TYPES OF AND ELEMENTS OF POETRYENGL 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 HORSESBY GARY SNYDER NARRATIVE POETRY

He had driven half the nightFrom far down San JoaquinThrough Mariposa, up theDangerous Mountain roads,And pulled in at eight a.m.With his big truckload of hay behind the barn.With winch and ropes and hooksWe stacked the bales up cleanTo splintery redwood raftersHigh in the dark, flecks of alfalfaWhirling through shingle-cracks of light, Itch of hay dust in the

sweaty shirt and shoes.At lunchtime under Black oakOut 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 seventeenI thought, that day I startedI sure would hate to do this all my life.And dammit, that's just whatI'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 understandThat 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 BLUESBY LANGSTON HUGHES LYRIC POETRY

Folks, I come up NorthCause they told me de North was fineI come up NorthCause they told me de North was fine.Been up here six months—I’m about to lose my mind.

This mornin’ for breakfastI chawed de mornin’ air.This mornin’ for breakfastChawed 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 meHow de blues they come to beSays if you was to ask meHow 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 COOLGWENDOLYN BROOKS

WHO’S SPEAKING?

The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.We real cool. WeLeft school. We

Lurk late. WeStrike straight. WeSing sin. WeThin gin. WeJazz June. WeDie 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”

•Metaphor• Explicitly says that one thing IS something else.

•Getting out of bed is like getting pulled out of quicksand.

• 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.

•A symbol represents something other than itself.

• "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.”

• 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 BLAKETHE 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 bedOf crimson joy,

And his dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.

WALT WHITMANI 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 SUMMERSHIKI

River in the summerThere 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 familyand the Long Island city projects,leaving a mongrel-skinny puertorriqueño boynine years oldwho had to find work. Makengo the Cubanlet him work at the bodega.In grocery aisleshe learned the steps of the dry-mop mambo,banging the cash registerlike piano percussionin the spotlight of Machito's orchestra,polite with the abuelas who bought on credit,practicing the grin on customershe'd seen Makengo grinwith his bad yellow teeth. Tony left the projects too,with a scholarship for law school.But he cursed the cold primaverain Boston;

the cooking of his neighborsleft no smell in the hallway.and no one spoke Spanish(not even the radio).

So Tony walked without a mapthrough the city,a landscape of hostile condominiumsand the darkness of white faces,sidewalk-searcher losttill he discovered the projects. Tony went to the bodegabut he didn't buy anything:he sat by the doorway satisfiedto watch la gente (peopleisland-brown as him)crowd in and out,hablando español,thought: this is beautiful,and grinnedhis bodega grin. This is a rice and beanssuccess 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 throwThe 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 syllableWe 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 timeThis 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 goesThen, then (methinks) how sweetly flowsThat liquefaction of her clothes

•Quatrain- a four-lines tanza, rhymed or unrhymedRhyme 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 intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof 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, ornext-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 gestureI love) I shan't have lied. It's evidentthe art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.