Poetry Crash Course

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Poetry Crash Course

• IB/AP English 12

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3 Groups

• 1. Dramatic poetry when speaker/character of
  poem speaks to someone else who may respond, but
  usually responses are not part of poem
• The Flea
• 2. Narrative poetry poems that tell a story with
  elements of plot
• Epics The Inferno The Odyssey Beowulf
• 3. Lyric poetry (lyrics) a poem that expresses
  one central thought or emotion
• Many forms fall into this genre

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Ballads

• Can be narrative and/or dramatic poems
• Characteristics
• Question and answer format
• Refrain
• Omitted details
• Supernatural elements
• Sensational or tragic subject matter

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Lyric Forms

• Ode -
• Elegy
• Aubade a poem or song on mourning that praises
  it or dismisses it as unimportant
• Sestina
• Villanelle
• Epigram
• Sonnets

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Sonnet Forms

• Italian/Petrarchan
• An octave abbaabba
• A sestet cdecde
• English/Shakespearean
• Three quatrains abab cdcd efef
• A couplet gg

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Sonnet Techniques

• Each quatrain presents one idea in relation to
  topic
• Ending couplet usually presents the theme
• Blason an ordered poem of praise, organized
  detail by detail
• Turn/volta A shift in focus or thought the
  speaker is turning from one thing to another
• Usually there is one, significant turn

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Time Periods/Movements

• Anglo-Saxon
• Middle Ages
• Renaissance
• Restoration
• Romantic
• Victorian
• Modern

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Important Poetic Movements before Modernism

• Carpe Diem Poetry (Renaissance)
• Andrew Marvell
• Metaphysical Poetry (Renaissance)
• John Donne
• Romantic Poetry
• William Wordsworth

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Meter

• Iamb
• Trochee
• Anapest
• Dactyl
• Spondee

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Feet units of measurement

• Dimeter
• Trimeter
• Tetrameter
• Pentameter

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Put it Together What Do You Get?

• Iambic tetrameter
• Dactylic pentameter
• Anapestic hexameter, etc.

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Line Groupings

• Rule 1 has a particular rhyme scheme
• Rule 2 each line has the same meter
• Couplet
• Sestet
• Octave
• Quatrain