POETRY

1. POETRY “We value poetry for what it shows us about our inner and outer lives. We find pleasure in its music, admire the power of its language, take pride and comfort in what it says.”

2. How do you feel about the study of poetry? “In a world increasingly focused on the material worth of the things we learn, poetry becomes a harder sell. Arriving at poetry’s complex pleasures and rewards requires patience, skill, knowledge, and even wisdom, none of which are a mere double-click away.” Allan Gedalof Professor / Writer

3. A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit. Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind-- A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-- A poem should not mean But be. Translation: The art of poetry Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish simile Moon imagery

4. Oral Tradition The first poetry to have been written in the English tongue was that of the Anglo-Saxon period. Due to the lack of a printing press until the 15th century and the fact that this was largely a pre-literate society, it was necessary for poets to employ complex systems of rhyme, familiar repeated phrases and alliteration to make their verse memorable as well as beautiful. Poems transmitted ideas. The purpose of this poetry was clearly to educate and confirm new religious thinking. The most famous Old English poem, Beowulf (probably written in the later 8th century), acknowledges and mourns the passing of the pre-Christian heroic age – of monsters such as Grendel and the dragon.

5. LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the athelings won! Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes, from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore, awing the earls. Since erst he lay friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him: for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, till before him the folk, both far and near, who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, gave him gifts: a good king he! . Listen:You have heard of the Danish Kingsin the old days and how they were great warriors.Shield, the son of Sheaf,took many an enemy's chair,terrified many a warrior,after he was found an orphan.He prospered under the skyuntil people everywherelistened when he spoke.He was a good king! From Beowulf

6. Connotation, Denotation • ConnotationThe associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. • DenotationThe dictionary meaning of a word.

7. Denotation of a rose Rose A rose is a flowering shrub of the genus Rosa, and the flower of this shrub. There are more than a hundred species of wild roses, all from the northern hemisphere and mostly from temperate regions. The species form a group of generally prickly shrubs or climbers, and sometimes trailing plants, reaching 2–5 m tall, rarely reaching as high as 20 m by climbing over other plants.

8. Connotation of a rose • Love , romance, beauty, red, fragrant, thorny, spring, romantic celebrations…

9. Metaphor (from the Greek meaning: transference) • MetaphorA comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose,“ Something is Something else.

10. Tenor – the subject of the comparison; the thing that undergoes the transference. Vehicle- the figure that completes the metaphor; the source of the transferred qualities, (gives the qualities to the Tenor). My Love is a rose. Tenor Vehicle

11. On either side, those dear old ladies, the loosening barns, their little windows dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs hide broken tractors under their skirts. Tenor Vehicle

12. Simile, Conceit or Extended Metaphor • ConceitIn literary terms, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs an entire poem or poetic passage. By juxtaposing images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison. When a metaphor extends beyond its original comparison continuing through an entire poem. • SimileA figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose."

13. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 Conceit: Warm day imagery 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 dimm'd, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd: 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.

14. A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit. Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-- A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind-- A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-- A poem should not mean But be. Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish simile Extended Metaphor: Moon imagery

15. Synecdoche, Metonymy • MetonymyA figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." Crown is a substitute for the king. SynecdocheA figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand."

16. synecdoche • I heard a Fly buzz (465) by Emily Dickinson I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –  The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air –  Between the Heaves of Storm –  The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –  And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset – when the King Be witnessed – in the Room –  I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away What portions of me be Assignable – and then it was There interposed a Fly –  With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –  Between the light – and me –  And then the Windows failed – and then I could not see to see –  metonymy

17. Animism The assigning of animal characteristics to humans. Example: Rolling on the floor like puppies • PersonificationThe endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification. • ImageA concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea appealing to, 1 or all of the five senses. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. • ImageryAny literary reference to the five senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste). Essentially, imagery is any words that create a picture in your head. Such images can be created by using figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, personification, and assonance.

18. animism Next time you walk by my place in your bearcoat and mooseboots, your hair all sticks and leaves like an osprey's nest on a piling,

19. animism next time you walk across my shadow with those swamp-stumping galoshes below that grizzly coat and your own whiskers that look rumpled as if something's been in them already this morning mussing and growling and kissing—

20. next time you pole the raft of you downriver down River Street past my place you could say hello, you canoe-footed fur-faced musk ox, pockets full of cheese and acorns and live fish and four-headed winds and sky, hello is what human beings say when they meet each other image

21. personification Exeunt Piecemeal the summer dies; At field’s edge a daisy lives alone; A shawl last burning lies On the gray field-stone. All cries are thin and terse; The field has droned the summer’s final mass; A cricket like a dwindled hearse Crawls from the dry grass.

22. Oxymoronputting two contradictory words together to create new meaning. examples: hot ice, cold fire, wise fool, sad joy, military intelligence, eloquent silence, sweet-pain to describe love • Hyperbole (pronounced "hy-PER-buh-lee" and NOT hyper-bowl)Largely synonymous with exaggeration and overstatement, is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated or extravagant. It may be used due to strong feelings or is used to create a strong impression and is not meant to be taken literally. It gives greater emphasis. "She has a brain the size of a pinhead." "I nearly died." "He is so dumb his IQ is probably -2!" • UnderstatementA figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of overstatement. The last line of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

23. hyperbole Dreary, drab day pressing in on me until like gray, gloomy clouds filled to saturation, my tears overflow. I silently scream for help That never seems to come. oxymoron

24. hyperbole My Papa's Waltzby Theodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. understatement

25. AllusionA brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art. Casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion. OnomatopoeiaThe use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. Most often, however, onomatopoeia refers to words and groups of words, such as Tennyson's description of the "murmur of innumerable bees," which attempts to capture the sound of a swarm of bees buzzing. Other examples include words such as: buzz, bam, slink, swoop, squish,

26. Player Piano by -John Updike- My stick fingers click with a snicker And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys; Light footed, my steel feelers flicker And pluck from these keys melodies. My paper can caper; abandon Is broadcast by dint of my din, And no man or band has a hand in The tones I turn on from within. At times I'm a jumble of rumbles, At others I'm light like the moon, But never my numb plunker fumbles, Misstrums me, or tries a new tune.

27. Translation:Museum of Fine Arts Allusion to Renaissance artists Musée des Beaux Arts (1938)W. H. Auden (1907-1973) About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters: how well they understoodIts human position; how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waitingFor the miraculous birth, there always must beChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgotThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its courseAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. Allusion to the birth of Jesus Christ Allusion to Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus

28. the plowman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry “As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater” and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel Brueghel was a Dutch artist noted for landscapes and scenes of the lives of ordinary people.

29. According to Brueghelwhen Icarus fellit was spring a farmer was ploughinghis fieldthe whole pageantry of the year wasawake tinglingwith itself sweating in the sunthat meltedthe wings' wax unsignificantlyoff the coastthere was a splash quite unnoticedthis wasIcarus drowning Landscape with the Fall of Icarus William Carlos Williams

30. Cacophonyrefers to sound that is harsh and unpleasant-sounding. The opposite of cacophony is euphony, meaning musical and pleasant. Euphonydescribes flowing and aesthetically pleasing speech. Poetry is often euphonic, as is well-crafted literary prose. CaesuraA strong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardy's "The Man He Killed" contains caesuras in the middle two lines: He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand-like--just as I—End-stopA feature in poetry in which the syntactic unit corresponds in length to the line. In other words, when the line pauses at its end whether by punctuation or natural rhythm. Its opposite is enjambment where the sense runs on into the next line. EnjambmentA run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next. In the opening lines of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," for example, the first line is end-stopped and the second enjambed: That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now....

31. Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance • AlliterationThe repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." • AssonanceThe repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." • ConsonanceA stylistic device, often used in poetry. It is the repetition of consonant sounds in a short sequence of words, for example, the "t" sound in "Is it blunt and flat?"

32. So This Is Nebraska by Ted Kooser The gravel road rides with a slow gallop over the fields, the telephone lines streaming behind, its billow of dust full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds. On either side, those dear old ladies, the loosening barns, their little windows dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs hide broken tractors under their skirts. So this is Nebraska. A Sunday afternoon; July. Driving along with your hand out squeezing the air, a meadowlark waiting on every post. Behind a shelterbelt of cedars, top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees, a pickup kicks its fenders off and settles back to read the clouds. You feel like that; you feel like letting your tires go flat, like letting the mice build a nest in your muffler, like being no more than a truck in the weeds, clucking with chickens or sticky with honey or holding a skinny old man in your lap while he watches the road, waiting for someone to wave to. You feel like waving. You feel like stopping the car and dancing around on the road. You wave instead and leave your hand out gliding larklike over the wheat, over the houses. alliteration Find the sound devices. consonance assonance

33. The gravel road rides with a slow gallop over the fields, the telephone lines streaming behind, its billow of dust full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds. assonance consonance alliteration

34. On either side, those dear old ladies, the loosening barns, their little windows dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs hide broken tractors under their skirts. assonance consonance alliteration

35. So this is Nebraska. A Sunday afternoon; July. Driving along with your hand out squeezing the air, a meadowlark waiting on every post. assonance consonance alliteration

36. Behind a shelterbelt of cedars, top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees, a pickup kicks its fenders off and settles back to read the clouds. assonance consonance alliteration

37. You feel like that; you feel like letting your tires go flat, like letting the mice build a nest in your muffler, like being no more than a truck in the weeds, assonance consonance alliteration

38. clucking with chickens or sticky with honey or holding a skinny old man in your lap while he watches the road, waiting for someone to wave to. You feel like assonance consonance alliteration

39. waving. You feel like stopping the car and dancing around on the road. You wave instead and leave your hand out gliding larklike over the wheat, over the houses. assonance consonance alliteration

40. Internal rhymeRhyming within a line. Example:I awoke to black flak. True in the game, as long as blood is blue in my veins • Rhyme.The similarity between syllable sounds at the end of two or more lines. Some kinds of rhyme include: True rhyme: occurs when the initial consonants change, but succeeding vowels and consonants remain the same span and van or ends and friends. Slant rhyme: A partial or imperfect rhyme, often using assonance or consonance only, as in dry and died or grown and moon. Also called half rhyme or near rhyme. Eye rhyme: words whose spellings would lead one to think that they rhymed (slough, tough, cough, bough, though, hiccough. Or: love, move, prove. Or: daughter, laughter.)

41. MeterThe measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems. FootA metrical unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by ˘', that is, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost's line "Whose woods these are I think I know" contains four iambs, and is thus an iambic foot. RhythmThe recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined: I said to my baby,Baby take it slow....Lulu said to LeonardI want a diamond ring

42. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem or in lyrics for music. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. For example "abab" indicates a four-line stanza in which the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth. Here is an example of this rhyme scheme from To Anthea, Who May Command Him Any Thing by Robert Herrick: Bid me to weep, and I will weep, While I have eyes to see; And having none, yet I will keep A heart to weep for thee.

43. a Sonnet 29 When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast stateAnd trouble deaf heaven with my bootless criesAnd look upon myself and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings. b a b c d c d e b e b f f

44. a b a Player Piano by -John Updike- My stick fingers click with a snicker And, chuckling, they knuckle the keys; Light footed, my steel feelers flicker And pluck from these keys melodies. My paper can caper; abandon Is broadcast by dint of my din, And no man or band has a hand in The tones I turn on from within. At times I'm a jumble of rumbles, At others I'm light like the moon, But never my numb plunker fumbles, Misstrums me, or tries a new tune. b c c c c d e d e

45. Iamb [ ^ ‘] unstressed , stressed I taste / a liqu / or ne / ver brewed • Trochee [ ‘ ^ ] stressed, unstressed Earth re/ceive an / honored / guest • Anapest [^ ^ ‘]unstressed, unstressed, stressed The Ass / yrian came down / like the wolf / on the fold • Dactyl [ ‘ ^ ^] stressed, unstressed, unstressed Out of the / cradle / endlessly / rocking

46. Number of Feet Line Length 1 Monometer 2 Dimeter 3 Trimeter 4 Tetrameter 5 Pentameter 6 Hexameter 7 Heptameter

47. The English Sonnet • The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of three quatrains and a couplet. The couplet generally introduced an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn" called a volta. The usual rhyme scheme was a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. In addition, sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, meaning that there are 10 syllables per line, and that every other syllable is naturally accented.

48. Tone The writer's attitude toward his readers and his subject; his mood or moral view. A writer can be formal, informal, playful, ironic, and especially, optimistic or pessimistic.

49. Irony