Poetic Elements

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Poetic Elements Poetry is thoughts that breath
and words that burn Thomas Gray

• Poetry is about interpretation
• It is not meant to be taken literally

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Imagery

• Imagery the senses the poem evokes in the
  reader, puts the reader in the poem, and helps
  reader to see the poem.
• The tools of imagery are
• Senses sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, and
  emotion.
• Figurative language metaphor, simile,
  personification, hyperbole, etc.

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Those Winter Sundays Sundays too my father got up
early and put his clothes on in the blueblack
cold, then with cracked hands that ached from
labor in the weekday weather made banked fires
blaze. No one ever thanked him. Id wake and
hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the
rooms were warm, hed call, and slowly I would
rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of
that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who
had driven out the cold and polished my good
shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know
of loves austere and lonely offices? Robert
Hayden
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Figurative Language

• Figurative language is words not meant to be
  taken literally. The words are symbolic. We know
  these images as metaphor, simile,
  personification, hyperbole, and others.
• What are some reasons why a poet would use
  figurative language.
• Look at example from an Arthurian Legend. What
  do they mean??
• a cold knife of loneliness pressed against his
  heart
• their bodies locked together as though a trap
  had sprung

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Personification

• When an author uses personification, he gives
  human characteristics to a non-human object.
• Look at the human characteristics used by Howard
  Nemerov in his poem The Vacuum. Also notice
  how personification reveals the speakers
  attitude toward housekeeping.

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The Vacuum The house is quiet now The vacuum
cleaner sulks in the corner closet, Its bag
limp as a stopped lung, its mouth Grinning into
the floor, maybe at my Slovenly life, my
dog-dead youth. Ive lived this way long
enough, But when my old woman died her
soul Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I cant
bear To see the bag swell like a belly, eating
the dust And the woolen mice, and begin to
howl Because there is old filth
everywhere She used to crawl, in corner and
under the stair. I know now how life is cheap
as dirt, And still the hungry, angry
heart Hangs on and howls, biting at air.
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Hyperbole/ Exaggeration

• The poet uses hyperbole to overstate something to
  reveal the truth.
• In a poem called Sow Sylvia Plath describes how
  much the sow eats. She writes, Of kitchen slops
  and, stomaching no constraint,/ Proceeded to
  swill/ The seven seas and every earthquaking
  continent.
• How much did the sow eat?

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Music

• The poet uses musical devices to make the poem
  song-like. In fact, some poems are/were songs.
• The musical devices we will discuss, and be
  responsible for, are onomatopoeia, rhythm, rhyme,
  alliteration , assonance, consonance, repetition,
  and enjambment.

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Onomatopoeia

• We are familiar with onomatopoeia even if we
  dont understand the word.
• When two cars collide, what sound do they make?
  Crash! That is onomatopoeia words that make
  the sound they are imitating.
• Here is a poem by Eve Merriam appropriately
  titled Onomatopoeia. See how many sounds are
  heard.

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Onomatopoeia
The rusty spigot sputter, utters a
sputter, spatters a smattering of drops, gashes
wider slash, splatters, scatters, spurts, finally
stops sputtering and plash! gushes rushes
splashes clear water dashes.
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Rhythm

• Rhythm is the beat of a poem. It is the pattern
  of stressed and unstressed syllables. There are
  several rhythm patterns in poetry which we will
  not go into in this presentation which will be
  shown later.
• Lets look at the following poem and see if we
  can identify the pattern of stressed and
  unstressed beats.

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Counting-Out Rhyme Silver bark of beech , and
sallow Bark of yellow birch and yellow Twig of
willow. Stripe of green in moosewood
maple, Colour seen in leaf of apples, Bark of
popple. Wood of popple pale as moonbeam, Wood of
oak for yoke and bran-beam, Wood of
hornbeam. Silver bark of beech, and hollow Stem
of elder, tall and yellow Twig of
willow. -Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Rhyme

• Exact rhyme are words that have the exact
  same-sounding ending, like cat and hat
• Slant rhyme words sound similar, but arent
  exact, like one and down.
• A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming words.
• Look at the following poem and identify the rhyme
  scheme.

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Reapers Black reapers with the sound of steel on
stones Are sharpening scythes. I see them place
the hones In their hip-pockets as a thing thats
done, And start their silent swinging, one by
one. Black horses drive a mower through the
weeds, And there, a field rat, startled,
squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground, I
see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting
weeds and shade.
Jean Toomer
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Letters

• Repetitive initial consonant sounds in a poem are
  called alliteration.
• Repetition of other consonant sounds is called
  consonance.
• Repetitive vowel sounds are called assonance.
• The following poem has many examples of each.
  See how many you can find. Also notice what
  other element of poetry you can find.

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Fueled by Marcie Hans Fueled by a
million man-made wings of fire the
rocket tore a tunnel through the sky
and everybody cheered, Fueled only
by a thought from God the
seedling urged its way through the
thickness of black and as it pierced
the ceiling of the soil and launched
itself up into outer space no
one even clapped.
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Repetition

• Poems also create music through the repetition of
  words and lines.
• Look at the poem One Perfect Rose by Dorothy
  Parker. One line is repeated three times.
  Notice how the meaning of the line changes by the
  third repetition.

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One Perfect Roseby Dorothy Parker
A single flowr he sent me, since we met. All
tenderly his messenger he chose Deep-hearted,
pure with scented dew still wet One perfect
rose. I knew the language of the flowerlet My
fragile leaves, it said, his heart
enclose. Love long has taken for his amulet One
perfect rose. Why is it no one ever sent me
yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah
no, its always just my luck to get One perfect
rose.
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Enjambment-Punctuation within the lines Meaning
flows as the lines progress, and the readers eye
is forced to go on to the next sentence. It can
also make the reader feel uncomfortable or the
poem feel like flow-of-thought with a sensation
of urgency or disorder.
We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late.
We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin.
We Jazz June. We die soon.
We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
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Notice that the enjambment forces you to pause
before the end of the line. The word we is
emphasized and gives the poem a syncopated
rhythm, similar to the rhythm in jazz. This is
appropriate since the poem is about the period of
the 30s when Prohibition was in effect and jazz
was king.
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Form

• Form is the structure of the poem. Any type of
  writing must have something to hold it together.
  
• The structure can be created through many means
  meter, stanza, rhyme scheme, or set patterns of
  poetry like sonnet, haiku , concrete, and others.

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Meter
Meter is the set pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables in a line of poetry. The
main meter patterns are Iambic -- U/ (one
foot) Trochee - /U Anapest -- UU/ Dactyl --
//U
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Iambic
Iambic is the most common pattern of meter since
it is the way we generally talk . It is the
unstressed/stressed syllable pattern. Here is an
example of iambic lines Sweet day, so cool, so
calm, so bright, (U/U/U/U/) The bridal of
the earth and sky (U/U/U/U/) The dew shall
weep thy fall to night, (U/U/U/U/) For thou
must die.(U/U/) (from Virtue by George
Herbert)
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Trochee
Trochee is the reverse of an iamb. It is a
stressed/unstressed pattern like in this
line Piping down the valleys wild,
(/U/U/U/) Piping songs of pleasant glee,
(/U/U/U/) On a cloud I saw a child,
(/U/U/U/) From Songs of Innocence by
William Blake
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Stanza

• A stanza in poetry is like a paragraph in prose.
  The author divides the poem by grouping words
  into stanzas. We can often see the structure of
  the poem by the authors use of stanza.

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Rhyme Scheme

• Having a certain rhyme scheme also is a way to
  give structure to poetry.
• Look at the rhyme scheme in the poem Cross by
  Langston Hughes. See how it holds the poem
  together. Also notice the use of stanzas. Why
  did Hughes put these words in the stanza?

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CrossLangston Hughes

• My old mans a white old man
• And my old mothers black.
• If ever I cursed my white old man
• I take my curses back.
• If ever I cursed my black old mother
• And wished she were in hell,
• Im sorry for that evil wish
• And now I wish her well.
• My old man died in a fine big house.
• My ma died in a shack.
• I wonder where Im gonna die
• Being neither white or black?