POETRY

1. POETRY by James Vineyard Sachse High School ELA Department

2. BASIC FORMS OF POETRY • Lyric • Short poems about a single subject • Narrative • Longer poems that tell a story • Free Verse • Poems that use no standard form of rhyme scheme or meter

3. BASIC TERMS • Rhyme Scheme • The pattern of rhyme repeated throughout a poem • Meter • The beat or rhythm of a poem • Line • The “sentences” of poems; groups of words set on a single line together

4. BASIC TERMS • Stanza • The “Paragraphs” of poems; a group of lines set apart that express a common idea • Speaker • The “narrator” of the poem—the person through whom the writer speaks his/her ideas—not necessarily the author

5. WALT WHITMANfrom “The Walt Whitman Archive” www.iath.virginia.edu/whitman/index.html • Born on Long Island in 1819 • Worked in the printing industry as a boy • Used teaching as a career to escape working on the family farm • Strong opponent of slavery; strong supporter of Lincoln • Wrote a majority of his poems in the 1840-50’s

6. WALT WHITMAN • Most famous work: a collection of poems called Leaves of Grass • Befriended many Transcendentalists, such as Thoreau • Died of mild tuberculosis in 1892

7. EMILY DICKINSONfrom “The Dickinson Homestead” www.dickisnsonhomestead.org • Born in 1830 • A recluse, Dickinson often locked herself away in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts • Most of her writing was done from 1858-1865 • Almost all of her work was published posthumously

8. EMILY DICKINSON • All of her poetry has a distinct rhythm and meter • Many of her poems are dark, focusing on death • Dies in 1886 in her parents’ home

9. EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSONfrom “Edwin Arlington Robinson” www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/robinson • Born in Maine in 1869 • Attended Harvard despite doubts from his father • Noted for his mastery of conventional forms, such as sonnets and the eight-line stanza • Most of his poems are narrative, with the main character facing failure and tragedy

10. EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON • Lived most of his life in poverty until his work was noticed by the son of Theodore Roosevelt • Received financial assistance from anonymous sources • Dies in April, 1935

11. PAUL LAWRENCE DUNBARInformation from The Academy of American Poets. www.poets.org • 1872-1906 • One of the first African-American poets to gain national recognition. • Befriended/mentored by Frederick Douglass • Clerked at the Library of Congress • Died of tuberculosis

12. LANGSTON HUGHESInformation from The Academy of American Poets. www.poets.org • 1902-1967 • Born in Joplin. MO; raised by grandmother • Influenced by Dunbar, Whitman, and Sandburg • Prominent voice of the Harlem Renaissance • Incorporated aspects of black culture, such as jazz and black slang into his writing

13. DOROTHY PARKERInformation from The Academy of American Poets. www.poets.org • 1893-1967 • Grew up on Manhattan’s wealthy Upper West Side • Led an unhappy childhood; her father died when she was 19 • Sold her first poem to Vanity Fair in 1914 • Founding member of a group of New York poets called the Algonquin Round Table

14. DOROTHY PARKER • Listed on the initial editorial board of The New Yorker in 1925 • Befriended exiled Modernists such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway • Died of a heart attack

15. T.S. ELIOTfrom “The Academy of American Poets” www.poets.org/poets • Born in Missouri in 1888 • Migrated to Europe after graduating Harvard in 1910’s • Came under the influence of Ezra Pound • Prominent poet of the Modernist movement • Most famous works: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “The Waste Lands”

16. T.S. ELIOT • Influenced by metaphysical poetry • Became an British citizen in 1927 • Received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948 • Died in London in 1965