POETRY STUDY GUIDE
FORM- the arrangement of lines and words on a page that help create a visual effect that reinforces the poem’s message
1) Structured poetry- the lines are grouped into stanzas in a regular, repeated pattern; structured poems also usually have consistent rhyme and rhythm. Example: Excerpt from “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer:
There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place,
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face;
And when responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt twas Casey at the bat.
2) Free verse poetry- poems that have no regular patterns; sounds like spoken language
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“The Rider” by Naomi Shihab Nye
A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,
the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.
What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.
A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.
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3) Meter- regular, repeated arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables
4) Lines- a word or group of words in a row of poetry (may or may not be sentences)
5) Verse-the group of lines in a poem
6) Stanza- The grouping of two or more lines in a poem (comparable to a paragraph in prose)
7) Couplet- pairs of rhyming lines in a poem (see the end of the “sonnet” example below)
8) End stop- punctuation that indicates the end of a completed thought in a poem (may or may not be at the end of a line)
SOUND DEVICES-language that appeals to the sense of hearing and reinforces the meaning of the poem
1) Rhyme- a similarity of sounds at the ends of words
2) Rhyme scheme- a rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes in a poem. A rhyme scheme can be described by using letters to represent the rhyming sounds at the ends of lines. Here is an example from Emily Dickinson:
If I can stop one Heart from breaking a
I shall not live in vain b
If I can ease one Life the Aching a
Or cool one Pain b
3) End Rhyme- Similarity of sounds as the ends of lines
4) Internal Rhyme- Similarity of sounds within a line
Excerpt from “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe:
Underlined words= Internal rhyme
Bold words= End rhyme
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door--
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."
5) Rhythm- the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in the poem’s lines
THINK: Can I clap to it like in “Casey at the Bat”?
6) Repetition- repeated sounds, words, phrases, or whole lines in a poem to emphasize an idea or create a certain feeling
THINK: “rapping, rapping” in “The Raven” (see Poe poem under #4)
7) Alliteration- the repetition of consonant sounds
THINK: Sally sells seashells by the seashore! OR: “nodded, nearly napping” from “The Raven” by Poe
8) Assonance- repetition of vowel sounds in stressed words or syllables
THINK of the repeated “e” sounds in the poem “Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe:
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
9) Onomatopoeia- the use of words whose sounds suggest their meaning, such as flashed, bang, and shattered.
THINK: Rice Krispies commercial: “Snap, crackle, pop!”
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE- conveys a meaning beyond the ordinary
1) Simile- a comparison that uses “like” or “as”. Example: “School is like a jail.”
2) Metaphor: a direct comparison with no signal words. Example: “School is a jail” or “eyes of flame”
3) Extended metaphor: two things are compared at some length and in several ways. Example: “Ode to an Artichoke” compares an artichoke to a soldier in several ways.
4) Personification- when a poet describes an animal or object as if it were human or had human qualities. Example: “the warm smile of a sun”
5) Hyperbole- exaggeration for emphasis or for humorous effect. Example: “I told you to clean your room five billion times!”
6) Imagery- language that appeals to the reader’s senses – sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell.
Example: “blistering sands” or “feather clouds”
7) Allusion- a reference to a well-known literary work, historical event or person, film, or other work of art
Example: Harriet Tubman is called the Moses of her time. (This is a Biblical allusion because Moses is from the Bible.)
8) Symbol- a person, place, an object, or an action that stands for something beyond itself. Example: The American flag is a symbol of freedom.
9) Idiom- an expression that has a meaning different from the meaning of its individual words. Examples: “It’s raining cats and dogs.” Or: “I’m all ears.” Or: “That’s a piece of cake.” Or: “Break a leg!”
SPEAKER- the voice that relates the story or ideas of the poem
TYPES OF POETRY
1) Elegy- a poem that states a poem’s sadness about the death of an important person
2) Epic Poem- a long story poem that describes the adventures of a hero and his companions.
Example: The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
3) Limerick- a short humorous poem composed of five lines. It has a sing-song rhythm, and it usually has the rhyme scheme aabba.
There was an old man who supposed a
That the street door was partially closed; a
But some very large rats, b
Ate his coats and his hats b
While that futile old gentleman dozed. a
4) Haiku-Japanese poetry that is three lines long; the first line is five syllables, the second line is seven syllables, and the third line is five syllables. Here is an example by Basho Matsuo:
An old silent pond... (5 syllables)
A frog jumps into the pond, (7 syllables)
Splash! Silence again. (5 syllables)
5) Ballad- a poem that tells a story and is meant to be sung or recited
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Excerpt from “Lucy Gray” by William Wordsworth
You yet may spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.
"To-night will be a stormy night-
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow."
"That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon--
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!"
Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery snow,
That rises up like smoke.
The storm came on before its time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.
The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide.
At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.
They wept--and, turning homeward, cried,
"In heaven we all shall meet;"
--When in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet.
Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footmarks small;
And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the long stone-wall;
And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.
They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!
--Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.
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6) Narrative Poem- a poem that tells a story. Examples: “The Highway Man” by Alfred Noyes or “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson (see below)
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Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
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7) Blank Verse- Unrhymed poetry with meter that is usually iambic pentameter
8) Lyric- a short poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses thoughts and feelings
9) Sonnet- A 14-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterned rhyme scheme. There are different kinds of sonnets, such as Italian and English. Here is an English sonnet by Shakespeare:
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1 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? a
2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate: b
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, a
4 And summer's lease hath all too short a date: b
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, c
6 And often is his gold complexion dimmed, d
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines, c
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8 By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: d
9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade, e
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, f
11 Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, e
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, f
13 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, g
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. g rhymed couplet (a pair of rhyming lines)
10) Ode- A long lyric poem of a serious nature that commemorates or celebrates. This is “Ode to a Piano” by Pablo Neruda:
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The piano was sad
during the concert,
forgotten in its gravedigger's coat,
and then it opened its mouth,
its whale's mouth:
the pianist entered the piano
flying like a crow;
something happened as if a stone
of silver fell
or a hand
into a hidden
pond:
the sweetness slid
like rain
over a bell,
the light fell to the bottom
of a locked house,
an emerald went across the abyss
and the sea sounded,
the night,
the meadows,
the dewdrop,
the deepest thunder,
the structure of the rose sang,
the milk of dawn surrounded the silence.
That's how the music was born
from the piano which was dying,
the garment
of the water-nymph
moved up over the coffin
and from its set of teeth
all unaware
the piano, the pianist
and the concert fell,
and everything became sound,
an elemental torrent,
a pure system, a clear bell ringing.
Then the man returned
from the tree of music.
He flew down like
a lost crow
or a crazy knight:
the piano closed its whale's mouth
and the pianist walked back from it
towards the silence.
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11) Concrete (Shape) Poem- poetry in which the arrangement of the poem’s words on the page reflects the poem’s subjects
Example: “Swan and Shadow” by John Hollander
Dusk
Above the
water hang the
loud
flies
Here
O so
gray
then
What A pale signal will appear
When Soon before its shadow fades
Where Here in this pool of opened eye
In us No Upon us As at the very edges
of where we take shape in the dark air
this object bares its image awakening
ripples of recognition that will
brush darkness up into light
even after this bird this hour both drift by atop the perfect sad instant now
already passing out of sight
toward yet-untroubled reflection
this image bears its object darkening
into memorial shades Scattered bits of
light No of water Or something across
water Breaking up No Being regathered
soon Yet by then a swan will have
gone Yes out of mind into what
vast
pale
hush
of a
place
past
sudden dark as
if a swan
sang
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