Poetry Forms

And Poetic Elements

Poetry:

A type of rhythmic and compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery that appeals to the

reader’s emotions and imagination.

Rhyme

• Exact Rhyme pick up/hiccup sing/ring

word/heard maroon/Junedrastic/elastic

• End Rhyme believe/receive

flight/ignite skies/eyes

funny/bunny

• Internal Rhyme neigh/away

breeze/sneeze flour/tower

• Approximate Rhyme library/carry

• Exact Rhyme: Sounds are exact.

fellow/yellow heard/wordhistory/mystery

• Approximate Rhyme: Sounds are similar but not exact.

fellow/follow mastery/mystery

heard/world

• This is the land the Sunset washes-

• There are the banks of the Yellow sea-

• Where it rose-or whither it rushes-

• There are the Western Mystery!

• Night after night her purple traffic

• Strews the landing with Opal Bales-

• Merchantmen poise upon horizons-

• Dip-and vanish like Orioles! Emily Dickinson

End Rhyme and Rhyme Scheme

• End rhyme occurs at the ends of the lines.

• Rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyming words at the ends of lines.– Rhyme scheme is labeled with lower case

letters.– The first sound is labeled with “a,” and the

subsequent sounds are labeled with subsequent letters of the alphabet.

The Coloring SpreeSix felt pens went off to playInto the world of Yesterday.

They colored the rainbow and also the skies, They found stone statues and colored the eyes,

They colored the flowers, especially the rose,They colored the nails on a Sphynx’s toes,They colored in cracks on a castle wall,They found white parrots and colored them all,They added a touch to the autumn trees,And wrote: “Felt Rules!” on parchment leaves.

They had such fun on their coloring spreeThere isn’t much left in the pens for me!

The Coloring SpreeSix felt pens went off to play aInto the world of Yesterday. a

They colored the rainbow and also the skies, b They found stone statues and colored the eyes, b

They colored the flowers, especially the rose, cThey colored the nails on a Sphynx’s toes, cThey colored in cracks on a castle wall, dThey found white parrots and colored them all, dThey added a touch to the autumn trees, eAnd wrote: “Felt Rules!” on parchment leaves. e

They had such fun on their coloring spree fThere isn’t much left in the pens for me! f

Internal Rhyme

• Rhyme occurs within the lines.

• Words within a line may rhyme with a word at the end of the line.

• Words within 2 or more lines may rhyme with each other.

Reading the Tree

I need to read my family Tree

upside-down.

If I turn it around with the boughs in the ground,

then offshoots are roots

that show how I grow.

Couplet: 2 consecutive lines that rhyme

Once by the Pacific by Robert Frost

The shattered water made a misty din.

Great waves looked over others coming in,

And thought of doing something to the shore

That water never did to land before.

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,

Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.

You could not tell, and yet it looked as if

The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff.

The cliff in being backed by continent;

It looked as if a night of dark intent

Was coming, and not only a night, an age.

Someone had better be prepared for rage.

There would be more that ocean-water broken

Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.

Onomatopoeia

• The use of words that sound like what they mean.

Snap Whoosh Smack

Thrum Ping

Gurgle Rattle Hiss

Boom Click

Small SoundsHave you heard

small sounds of the world:

a tippity-tap when a ladybird lands,

the scrinching-scrunch of a slug crunching lunch

or the rumble of worm murmurs under the ground?

Have you heard

the small of the world?

Alliteration: the repetition of an initial consonant sound

Betty bought a bit of butter,

But the butter Betty bought was a bit bitter.

So Betty bought a bit of better butter,

To make Betty's bitter butter better.

Six sleek swans swam swiftly southwards.

If two witches were watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch ?

Jolly juggling jesters jauntily juggled jingling jacks.

Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds.

Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came. --

Carl Sandburg, Early Moon

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling, my darling, my life and my bride.

--Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee"

Prose Poem: poetry that is written in ordinary paragraph form yet uses the elements of poetry – especially very

powerful images.

Campbell McGrath’s winding and descriptive “The Prose Poem” is a recent example of the form; it begins:

On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row upon row upon row.

Quatrain

• A four line poem or stanza LaterMy teacher said I should look up

This word: PROCRASTINATE.

I’ll check it out when I get home,

It’s just a little wait.

But after school my friends drop by,

We laugh and play and fight;

Then suddenly it’s dinner time,

I’ll look it up tonight.

But now the television’s on,

Homework’s looking bleak;

PROCRASTINATE can wait a bit,

I’ll look it up next week.

Lyric Poem: expresses a speaker’s emotions or thoughts and does not tell a story.

One Perfect RoseA single flow'r he sent me, since we met.All tenderly his messenger he chose;Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'Love long has taken for his amuletOne perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yetOne perfect limousine, do you suppose?Ah no, it's always just my luck to getOne perfect rose.

• Dorothy Parker

English Sonnetalso called Shakespearean Sonnet

Lyric poem

14 lines

iambic pentameter

3 quatrains

1 couplet

Rhyme Scheme:

abab cdcd efef gg

English sonnet

• Each quatrain makes a point or gives an example.

• The couplet sums it all up

Iambic pentameter

-poetry that consists of 5 iambic feet

- Each foot contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable

= 10 syllables = 5 iambs ( ~ /)

The evil that men do lives after them.

The good is oft interred with their bones;

Julius Caesar Act V

English Sonnet:

Sonnet LXXIII That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day,

As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the deathbed, whereon it must expire, Consumed by that which it was nourished by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

Italian Sonnet

• Lyric poem

• 14 lines

• Iambic pentameter

• 1 octave

• 1 sestet• Rhyme scheme: abba abba cde cde

Italian Sonnet

"Sonnet LXXI" Who will in fairest book of Nature know How Virtue may best lodged in Beauty be, Let him but learn of Love to read in thee, Stella, those fair lines, which true goodness show. There shall he find all vices' overthrow, Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly; That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so. And not content to be Perfection's heir Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move, Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair. So while thy beauty draws the heart to love, As fast thy Virtue bends that love to good.

"But, ah," Desire still cries, "give me some food." by Sir Philip Sidney,

Rhythm: musical quality in language, produced by repetition.

• From The Splendor Falls

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story;

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory;

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying dying,

Meter: a generally regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.

from Next! by Ogden Nash

I thought that I would like to see

The early world that used to be

That mastodonic mausoleum

The Natural History Museum.

On iron seat in marble bower,

I slumbered through the closing hour.

At midnight in the vasty hall

The fossils gathered for a ball.

Trochaic meter• trochaic = ( ~) • 2 syllables = stressed + unstressed

ONE FISH TWO FISH RED FISH BLUE FISHCopyright 1960 Beginner Books

One fish two fishRed fish Blue fish.Black fish Blue fishOld fish New fishThis one has a little star.This one has a little car.Say! What a lot of fish there are.

Anapestic meter

anapestic = ( ~ ~ )

3 syllables = unstressed + unstressed +stressed

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house

Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse.

dactylic = ( ~ ~ ) 3 syllables = stressed + unstressed + unstressed

Eve By Ralph HodgsonEve, with her basket, was Deep in the bells and grass, Wading in bells and grass Up to her knees, Picking a dish of sweet Berries and plums to eat, Down in the bell and grass Under the trees. Mute as a mouse in a Corner the cobra lay, Circled round a bough of the Cinnamon tall. . .

 

  

Spondaic meter

• spondaic = ( )

• 2 syllables = stressed + stressed

Break, break,

Break On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

Tanka

A Japanese poetic form, dating back to the

7th century.

5 unrhymed lines

31 syllables

Lines 1 and 3 have five syllables

Lines 2, 4, and 5 have seven syllables

Evokes a strong feeling with a single image

Tanka

5 syllables Beautiful mountains

7 syllables Rivers with cold, cold water.

5 syllable White cold snow on rocks

7 syllables Trees over the place with frost

7 syllables White sparkly snow everywhere.

Aru toki wa

hana no kazu ni wa

taranu domo

chiru ni wa morenu

Tomoday Kimpei

In life I never was

among the well-known flowers

and yet, in withering

I am most certainly

Tomoda Kimpei.

Blank Verse

• A poem with ten-syllable lines, five accents in each, and no end rhyme

(unrhymed iambic pentameter)

I’m a Myna

I mimic noise, I imitate a voice,I copy chat exactly as it is,And when I shout: “ROLL OVER! SIT! LIE DOWN!”a furry-one-with-fleas will leap about.I love to tock to Clock and rap with Tapwho thrums his water fingers in the sink.I’m like a magpie storing shiny thingsfor I collect the glitterings of sound.

Free Verse: poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme.

I Dream'd in a Dream

by Walt Whitman

  I DREAM'D in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the    whole of the rest of the earth,  I dream'd that was the new city of Friends,

 Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest,

 It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,  And in all their looks and words.

Figurative Language

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Direct Metaphor

• Indirect Metaphor

• Extended Metaphor

• Personification