Poetry and Sonnets

1. Poetry and Sonnets

2. Poetry Terminology • Speaker- voice behind the poem establishing a point of view • Imagery- verbal expression of a sensory detail (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, or olfactory) • Symbolism- representation in which an object or action represents something beyond itself Example: white = innocence, purity, hope

3. Poetry Terminology • hyperbole: exaggeration for emphasis (the opposite of understatement) Example: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.“ • metaphor: comparison between essentially unlike things Example: "[Love] is an ever fixed mark, / that looks on tempests and is never shaken.“ • simile: comparison between two essentially unlike things using words such as "like," as," or "as though" Example: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"

4. Poetry Terminology • paradox: a situation that appears to be contradictory but which contains a truth worth considering Example: "In order to preserve peace, we must prepare for war.“ • personification: the endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities Example: "Time let me play / and be golden in the mercy of his means“

5. Poetry Terminology • alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds, particularly at the beginning of words Example: ". . . like a wanderer white“ • assonance: the repetition of similar vowel sounds Example: "I rose and told him of my woe“ • onomatopoeia: the use of words to imitate the sounds they describe Example: "crack" or "whir“ • allusion: a reference to the person, event, or work outside the poem or literary piece Example: "Shining, it was Adam and maiden"

6. Poetic Form Terminology • meter: measured pattern of rhythmic accents in a line of verse • rhyme: correspondence of terminal sounds of words or of lines of verse • stanza: unit of a poem often repeated in the same form throughout a poem; a unit of poetic lines ("verse paragraph") • blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter • free verse: lines with no prescribed pattern, rhyme, or structure

7. Poetic Form Terminology • couplet: a pair of lines, usually rhymed • heroic couplet: a pair of rhymed lines at the end of a sonnet • quatrain: four-line stanza • iambic pentameter: a traditional form of poetry consisting of lines containing five iambic feet (and, thus, ten syllables)

8. A sonnet is • a lyric poem • consisting of fourteen lines • written in iambic pentameter • with a definite rhyme scheme • and a definite thought structure

9. Iambic pentameter consists of • five measures, units, or meters, of • iambs

10. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting ofan unaccented syllable Ufollowed by an accented syllable /. U / a gain U / U / im mor tal ize

11. Iambic pentameter 1 2 3 4 5 U / U / U / U / U / • One day I wrote her name u pon the strand, U / U / U / U / U / • But came the waves and wash ed it a way: U / U / U / U / U / • A gain I wrote it with a sec ond hand, U / U / U / U / U / • But came the tide, and made my pains his prey • Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, Sonnet 75

12. Rhyme scheme • Petrarchan (Italian) rhyme scheme: abba, abba, cd, cd, cd abba, abba, cde, cde • Shakespearean (English, or Elizabethan) rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg

13. Sonnet 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. A B A B C d C D E F E F G G

14. Thought structure • Octave/ sestet The octave, eight lines, presents a situation or idea. The sestet (sextet), six lines, responds, to the situation or idea in the octave. • Quatrain, quatrain, quatrain, couplet Each quatrain, four lines, describes and idea or situation which leads to a conclusion or response in the couplet, two lines.

15. Sonnet 18 The octave describes the ways in which the summer’s day is inferior to the beloved. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. The sestet describes the ways in which the beloved is superior to the summer’s day.

16. Sonnet 29 The diction of the octave implies the speaker’s self-pity and depression. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alonebeweep my outcast state, And troubledeaf heaven with my bootlesscries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, singshymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings. The sestet’s diction, in conrast, is joyful.

17. Sonnet 73 That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see'st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west;Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well, which thou must leave ere long. 1st Quatrain Year - Fall 2nd Quatrain Day - Twilight 3rd Quatrain Fire - Coals “This” is ll.1-12

18. Sonnet 73 Year That time is running out is what the beloved perceives. Time is rapidly shortening. Day Hour