Elements of

Poetry

1.SENSE

• A word is a sound or a combination of sounds which refers to or means something. A word may be used in different senses, but for each sense the word refers to an object, idea, action or quality. This meaning is called the DENOTATION of the word. Sometimes a word may call to mind other allied meanings or ideas. We call these meanings, CANNOTATIONS.

Example:

Green Leaves and Grass

- Green denotes simply the familiar color of leaves and grass.

- It connotes “newness”, “freshness” and hope

2. SOUND

Part of the meaning of a poem is carried by the sound of the words used. As in music, every word has it’s tone color.

Differences in tone color depend on differences in the sound of the two letters.

The poet selects his words with the appropriate tone color in mind to produce his intended effect.

Example:The poet might explore the possibilities of evoking a particular mood through a regular repetition of the same vowel sound(assonance), as in “On thy cold gray stones, O sea!”(Tennyson) or the same consonant sound(alliteration), as in “These ruminants on the run, when they travel,/ travel a mobile mental mileage metered/ by the depth and distance of their dreams”

He may also use onomatopoeic words like “plop”, “bang”, and “splash”.

3. POETRY IS LIKE ORDINARY SPEECH

When we utter sounds of human speech, they do not come out in one even flow but varying pitches, stresses, volumes, and durations. This variety makes for the rhythm of the language. In poetry, it used with special intensity to stress certain moods, feelings, ideas, certain ideas and attitudes.

To sum up, a poem becomes an effective conveyor of meaning if its components, substance or sense, sound, and structure, work together, to make a whole meaningful entity.

Detailed Elements of Poetry the reader must be familiar with:

a. Voice

b. Diction

c. Imagery

a. Voice

- Means the speaker in the poem or persona. Sometimes the voice in the poem is not that of a person. It can be the voice of a mountain or any non-human being. When we read a poem, we hear the speaker’s voice that conveys its tone that is implied attitude toward its subject.

Tone is an abstraction we make from details and exclusion of other kinds.

Kinds of Voice

A. Dramatized Voice- voice that says “I”; identifies himself

B. Undramatized Voice- is just a voice but does not identify him.

b. Diction

Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it as “the best word in the best order”. It refers to the author’s choice and use of words in the poem. To understand the poem one must know how not only what the word means but also what they imply or suggest both denotation and connotation of words must be considered.

This includes sound, denotation and connotation.

c. Imagery

- refers to the words that are used to describe things in a poem. It is the element that produces the effect of vividness, the result of evocation of mental reproductions, representations or imitations of sense perceptions.

4. FIGURES OF SPEECH

- Language can be conveniently classified as either literal or figurative language when we mean something other than the actual meaning of the words.

- These are expressions or ways of using word in a nonliteral sense. These are rhetorical devices used by poets in order to evoke imagery. Rhetoricians have catalogued more than 250 different figures of speech.

- It is saying less, more, opposite or something else than what you mean.

- According to R. Frost “A permissible way of saying something and meaning another”.

a. SIMILE- a comparison of two persons or things which are unlike in most respects uses like or as to signal the comparison. (Serrano, 1979)

Ex: “The boat, like some full breasted swan…”

b. METAPHOR- an implied comparison between two persons or things which are unlike in most respects; does not use like or as.

Ex: “My soul is an enchanted boat”.

c. PERSONIFICATION- the transfer of human characteristics to inanimate objects or abstract qualities.

Ex: “Where wasteful time debateth with decay”.

d. Hyperbole- a statement greatly exaggerated for an aesthetic purpose.

e. ONOMATOPEIA- the blending of sounds of words with their sense.

Ex: “How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle”

f. APOSTROPHE- addressing absent person or ideas directly as if they were present.

Ex: “He’s not a bad singer.”

g. ALLUSION- a reference to something outside the poem (in history, mythology or another literary work) which has built-in emotional association. Ex: “Was this face that launched thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”

It refers to the grammatical structure of words in sentences of longer units throughout the poem.

5. SYMBOLISMAND ALLEGORY

• Symbolism refers to a symbol of any object or action that means more than itself, any object or action that represents something beyond itself. (Di Yanni,1994)

Ex: The heart shape or rose is a symbol of love.

• Allegory is more or less extended use of metaphor, symbol or personification for the purpose of communicating indirectly a hidden meaning-often a veiled personal identity, political opinion or religious or oral doctrine.

6. GRAMMAR

This refers to the word order in poetry may be lengthy and complicated with subjects and predicates following inverted order.• Syntax- it is the order of words in the sentence,

phrase or clause. It comes from a Greek word meaning to “arrange together”.

Ex: “Full many a gem of purest ray serene.The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear.”Means: The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean caves bear many lustrous gems.

7. SOUND AND RHYME

• Sound- in a poem has something to do with its rhyme as well as two figures of speech earlier mentioned, alliteration and assonance.

• Rhyme- it is the most familiar element of poetry which can be defined as the matching of final vowel and consonant sounds in two or more words. (Di Yanni, 1994)

- it is the repetition of stressed vowel sound and its succeeding sound.

Different Types of Rhyme

a. Perfect or Exact Rhyme-it occurs when differing consonant sounds are

followed by identical stressed vowel sounds.Ex: Foe-foeb. Half-rhyme

-only the final consonant sounds of rhyming words are identical; the stressed vowel sounds as well as the initial consonant sounds differ.Ex: Soul-oil, mirth-fourthc. Eye-rhyme

-doesn’t really rhyme, it merely looks rhyme.Ex: Cough-bough

d. Rime riche

Words that sound exactly the same but have different spellings and meanings.

Ex: Knight-night.

e. Historical Rhyme- rhyme that was perfect when the poem was written but because of changes in pronunciation, is no longer so.

f. Masculine Rhyme- the final syllabled are stressed and after their differing consonant sounds are identical I sounds.

Ex: stark-mark, support-retort

g. Feminine Rhyme- stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identical stressed syllables.Ex: revival-arrivalg. Triple Rhyme- a kind of feminine rhyme in which identical unstressed syllables.Ex: machinery- sceneryh. End Rhyme- corresponding sounds occur at the end of line.i. Internal Rhyme- corresponding sounds occur within the lines.j. Beginning Rhyme- the first word or syllable rhymes in two or more.

8. RHYTHM AND METER• RHYTHM- is a pattern of sounds a sounds

arranged in a particular way. It also refers to the regular recurrence of the accent or stress in a poem or a song. It is the pulse or beat we feel in a phrase of music or a line of poetry.

Poets rely heavily on rhythm to express and convey feeling.Ex: “The Rising Sun” by John Donne

Busy old FOOL, unruly SUNWHY DOST THOU THUSThrough WINdows, and through

CURtains CALL on US

• METER- defined as the number of stressed and unstressed syllables in one poetic foot. It is a count of the stresses we feel in the poem’s rhythm.

Foot – it is the unit of poetic meter in English by convention. It could be: iambic, trochaic, anapaestic or dactylic. Iambic Line- it is composed primarily of iambs.

An iamb- is an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one.Ex: “pre-VENT”Trochaic Line- it is an accented syllable followed

by an accented one. Ex: FOOT-ball

We can represent an accent syllable followed by one by a TUM and the unaccepted one by a TA.

Because the iambic and the trochaic feet contain two syllables per foot, they are called ‘duple’ or double meters that can be distinguished from a triple meters, like the anapestic and the dactylic.

Anapestic Line- accent is on the last syllable. It consist of ‘ta-ta-tum’ as in com-pre-HEND

Dactylic Line- accent is on the first syllable. It is composed of ‘tum-ta-ta’ like DAN-ge-rous.

If the foot is made up of two accented syllabes together or a ‘tum-tum’ it is called a spondee or the spondaic meter.

Duple-Meters: two syllables per foot: iambic and trochaic

Triple Meters: three syllables per foot: anapesticand dactylic. Number of foot per line

One foot- Monometer

Two foot- Dimeter

Three foot- Trimeter

Four foot- Tetrameter

Five foot- Pentameter

Six foot- Hexameter

Seven foot- Heptameter

Eight foot- octameter

9. FORM STRUCTURE

- it is the way the poem goes together in terms of its component; physical appearance; genre (structure); what words used (form)

10. SETTING

- It answers the question what, when or where. It may or may not be represented in the poem.

11. THEME

- it is commonly known as the message or the underlying philosophy conveyed in a poem. It is an abstraction or generalization drawn from the details of a literary work.

It also refers to the idea or intellectually apprehensible meaning inherent and implicit in a piece of literary work. (Di Yanni, 1994)Purpose: to work toward understanding a poem’s significance- what it says, implies and what it means.12. TONE- it is the attitude of the writer towards his subjects or audience; it is the emotional meaning of the work; it is the mood it creates on the reader.13. PATTERN-it is the entire combination of rhythm, rhyme, meter and other devices to create a distinctive flow.Ex: Sonnet