I. Poetry is one of the three major types of literature, the others being prose and drama. Most poems make use of highly concise, musical, and emotionally charged language. Many also make use of imagery, figurative language, and special devices of sound such as rhyme. Poems are often divided into lines and stanzas and often employ regular rhythmical patterns, or meters. However, some poems are written out just like prose, and some are written in free verse.

a. ORAL TRADITION is the passing of songs, stories, and poems from generation to generation by word of mouth.

b. SOME TYPES OF POETRY

1. A CONCRETE POEM is one with a shape that suggests its subject. (See handout) William Burford’s “A Christmas Tree” is a concrete poem:

Star,

If you are

A Love compassionate,

You will walk with us this year.

We face a glacial distance, who are here Huddl’d

At your feet.

The lines of the poem appear on the page in a shape of a tree, and the words star and at your feet appear in appropriate positions, at the top and bottom.

2. DRAMATIC POETRY is poetry that involves the techniques of drama.

a. A MONOLOGUE is a speech by one character in a play, story, or poem.

3. An EPIGRAM is a short poem with a single point, usually two to four lines long, but sometimes more. The word literally means “inscription” and they originally were inscribed on tombs.

4. FREE VERSE is poetry not written in a regular rhythmical pattern, or meter. Free verse seeks to capture the rhythms of speech.

5. The HAIKU is a three-line Japanese verse form. A haiku seeks to convey a single vivid emotion by means of images from nature. Each line has a certain amount of syllables. Line 1 ----- 5 Line 2 ----- 7 Line 3 ----- 5

6. LYRIC POETRY is a highly musical verse that expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker. They were at one time sung, but not today. They still have a musical quality that is achieved through rhythm and other devices such as alliteration and rhyme.

a. A SONNET is a 14 line lyric poem, usually written in iambic pentameter.

i. The SHAKESPEAREAN (ENGLISH) sonnet consists of three quatrains (four-line stanzas) and a couplet (two lines), usually rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet usually comments on the ideas contained in the preceding twelve lines. The sonnet is usually not printed with stanzas divided, but a reader can see distinct ideas in each.

ii. The PETRARCHAN (ITALIAN) sonnet consists of an octave (eight line stanza) and a sestet (six-line stanza). Often the octave rhymes abbaabba and the sestet rhymes cdecde. The octave states a theme or asks a question. The sestet comments on or answers a question.

7. A NARRATIVE POEM is one that tells a story.

c. SPEAKER is the imaginary voice assumed by the writer of a poem. In many poems the speaker is not identified by name. When reading a poem, remember that the speaker and the poet are not the same person, not more than an actor is the playwright. The speaker within the poem may be a person, an animal, a thing, or an abstraction.

d. STRUCTURE OF POETRY

1. BLANK VERSE is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter lines. This verse form was widely used by Elizabethan dramatists like William Shakespeare.

2. A REFRAIN is a repeated line or group of lines in a poem or song.

3. A STANZA is a formal division of lines in a poem, considered as a unit. Often the stanzas in a poem are separated by spaces. Stanzas are sometimes named according to the number of lines found in them.

a. 2 lines ---- couplet

b. 3 lines ---- tercet

c. 4 lines ---- quatrain

d. 5 lines ---- cinquain

e. 6 lines ---- sestet

f. 7 lines ---- heptastich

g. 8 lines ---- octave

4. METER of a poem is its rhythmical pattern. This pattern is determined by the number and types of stresses, or beats, in each line.

e. SOUND DEVICES

i. ALLITERATION is the repetition of initial consonant sounds. Writers use alliteration to give emphasis to words, to imitate sounds, and to create musical effects.

“There will come soft rains

• and the smell of the ground

•and swallows circling

• with their shimmering sound;

ii. ASSONANCE is the repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonants in two or more syllables.

1. “weak and weary” in “The Raven”

iii. CONSONANCE is the repetition in two or more words of final consonants in stressed syllables.

1. “add-read”

iv. DIALECT is the form of a language spoken by people in a particular region or group. Pronunciation, vocabulary, and sentence structure are affected by dialect.

v. ONOMATOPOEIA is the use of words that imitate sounds. Whirr, thud, sizzle, buzz, and hiss are typical examples.

vi. REPETITION is the use, more than once, of any element of language – a sound, a word, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence. Poets use many kinds of repetition. Alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and rhythm are repetitions of certain sounds and sound patterns.

vii. REFRAIN is a repeated line or group of lines.

viii. RHYME is the repetition of sounds at the ends of words.

1. End rhyme occurs when the rhyming words come at the end of lines.

2. Internal rhyme occurs when the rhyming words appear in the same line.

ix. RHYME SCHEME is a regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem. The rhyme scheme of a poem is indicated by using different letters of the alphabet for each new rhyme.

x. RHYTHM is the pattern of beats, or stresses, in spoken or written language. Some poems have a very specific pattern, or meter, whereas prose and free verse use the natural rhythms of everyday speech.

f. WAYS TO MEANING

i. LITERAL LANGUAGE uses words in their ordinary senses. It is the opposite of figurative language.

ii. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE is writing or speech not meant to be interpreted literally.

1. SIMILE uses “like or as” to make a comparison

a. Between two unlike ideas

b. Jim is as fast as Rick ---- not a simile

c. Jim runs like a deer ---- simile

2. METAPHOR one thing is spoken of as though it were something else.

a. DOES NOT USE LIKE OR AS

b. Jim is a deer.

3. IMAGERY is a word or phrase that appeals to one or more of the five senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Writers use images to re-create sensory experiences in words.

4. PARODY is a work done in imitation of another, usually in order to mock it, but sometimes just in fun. The following lines are Lewis Carroll’s parody of the familiar children’s rhyme, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”:

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a teatray in the sky.

5. PERSONIFICATION is a type or figurative language in which a non-human subject is given human characteristics.