ENH 110 Introduction to Poetry

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ENH 110 Introduction to Poetry
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Suggestions for reading a poem
1.Find a quiet space without distractions
(ipods, cell phones, tv, etc). Read the syntax
literally read the poem straight through
without expectations It is best to read it aloud
first then read it silently. Perhaps even jot
down a first impression. Some poems are
complex. Take in as much as you can.
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Suggestions for reading a poem
2. Focus on the title try to articulate its
significance, especially after having read it
carefully, perhaps twice.
Jabberwocky A Martian sends a Postcard
Home Out, Out-- somewhere i have never
travelled, gladly beyond
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Suggestions for reading a poem
3. Identify the poems situation What is going
on? Who is the voice? What is the tone? Is
someone being spoken to? Is a story being
told? Pay attention to particular sound
patterns alliteration, assonance, consonance,
onomatopoeia, and figures of speech simile,
metaphor, personification
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Suggestions for reading a poem
4. Use a dictionary, other reference
books, and/or reliable web sites. Also pay
attention to the poets use of diction, syntax,
and punctuation (or lack thereof)
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Suggestions for reading a poem
5. Remember poems exist in time and
times change. Reference the time it was
written research the poet.
Poets.org
Poetry Foundation.org
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Suggestions for reading a poem
6. Take a poem on its own terms. Live with it,
and try not to get frustrated. It is supposed to
bring you pleasure, not make you run for the
Prozac.
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Suggestions for reading a poem
7. Be willing to be surprised.
You Fit Into Me
you fit into me like a hook into an eye
a fish hook an open eye
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Suggestions for reading a poem
8. Assume there is a reason for everything.
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Suggestions for reading a poem
9. Argue jot down your varied thoughts about
its thematic value.
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Suggestions for reading a poem
10. Paraphrase the content interpret what you
think the poem means, the poets purpose.
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What is poetry?
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What is poetry?
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove, the poem
must ride on its own melting. Robert Frost
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What is poetry?
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it
must be a well-made verbal object that does
honor to the language in which it is written.
Secondly, it must say something significant
about a reality common to us all, but perceived
from a unique perspective. What the poet says
has never been said before, but, once he or she
has said it, readers will recognize its validity
for themselves. - W. H. Auden
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What is poetry?
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of
the world, and makes familiar objects be as if
they were not familiar. - Percy Bysshe
Shelley
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What is poetry?
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is a
speaking picture. - Simonides
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What is poetry?
I grew up in this town, my poetry was born
between the hill and the river, it took its
voice from the rain, and like the timber, it
steeped itself in the forests. - Pablo
Neruda
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What is poetry?
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on
land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a
search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of
the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a
phantom script telling how rainbows are made and
why they go away. - Carl Sandburg
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What is poetry?
Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the
poet believes to be interior and personal, which
the reader recognizes as his own. -
Salvatore Quasimodo
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What is poetry?
Write drunk, revise sober. - Miller Williams
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What is poetry?
Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked
ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the
leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet
pea that has run wild ... - Boris Pasternak
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What is poetry?
Just because your voice reaches halfway around
the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it
reached only to the end of the bar. - Edward R.
Murrow
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What is poetry?
Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the
steadfast possession of definition. - Eli
Khamarov
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What is poetry?
A poet's work is to name the unnamable, to point
at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape
the world, and stop it from going to sleep. -
Salman Rushdie
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What is poetry?
A poet is a person who manages, in a lifetime of
standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by
lightning five or six times. - Randall
Jarell
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What is poetry?
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a
rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for
the echo. - Don Marquis
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What is poetry?

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, doth
glance from heaven to earth, from earth to
heaven and, as imagination bodies forth the
forms of things unknown, the poets pen turns
them to shapes, and gives airy nothing a local
habitation and a name. - William Shakespeare
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What is poetry?
Poetry allows us to delicately unravel the fabric
of its being to see the beauty of form and
function, truth, and the infinite manifestations
of humanitys emotions. Poetry is the evocation
of innumerable truths through the artistic
arrangement of emotive words. Professor Robert
Mugford