Download Types of and Elements of Poetry

TYPES OF AND ELEMENTS OF
POETRY
ENGL 103
NARRATIVE POETRY
(Such as Ballads and Limericks)
•They were stories passed down through history that were not written
down because people weren’t very literate.
•They were song-like because it was easier to remember them that way.
•They usually were confusing and symbolic since each new storyteller
added their own twist.
•They were set in the past.
•They were impersonal, repetitive.
HAY FOR THE HORSES
BY GARY SNYDER
He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks
of light, Itch of hay dust in the
NARRATIVE POETRY
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
--The old mare nosing lunch pails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the
weeds—
-"I'm sixty-eight" he said,”
I first bucked hay when I was
seventeen
I thought, that day I started
I sure would hate to do this all my
life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done.”
ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO
AMERICA BY PHILLIS WHEATLY
NARRATIVE POETRY
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Savior too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their color is a diabolic dye.
"Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refined, and join the angelic train.
LYRIC POETRY
used to be short
 expressive
 emotional (joy, sorrow)
 musical, accompanied by a lyre (music)
 set in the present

EVENIN’ AIR BLUES
BY LANGSTON HUGHES LYRIC POETRY
Folks, I come up North
Cause they told me de North was
fine
I come up North
Cause they told me de North was
fine.
Been up here six months—
I’m about to lose my mind.
This mornin’ for breakfast
I chawed de mornin’ air.
This mornin’ for breakfast
Chawed de mornin’ air.
The the evenin’ for supper,
I got evenin’ air to spaire
Believe I’ll do a little dancin’
Just to drive my blues away—
A little dancin’
Cause when I’m dancin’
De blues forgets to stay.
But if you was to ask me
How de blues they come to be
Says if you was to ask me
How de blues they come to be—
You wouldn’t need to ask me:
Just look at me and see!
THE SPEAKING TONE OF VOICE
When reading a poem, you should always ask
yourself, who’s speaking?
 Don’t think of the author. Think of the speaker.
 Try to get a deeper sense of the character.
 We get not the whole of an author in a poem but
rather just a mask of who they are.

WE REAL COOL
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
WHO’S SPEAKING?
The Pool Players. Seven at the
Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We Die soon.
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES
We have learned that poems reflect part of the
speaker, or that even the reader can imagine
him/herself as the speaker of the poem. But some
characters are so distinct that they are others, as
in dramatic monologues. Which is when:
 A specific character speaks in a clear, specified
situation.
You should:
 Think of the occasion the character is in.
 Think of the setting.
DICTION AND TONE

Diction is the conscious or unconscious selection
of words and grammatical constructions


These constructions can make a writer seem
educated or uneducated, for example.
Tone is the way writers speak to their audience
because they know who they are.
(sarcastic, confident, angry, playful)
 Satire is a type of tone which ridicules aspects of
human behavior to amuse others.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Figurative
language helps us
express the emotions that logical
language won’t let us.
---”My love is like a red rose” =
She is pretty.
Through figurative language we
focus on the connotations over
denotations of words.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE CONTINUED

Simile

Items from different classes are compared by words,
such as “as” “than” “appears” “seems”
•Getting out of bed is like getting pulled out of quicksand.
•Metaphor
•Explicitly says that one thing IS something else.
•She is a rose.
•Metonymy is a word that stands in for another word.
•The pen is mightier than the sword. Pen= writing, sword?
•Synecdoche is when a whole is replaced by a part.
•Wheels (part) = car (whole)
•Hands (part) = workers (whole)
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE CONTINUED

Personification:
 when something inanimate becomes animate.
•Her bright, green shirt screamed at me!
•His accent massaged my ears.
•Apostrophe:
An address to someone/something that isn’t
really listening.
•Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder
what you are.
IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM

Imagery is an appeal to our senses.
•"I was awakened by the strong smell of a freshly brewed
coffee.”
•"The clay oozed between Jeremy's fingers as he let out
a squeal of pure glee.”
•A symbol represents something other than
itself.
•Natural Symbols represent something in particular even
by people from all over the world.
•Rain = renewal, Forest = darkness, Mountain =
strength
•Conventional Symbols represent something other than what
they are and most people have accepted that.
•Cross= Christianity, Rose = love
WILLIAM BLAKE
THE SICK ROSE
IMAGERY/SYMBOLISM
O Rose thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
WALT WHITMAN
I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE OAK GROWING
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves
of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there
without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it,
and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana solitary
in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.
A BIT ABOUT HAIKU
Haiku is a form of poetry that from Japan that
puts a great emphasis on sharp images
 Haiku is only seventeen syllables that are
arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five
syllables.
 It is unrhymed,
 The subject matter is high and low,
 The subject matter is usually connected to
seasons.
 Haikus create a sense of where, what, and when.

RIVER IN THE SUMMER
SHIKI
River in the summer
There is a bridge, but my horse
Walks through the water
What sharp images do you have
when you read this poem?
IRONY

Irony means to say one thing and mean the other
•Verbal Irony – what is stated is negated by what is suggested
“He that’s coming/Must be provided for.” –Lady Macbeth
•Understatement covers up but also reveals at the same time.
The quote above is an example.
•“The desert is sometimes dry and hot.”
Sarcasm is usually rude, scornful
“Oh, that was brilliant!” (after causing a problem)
•Overstatement (hyperbole) contains a contradictory
suggestion, and is therefore ironic.
•If you can do it, we all can, can’t we?
•Paradox is a contradiction, similar to irony.
Tony went to the bodega but he did
not buy anything- Martin Espada
Tony's father left the family
and the Long Island city projects,
leaving a mongrel-skinny puertorriqueño boy
nine years old
who had to find work.
the cooking of his neighbors
left no smell in the hallway.
and no one spoke Spanish
(not even the radio).
Makengo the Cuban
let him work at the bodega.
In grocery aisles
he learned the steps of the dry-mop mambo,
banging the cash register
like piano percussion
in the spotlight of Machito's orchestra,
polite with the abuelas who bought on credit,
practicing the grin on customers
he'd seen Makengo grin
with his bad yellow teeth.
Tony left the projects too,
with a scholarship for law school.
But he cursed the cold primavera
in Boston;
So Tony walked without a map
through the city,
a landscape of hostile condominiums
and the darkness of white faces,
sidewalk-searcher lost
till he discovered the projects.
Tony went to the bodega
but he didn't buy anything:
he sat by the doorway satisfied
to watch la gente (people
island-brown as him)
crowd in and out,
hablando español,
thought: this is beautiful,
and grinned
his bodega grin.
This is a rice and beans
success story:
today Tony lives on Tremont Street,
above the bodega.
RHYTHM AND VERSIFICATION

Rhythm should make “even someone with a
wooden leg step out.”
•Stress at regular intervals
Rain, rain go away, come again another day
•CAUTION! Don’t assume that a poem that has
consistent rhythm is good. Rhythm contributes to
meaning, too. Remember Frost’s poem about the old dog?
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw
The line too labors, and the words move slow
Rhythm
suggests
roughness of
hell.
VERSIFICATION- PROSODY

Meter- a pattern of stressed sounds
Pay attention to words that do not follow the pattern. It may mean that the
word not following the pattern has a special meaning.
•The foot- a basic unit of measurement (4 types)
•Iambic foot- one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one
My heart is like a singing bird
•Trochaic foot- one stressed followed by one unstressed syllable
We were very tired, we were very merry
•Anapestic foot- two unstressed followed by one stressed syllable
There are many who say that a dog has his day

Dactylic foot- one stressed followed by two unstressed syllables
Take her up tenderly
METRICAL LINES

A metrical line has one or more feet and is named
for the number of feet it has.
Type
Number of feet
Monometer
One foot
Dimeter
Two feet
Trimeter
Three feet
Tetrameter
Four feet
Pentameter
Five feet
Hexameter
Six feet
Heptameter
Seven feet
Octameter
Eight feet
PATTERNS OF SOUND (5 TYPES)

Perfect Rhyme: identical vowel sounds are stressed with differing
consonants
Foe-toe, meet-fleet, buffer- rougher
•Half-Rhyme: only the final consonant sounds of the words are identical;
the other parts of the word differ
Soul-oil, mirth- forth, trolley- bully
•Eye-rhyme: The sounds don’t actually rhyme, but the words look like
they do.
Cough-dough
•Masculine Rhyme: The final syllables are stressed and rhyme.
Stark- mark, support- retort
•Feminine Rhyme: stressed rhyming syllables followed by identical
unstressed syllables
Revival- arrival, flatter- batter
MORE PATTERNS OF SOUND

Alliteration- repetition of initial sounds
Bring me my bow of burning gold.
•Assonance- repetition of identical vowel sounds preceded and
followed by different consonant sounds
Tide - mine
•Consonance- repetition of identical consonant sounds and
differing vowel sounds in words that are close to one another
Fail – feel, rough – roof, pitter - patter
•Onomatopoeia- the use of words that imitate sounds
hiss, buzz, thump
PATTERNS OF STANZAS

Couplet- two lines, usually ending with a rhyme
Had we but world enough and time
This coyness, lad, were not crime
•Heroic Couplet- a rhyming couplet of iambic pentameter,
often containing a complete thought. A heavy pause at the
end of first line and heavier pause at end of second.
Some foreign writers, some our own despise
The ancients only, or the moderns, prize
•Triplet- a three-line stanza, usually with one rhyme
Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes
•Quatrain- a four-lines tanza, rhymed or unrhymed
Rhyme is abab (1st and 3rd lines = A, 2nd and 4th = B
ONE ART BY ELIZABETH BISHOP
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent
.I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.