POETRY & POE

An Introduction and Overview

WHAT IS POETRY?

Poetry is best appreciated when read and listened to aloud

The sound of poetry is like the sound of music

Poetry is not always analytical, so the “meaning” is not always the most

important feature of the poem

The “test” of poetry is how much the author can cause you to feel poignantly

or see vividly what the author is feeling or describing

THE GIFT OF THE POET

Sees beauty where we never thought it was and points it out to us

Sees injustice where we never thought it was and makes us see/feel it too

Senses a great truth and shows it in a way that we feel it profoundly

For example, expresses feelings on a spring morning, and we realize that we’ve

felt that way before but could never express it

• Describes or relates

events or happenings

• Expresses thoughts/feelings, hopefully , that we might feel as s/he does

NARRATIVE AND LYRIC POETRY

Narrative Poetry Lyric Poetry

WILLIAM CULLENBRYANT’S “TO A

WATERFOWL”

Does not tell us a story about

birds nor gives us a description

of them

Instead, he tries to get us to feel

as he felt when he saw the birds

against the sunset

HOW TO APPRECIATE POETRY

Get the author’s mood – imagine yourself in the same emotional setting that the

author (presumably) was when the poem was written

Try to associate the author’s mood with a time when you felt the same way on a

similar occasion

Allow poetry to open your mind and emotions to new understandings of life and

new viewpoints and feelings about people and things

FIGURES OF SPEECH

Used in all types of

writing but most often

used in poetry

Simile

Alliteration

Hyperbole

Onomatopoeia

Antithesis

Irony

Metaphor

Personification

Apostrophe

SIMILE Expresses comparison

between two objects of unlike

nature

“Like” and “as” are signs of a

simile

*Helen, thy beauty to me Like those Nicean barks of yore(Edgar Allen Poe – “To Helen”)

*And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down,As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,Goes down with a great shout upon the hills(Edwin Markham – “Lincoln,: Man of the People”)

ALLITERATION

Repetition of successive

words having the same

sound

*A tapering turret overtops the work.(Ralph Waldo Emerson – T”he Snow Storm”)

*By midnight moons, o’er moistening dews (Phillip Freneau – “The Indian Burial Ground”)

*I have known the silence of the stars, and of the sea.(Edgar Lee Masters – “Silence”)

HYPERBOLE: AN EXTRAVAGANCE OF UTTERANCE

*How many million Aprils came. (Sara

Teasdale – “Blue Squills”)

*He ate and drank the precious

words. (Emily Dickinson – “A Book”)

ONOMATOPOEIA

The use of words in

which the sound

suggests the sense

*From the jingling and

the tinkling of the bells (Edgar Allen Poe – “The Bells”)

*Boomlay, boomlay,

boomlay, boom. (Vachel Lindsay –

T”he Congo”)

ANTITHESIS

An opposition or contrast of

words and ideas

Words are contrasted or

balanced against each other

so that the meaning is more

emphatic

Character is

what we think we

are; reputation is

what men think we

are.

I R O N Y : A N U T T E R A N C E I N T H E F O R M O F H U M O R O R L I G H T S A R C A S M I N W H I C H T H E

O P P O S I T E O F W H A T I S S A I D I S M E A N T

He hath brought many captives home to Rome,Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill;Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:Yet Brutus says that he was ambitions,And Brutus is an honorable man.

(William Shakespeare – “Julius Caesar”)

METAPHOR

An implied comparison

“Like” and “as” are not

used

*My Vigor is a

new-minted penny.

(Amy Lowell – “A Lady”)

*My heart a

dewdrop is. (John

Bannister Tabb – T”o Sidney Lanier”)

P E RS ONIF ICATION : G IVES THE ATTRIBUTES OF L IFE TO

INANIMATE OBJECTS

*Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The swift we raise to them and thee.(Ralph Waldo Emerson – “The Concord Hymn”)

*My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines.(Robert Frost – “Mending Wall”)

APOSTROPHE

Directly addresses an

inanimate object as if it

were present

*Darest thou now, O

Soul.

(Walt Whitman – “Darest Thou Now, O

Soul”)

*O World, I cannot

hold thee close

enough.

(Edna St. Vincent Millay – “God’s World”)

T H E P H I L O S O P H Y O F C O M P O S I T I O N

Edgar Allen Poe

THE PROPER LENGTH OF POETRY

o If more than one sitting is needed, the totality of impression is lost.

o Intense excitements or elevations of the soul are, by psychical necessity, brief.

o Brevity is proportional to the intensity of the desired effect – and a degree of duration is necessary to produce any effect at all.

o To meet that criteria of brevity & intensity, as well as construct a poem that would at once satisfy popular taste and critical review, Poe established the proper length of The Raven to be at around 100 lines.

Contemplation of the beautiful is most intense, most elevating, and most pure. Beauty is an effect felt within the soul (not intellect or heart). This effect and elevation can be most readily attained through poetry whereas satisfaction of the intellect and the heart (passion) is most readily attained in prose. Though truth and passion can exist in poetry too, they must always be subservient to the predominate aim, which is Beauty. The tone of the highest manifestation of Beauty is sadness, which in its most supreme development, excites the soul to tears, and melancholy is the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

B E A U T Y A S T H E S O L E L E G I T I M A T E P R O V I N C E O F T H E P O E M

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE REFRAIN

Depends upon the force of monotone, both in sound and thought, for its impression – of which pleasure is induced from a sense of identity – through repetition.

While adhering to the monotone of sound, Poe, however, varied thought, in the application of the refrain, to produce continuously novel effects – while the refrain itself remained the same.

He decided that the refrain would be most effective in proportion to its brevity; thus, he fixed upon a single word for it.

C H A R A C T E R O F T H E W O R D

NEVERMOREClose of refrain, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis

Long “0” is most sonorous vowel.

And “r” is most producible consonant.

Continuous use by human being seems implausible; hence, Poe conceived of non-reasoning creature capable of speech instead.

The idea of a parrot was replaced by the raven, for this bird of ill omen is more in keeping with the intended tone.

The Raven monotonously repeats the one word, “Nevermore,” at the conclusion of each stanza in a melancholy poem of 108 lines.

P R E T E X T F O R C O N T I N U O U S U S E O F “NEVERMORE”

THE MOST UNIVERSALLY

MELANCHOLY TOPIC

If the topic is melancholy and yet most

poetical, then it must be the most closely

allied with Beauty: it is the death of a

beautiful woman.

And the lips best suited to speak of this

melancholy topic are those of her

bereaved lover

Combine idea of lover lamenting the death of his mistress and bird continuously repeating “Nevermore.”

The first query is commonplace, the second less so, the third still less so, etc.

The bereaved lover, is startled from his original nonchalance by the melancholy character of the word itself, by its frequent repetition, and the ominous reputation of the fowl that utters it.

At length, he becomes excited and begins to fashion queries to the bird of a far different character (see text, p. 3)

O P P O R T U N I T Y F O R T H E V A R I A T I O N O F A P P L I C A T I O N

POE COMPOSES QUERIES CL IMAX STANZA F IRST

“Prophet!,” said I, “thing of evil! Prophet still if bird or devil!

By that heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore,

Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore –

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore .”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

LOCALE Close circumscription of space

necessary for effect of insulated incident – it has the force to frame a picture as well as indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention.

The lover in his chamber, held sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented it.

Through a window so that the flapping of the wings is like the “tapping” at the door.

Lover throws open the door – only to find darkness and so adopts the fancy that it was the spirit of his mistress that had knocked.

Tempestuous night accounts for the Raven to seek entrance and also contrasts with serenity of chamber.

Bird alights on bust of Pallas to contrast marble and plumage and in keeping with the scholarship of the lover.

Raven enters with “many a flirt and flutter,” indicating an air of the fantastic.

IN T R O DUCT ION O F T H E B IR D