What is Poetry?

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What is Poetry?
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The wind inclines the cedars and lets snow
riding in bow them swaying weepers
on the hedgerows of open fields
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The cat has his sport and the mouse suffers but
the cat is innocent having no
image of pain in him
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(No Transcript)
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Poetry

• Terms

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I. Three Forms

• A. Narrative poem tells a story literary
  elements apply
• common forms ballads, epics
• B. Dramatic poem an enactment like a play
• C. Lyric poem reveals thoughts and feelings
• common forms haiku, ode, psalm, sonnet, etc.

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II. Parts of a Poem

1. stanza acts like a paragraph in prose can be
   any length
2. couplet two consecutive rhyming lines
   expressing a complete thought
3. quatrain four lines that rhyme in different
   ways ABCB, ABAB, ABBA, AABB, AAAA
4. refrain section of text repeated at intervals

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III. Music of Poetry

1. stress vocal emphasis / intensity given
   syllables
2. meter pattern of stresses in lines of a poem
3. rhythm how the words fit into the meter
4. rhyme words with the same ending sound
5. onomatopoeia words that sound like what they
   are
6. alliteration repetition of words with same
   beginning sound
7. assonance repetition of a vowel sound
8. internal rhyme words that rhyme within a line

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IV. Figurative Language

• personification giving lifelike qualities to
  inanimate objects
• irony what is said is the opposite of what is
  implied
• hyperbole - extreme exaggeration
• apostrophe speaking directly to an absent
  person or object
• euphemism understatement by using a softer term
• simile comparison using like or as
• metaphor direct comparison without like or
  as
• allusion reference to something outside the
  poem

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Because You Asked about the Line between Prose
and Poetry (By Howard Nemerov)

• Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
• That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
• Riding a gradient invisible
• From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
• There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
• And then they clearly flew instead of fell.