Lyric Poetry

1. Lyric Poetry

2. Definition • Poetry that focuses on emotions or thoughts rather than telling a story • The name “lyric” comes from the Greeks- songs accompanied by a lyre • Lyric poems tend to be melodious- created by use of rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc.

3. Types • Sonnet - Shakespearean - Italian • Ode • Elegy

4. Ode • Uses heightened, impassioned language • Addresses some object • Uses apostrophe- speaker directly addresses an absent/dead person, abstract quality, or something nonhuman as if it were present and capable of responding • Consists of five sonnets • Rhyme scheme: terzarima- each sonnet ends with a couplet; each group of three lines picks up the rhyme of the second line of the preceding three lines

5. TerzaRima O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being a Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead b Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, a Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, b Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou c Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed b The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, c Each like a corpse within its grave, until d Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow c Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill d (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) e With living hues and odours plain and hill; d Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; e Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear! e

6. Elegy • Mourns the death of a person or laments something lost • Can lament the passing of life and beauty, or mediations on nature and death • Formal in language & structure • Solemn or melancholy in tone

7. Examples of Ode • “Ode to the West Wind”- textbook p. • “Ode to the Caribbean Sea”

8. Examples of Elegy • “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” • “Baba”