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Is this poetry?
Red leaves and blue tomorrows
Time will give back the love that we shared
on the time that we borrowed.
--Britney Spears, “Autumn Goodbye”
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
--Wiliam Carlos Williams, “The Red
Wheelbarrow”
I measure
man and Myself
And my friend
-Thomas Robinson, age 5.
Untitled Magnetic Poetry.
What is poetry?
Please answer in your notebook:
 What is poetry?
 What makes good poetry?
 Is poetry still a valid and necessary form of human
expression? Why or why not?
 Do you like poetry? Explain.
POETRY TERMS REVIEW
DICTION and TONE
Diction Impacts Tone
poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores
from “For a Lady I Know,” Countee Cullen
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle
from “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke
Diction Terms
 Denotation: basic meaning of a word, without emotional
implications
 Connotation: emotional implications that words carry
 Diction: word choice with a stylistic effect
 Tone: attitude toward the subject/audience
Examples
POETRY TERMS REVIEW
SYMBOLISM and COMPARISONS
Metaphors & Symbols IMPACT MEANING
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
from “Valentine,” Carol Ann Duffy
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
from “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” Emily Dickinson
Symbolism/Comparison Terms
Leave space for examples
 symbol: something that is itself and also stands for something else
 metaphysical conceit: a telling and unusual metaphor; metaphor
in which the vehicle comes from a startling esoteric or a shockingly
commonplace comparison
 metaphor: identifying one object with another
 tenor: the idea being expressed or the subject of the comparison
 vehicle: the image by which the idea/subject is conveyed
 simile: a similarity between two unlike objects, usually introduced by
as or like
 allusion: a brief reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or
object
POETRY TERMS REVIEW
METER AND FORM
Meter
 The rhythm of a piece of poetry, determined by the number
of feet in a line.
Meter IMPACTS TONE & MEANING
Beat! beat! drums! – blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through the
doors—burst like a ruthless force…
WaltWhitman
We Real Cool-John Ulrich
We Real Cool-Gwendolyn Brooks
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Gwendolyn Brooks
If it’s square it’s a sonnet…
 14 lines!
 It has a volta!
 Is it about love? Is it not? THAT MATTERS.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so…
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die
John Donne
Meter and Form Terms
Sonnet Terms
Sonnet—a poem of 14 lines that follows a set rhyme scheme
Rhyme Scheme—the rhyming pattern in a poem
Petrarchan Sonnet—also called Italian Sonnet; has an octave and a sestet. Rhyme Scheme:
abba abba cdcdcd
Octave—first 8 lines of a Petrarchan Sonnet; presents a narrative, states a proposition, or
raises a question
Sestet—last 6 lines of a Petrarchan Sonnet; drives home the narrative by making an abstract
comment, applies the proposition, or solves the problem
Volta—the turn of thought in a sonnet
it often “turns” from a question to an answer
occurs at the beginning of the sestet
Shakespearean Sonnet—abab cdcd efef gg; the volta usually after line 12 (before the rhyming
couplet)
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
What type of sonnet is this?
'Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'
Example
Sonnet XVIII
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 owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Example
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Lines are Measured by Feet
 FOOT-Metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured. A foot
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




usually consists of one stressed and one or two unstressed
syllables.
Monometer: One Foot
Dimeter: Two Feet
Trimeter: Three Feet
Tetrameter: Four Feet
Pentameter: Five Feet
Hexameter: Six Feet
Heptameter: Seven Feet
Octameter: Eight Feet
Most Common Feet
FOOT-Metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured. A foot
usually consists of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables.
 Iamb: unstressed syllable + a stressed syllable




o
o
exact
Anapest: 2 unstressed syllables + stressed
misinformed
Trochee: stressed syllable + unstressed
double
Dactyl: stressed + 2 unstressed
visitor
Spondee: Two Stressed Syllables
Stress: emphasis on syllable
Meter: a rhythmic pattern in literature
What is this poem’s meter?
There's a river that twists in the mind
that I plunder and ravish with sieves,
on crusades to the summit of rhyme
where my Phoenix of tropes and schemes live.
In a war to free diction's fair Queen
where the Soldiers of Babel bemuse
and the modern day graceless regimes
are in battles to stifle my muse!
Noooow…practice!
Other terms pertaining to meter:
 Scansion: The act of measuring the stresses in a line to
determine its metrical pattern.
 Rising Meters (Anapestic, Iambic) Move from unstressed to
stressed. (Typically) these move lightly and rapidly.
 Falling Meters (trochaic and dactylic) are falling meters
because they move from stressed to unstressed.
 Blank Verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter
Almost done…
 Caesura: A pause within a line, perhaps because of
punctuation, though not always.
 Enjambment Running over from one line to another.
POETRY TERMS REVIEW
RHYME AND SOUND
SOUND CREATES MEANING
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not
Seamus Heaney
Rhyme and Sound Terms
 Onomatopoeia: words whose sound suggest their meaning (whirr, buzz)
 Rhyme: identical end sounds in a word (fan, ran)
 End rhyme: rhyme that occurs at the end of lines of poetry
 Internal Rhyme: rhymes within a line of poetry
 Alliteration: repetition of initial word sound (The fair breeze blew, the white

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foam flew)
Assonance: repeating vowel sounds within words (knee-deep in the saltmarsh)
Consonance: repetition of final consonant sound (but not a rhyme)
Repetition: reiteration of a word, sound, phrase, or idea
Anaphora: type of repletion in which the same expression is repeated at
the beginning of two or more lines
As I ebb’d with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk’d wheer the ripples continually wash you Paumanok
Sonnet XVIII--Shakespeare
What kind of love does 'this' in fact give to 'thee'? We know nothing of the beloved’s form or
height or hair or eyes or bearing, nothing of her character or mind, nothing of her at all,
really. This 'love poem' is actually written not in praise of the beloved, as it seems, but in
praise of itself. Death shall not brag, says the poet; the poet shall brag. This famous sonnet is on
this view one long exercise in self-glorification, not a love poem at all; surely not suitable for
earnest recitation at a wedding or anniversary party, or in a Valentine. (142)
Meter?
Waiting for the Storm
Breeze sent a wrinkling darkness
Across the bay. I knelt
Beneath an upturned boat,
And, moment by moment felt
The sand at my feet grow colder,
The damp air chill and spread.
Then the first raindrops sounded
On the hull above my head.