Poetry

Metric foot - The style of stressed and unstressed syllables within a meter.

• Iamb-a foot with one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable as in the word "around".
• Trochee-a foot with one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable, as in the word "broken".
• Anapest-a foot with two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable, as in the phrase "in a flash".
• Dactyle-a foot with one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllable, as in the word "argument"
• Spondee-a foot with two stressed syllables as in the word "airship".
• Pyrrhic-a foot with two unstressed syllables as in the last foot of the word "imag[ining]"

• Monometer-verse written in one foot lines.
• Dimeter-verse written in two foot lines.
• Trimeter-verse written in three foot lines.
• Tetrameter-verse written in four foot lines.
• Pentameter-verse written in five foot lines.

RHYME SCHEME

Is a regular pattern of rhyme words in a poem. To describe a rhyme scheme, one uses a letter of the alphabet to represent each rhyming sound in a poem or stanza.

CONSONANCE

Is the repetition of similar final consonant sounds at the ends of words or accented syllables.

ASSONANCE

Is the repetition of vowel sounds in conjunction with dissimilar consonant sounds. "given and distance" the "i" sound repeats while the g-n d-s.

Dust of Snow

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

~Robert Frost~

The Ball Poem

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,

What, what is he to do? I saw it go

Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then

Merrily over-there it is in the water!

John Berryman

Suicide's Note

The calm,

Cool face of the river

Asked me for a kiss.

Langston Hughes

a poem that makes use of the conventions of drama. Such poems may be monologues or dialogues or may present the speech of many characters.

Suicide's Note

The calm,

Cool face of the river

Asked me for a kiss.

Langston Hughes

A modern style of art and literature that tries to organize art according to the irrational dictator of the unconscious mind.

The Absence

I speak to you across cities

I speak to you across plains

My mouth is upon your pillow

Both faces of the walls come meeting

My voice discovering you

I speak to you of eternity

O cities memories of cities

Cities wrapped in our desires

Cities come early cities come lately

Cities strong and cities secret

Plundered of their master's builders

All their thinkers all their ghosts

Fields pattern of emerald

Bright living surviving

The harvest of the sky over our earth

Feeds my voice I dream and weep

I laugh and dream among the flames

Among the clusters of the sun

And over my body your body spreads

The sheet of it's bright mirror

Types of poems

Theme

a central message or insight into life revealed by literary work.

Paraphrase

The restatement in ones own words of what we understand a literary work to say.

Summary

A brief condensation of the main idea or story of a literary work. A summary is similar to a paraphrase, but less detailed.

Speaker

The voice of the poem. usually the poet but can be a character or even inanimate object.

Figurative language

A writing or speech not meant to be taken seriously. Writers use this to express ideas in vivid and imaginative ways.

Subject

The main topic of a poem, story, or play.

You might need to know

Surrealists

Imagists

Wrote short poems that used ordinary language and free verse to create sharp, exact, concentrated pictures.

John Henry was a railroad man.

He worked from six 'till five,

"Raise 'em up bullies and let 'em drop down,

I'll beat you to the bottom or die."

John Henry said to his captain:

"You are nothing but a common man,

Before that steam drill shall beat me down,

I'll die with my hammer in my hand."

John Henry said to the Shakers:

"You must listen to my call,

Before that steam drill shall beat me down,

I'll jar these mountains till they fall."

John Henry

A song like poem that tell a story, often one dealing with adventure and romance.

Homer's

The Odyssey

4 to 6 line stanzas

Regular meter

Ballads

Simple Language

Rhyme

Long poem about deeds of gods or heroes.

Epics

Poems that tell stories of chivalry

Metrical Romances

Tells a story in verse

Naratives

a poem or speech in which on imaginary character speaks to a silent listener.

Even had you skill

In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark' -- and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

—E'en then would be some stooping...

My Last Duchess

Dramatic monologue

Dramatic poetry

• A melodic poem that expresses the observations and feelings of a single speaker.

Lyric Poem

Consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet

Shakesperean or English, sonnet

Shall i compare thee to a summers day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespear

Sonnet

A 14 line lyric poem. Focused on a single theme. They can have many variations but are usually written in iambicpentameter, Following 1 or 2 traditional patterns.

split into two parts, one octave and one sestet.

Petrarchon or italian, sonnet

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"

I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait."

John Milton

a single metrical line of poetry

VERSE

types of verse

• Blank verse- poetry written in unrhymed iambicpentameter.

• Free verse-poetry that lacks a regular rhythmical pattern or meter. A writer of free verse is at liberty to use any rhythms appropriate to what he or she is saying.

STANZA

A group of lines in a poem that are considered to be a unit. Many poems are divided into stanzas that are separated by spaces. Stanzas ofter function just like a paragraph in prose. Each stanza states and develops a main idea. Stanzas are commonly named according to the number of lines found in them.

Couplet-a two-line stanza

Tercet-a three-line stanza

Quatrain-a four-line stanza

Cinquain-a five-line stanza

Sestate-a six-line stanza

Heptastick-a seven-line stanza

Octave-a eight-line stanza

Types of Stanzas

POETRY

Basic parts to poems

• Meter
• Rhyme
• Stanza
• Verse

• Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.

The repetition of sounds at the ends of words. Rhyming words have identical vowel sounds in their final accented syllables. The consonants before the vowels may be different, but any consonants occurring after these vowels are the same.

types of rhymes

RHYME

• End rhyme-occur when rhyming words are repeated at the end of lines
• Internal rhyme-Occur when rhyming words fall within a line.
• Approximate, or slant rhyme-Occurs when the rhyming sounds are similar but not exact "prove and glove".

Number of metric feet

NUMBER

COMBINED

Scansion

The process of analyzing a poems metrical pattern . To do this, stressed and unstressed syllables are marked to determine the style and number of feet.

iambicpentameter

anapestictetrameter

dactylicdimeter

METER

A poems rhythmical pattern. This pattern is determined by the number and types of stresses or beats in each line.

STYLE

Types of metric feet

Average at best

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