Bellringer: How does your attitude toward poetry compare to the speaker’s? What do you think of/how do you feel when you hear that your Literature class is about to start studying poetry?

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are

members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law,

business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty,

romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” Dead Poets’

Society

Poetry Unit8th Grade GRC

• “Novels are like a mural. Poetry is a snapshot.”– What does this quote mean? – What are some of your fears as you

approach poetry? – “I, , make a solemn promise to

keep an open mind about poetry. I can analyze poetry well if I work hard enough.”

TPCASTT• Title• Paraphrase• Connotations and Literary

Devices• Attitude• Shift• Title • Theme

“Road Not Taken”Robert Frost• Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26,

1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.

• Although his work is mainly associated with the life and landscape of New England, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. His poems are often considered searching and dark meditations on universal themes with layers of ambiguity and irony.

Lyric Poetry• a short, highly musical poem that expresses

the observations and feelings of a single speaker

• On the ancient Greek stage, a dramatic production often featured a chorus, which was a group of speakers, who commented on the action of the play.

• When a single individual sang or spoke more personally and accompanied himself on a lyre, the verse was called lyric.

• Thus, our present designation of lyric poetry includes personal, individual emotion.

• The lyric does not tell a story as an epic or narrative poem does.

• Forms of Lyric Poetry: Sonnets, Rondeau, Odes Villanelles, Elegies

Free Verse Poetry• poetry not written in a regular rhythmic pattern, or

meter.– May contain lines of any length or with any

number of beats.• Many people consider free verse to be a modern

form of poetry. The truth is that it has been around for several centuries.

• Only in the 20th century did it become one of the most popular forms of poetry.

• Its popularity stems from the belief that free verse is poetry without rules; after all, it doesn't rhyme, and it doesn't have a meter.

• Remember, what separates poetry from prose is the arrangement of carefully chosen words into verses.

“anyone lived in a pretty how town” e.e. cummings• Edward Estlin Cummings was born October 14, 1894

in the town of Cambridge Massachusetts. • Cummings's poetry often deals with themes of love

and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual to the masses and to the world. Many of Cummings's poems are satirical and address social issues

• Cummings's work universally shows a particular idiosyncrasy of syntax, or way of arranging individual words into larger phrases and sentences. – Many of his most striking poems do not involve

any typographical (i.e. capital letters) or punctuation marks at all,

• “anyone lived in a pretty how town” is a commentary on society and the individual, telling the story of Anyone and No one, with references to the seasons indicating the passage of time.

Limericks & Haiku

• Limerick: a short, humorous, narrative poem– Has 5 lines, with an aabba rhyme scheme– Has a specific rhythm

•The a lines match in length•The b lines match in length, but are

shorter than the a lines• Haiku: a 3-line Japanese verse form.

– It has a 5-7-5 pattern, meaning the first and third lines have 5 syllables and the second line has seven syllables.

– Uses vivid images to create a single picture, generally of a scene from nature

Narrative Poetry • Tells (narrates a story)• Includes epics and ballads

– Are usually longer than lyric poems• Epic Poem: a long poem that tells of the

adventures of one or more great heroes. – An epic is written in a dignified, formal style

and often demonstrates the values that are important to a specific culture.

• Ballad: – a songlike poem that tells a story, often

dealing with adventure or romance. – Often written in 4-6 line stanzas– Have regular rhythms and rhyme schemes– Often features a refrain

“Those Winter Sundays”Robert Hayden

• Hayden wrote “Frederick Douglass” and “Those Winter Sundays.”

• Born Asa Bundy Sheffey in 1913, Robert Hayden was raised in a poor neighborhood in Detroit.

• Because of impaired vision, he was unable to participate in sports, but was able to spend his time reading.

• He had an interest in African-American history and explored his concerns about race in his writing.

• In 1976, he became the first black American to be appointed the Poet Laureate (expert in poetry for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.).

Sonnets• A lyric poem that is 14 lines long first written in Italy during the

13th century • Two main types of sonnets: Petrarchan and Shakespearean • Petrarchan Sonnet (a.k.a. Italian Sonnet)

– divided into two sections by two different groups of rhyming sounds. The first 8 lines is called the octave and rhymes:

a b b a a b b a– The remaining 6 lines is called the sestet and can have either

two or three rhyming sounds, arranged in a variety of ways: cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce.

• Shakespearean Sonnet (a.k.a. English Sonnet)– Each quatrain develops a specific idea, but one closely

related to the ideas in the other quatrains. – The English sonnet has the simplest and most flexible pattern

of all sonnets, consisting of 3 quatrains of alternating rhyme and a couplet: a b a b c b c d e f e f g g

Other Forms:Odes & Villanelles

• Ode: An ode is a lyric poem, usually addressing a particular person or thing – often praises people, the arts of music and

poetry, natural scenes, or abstract concepts • Villanelles: a nineteen-line poem with

two repeating rhymes and two refrains. – made up of five tercets followed by a

quatrain. – The first and third lines of the opening tercet

are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines.

“One Art”Elizabeth Bishop• Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911 in Worcester,

Massachusetts. When she was very young her father died, her mother was committed to a mental asylum, and she was sent to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia.

• She was independently wealthy, and from 1935 to 1937 she spent time traveling to France, Spain, North Africa, Ireland, and Italy and then settled in Key West, Florida, for four years.

• Her poem, “One Art,” is a villanelle, one of the most difficult poetic forms.

• She is comparing the art of writing to the art of losing someone or something important.

• Pay attention to the way she uses the strict form to balance the intense emotion that builds until the final line.

Blank Verse• Unrhymed iambic pentameter• Since it is unrhymed, it depends on

imagery to distinguish it from prose, and its metrical pattern to distinguish it from free verse.

• No set stanza pattern• Shakespeare often used it for his

plays. • Echoes the natural rhythms of speech

and allows for smooth enjambment

More Blank Verse

More Blank Verse