Poetry

1. Poetry Annabel Lee

2. Definition From a Handbook to Literature: “A term applied to the many forms to which man has given a rhythmic expression to his most imaginative and intense perceptions of his world, himself, and the interrelationship of the two.” Any definition is illusive and inadequate because poetry changes, serves each poet needs, serves each reader’s needs. Not only is the definition illusive, so can be each poem and its essence be illusive.

3. Edgar Allen Poe: • I would define the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty. Its sole arbiter is taste. With the intellect or with the conscience it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with duty or truth.”

4. William Wordsworth “ Poetry is the imaginative expression of strong feeling, usually rhythmical. . . the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility.”

5. Emily Dickenson “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head is taken off, I know that it is poetry.”

6. Marge Piercy “Poems are arrangements of sounds and silences, and all you have on page is black marks surrounded by white space. If you’ve ever wondered why poems are sent off in lines . . . one of the strong reasons for poems being in lines is to tell you how to read a poem and how to hear it in your head. A poet is using that space to indicate pauses, like rests in music . . . . The line breaks indicate little pauses when you are reading a poem aloud, and I urge you to read it aloud.”

7. The Content of Poetry • Emotional • Represents the emotions of the poet as he/she is aroused by some scene of beauty, some experience, some attachment • Wordsworth is overwhelmed by a field of daffodils in “I Wandered Lonely as A Cloud” • Turner’s invitation to a bullet to rip through his flesh in “Here Bullet” • E. Browning’s declaration of of love in “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways?

8. Poetry must have truth, thought, ideas, and meaning. • It must have significance • It must contribute to the store of human knowledge • Must be dignified

9. Form • Rhythm and Meter • “The ear recognizes the existence of recurring accents at stated intervals and recognizes, too, the various forms of patterns”: Iambic pentameter: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

10. The Effect of Poetry • Prose serves many purposes: to entertain, to persuade, to inform, includes everything from fiction to a textbook, from history to geography to politics • Essays, short stories, novels, drama, newspapers articles, magazine features • But for poetry: its only effect is to please.