges! (MRS. F’S FAVORITE!!!)

The speaker is recalling a dramatic and important experience of growing up. What was special about this incident?

What contrast does the poet create between the setting and action and emotions of the characters?

How does the vivid imagery of the poem help explain the speaker’s feelings for the girl?

Dramatic Poetry

Dramatic poems present one or more characters speaking, usually to each other, but sometimes to themselves or directly to the reader.

Definite setting

Dramatic situation

Emotional conflict

Vigorous speech

Natural language and rhythms

Dramatic Monologue

One character speaks to one or more other characters, whose replies are not given in the poem.

Fear pg. 460

Why is this considered a dramatic poem? Explain

Lyric Poetry

A short poem that was sung with the accompaniment of a lyre (small instrument)

Expresses personal thoughts or emotions

Lyric poetry is rich and musical devices.

I thank you God for most this amazing

What similarities do you see between this poem and Shakespeare's sonnet 71?

What images from the world of nature does Cummings use in his celebration of God?

Cummings ends the first stanza with the word yes, as another of the things he thanks God for.

The Sonnet-Ballad

What has happened to make the speak as, “where is happiness”?

What metaphor does the speaker use in line 4 to help you visualize her feeling of loss?

In what unusual way does the speaker personify her rival death?

How would you describe the common emotion expressed in this lyric?

Part 2 ReviewMusical Devices:

Blue Girls: 418- 2, 5,

Summer Remembered: 419-1,2

Two Bodies (questions already done)

Rhythm & Meter: Sea Fever: 426-1,2,4

Cavalry Crossing a Ford: 433-1,3 (know alliteration!)

Structure: Sonnet 71 : 438- 1, 2,3

Narrative & Dramatic Poetry:Oranges: 454- 1,2,3

The Laboratory: 459- 1,4,

I thank YOU God for most this amazing 464-1,3,4

Poetry Analysis Booklet Due 4/26

You must provide in this compilation an explanation for why the poem you chose is a good example of this type of poetry.

You MAY NOT use any of the poems that are within your textbook. I want you to locate your own pieces.

This is to be done IN the classroom.

Rubric and terms to be defined provided.