The Elements of Poetry

1. The Elements of Poetry • Every aspect of a poem– including line, white space, and language– is purposeful and creates the overall effect of the poem. • Poets say more with less words.

2. Imagery • The poet paints images with words for the reader. • These images help the reader to visualize the poem. Tools for Imagery • Sensory • Details • Figurative • Language

3. Sensory Details • Painting images with the five senses:

4. Those Winter Sundays Robert Hayden 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. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Let’s look at the sensory details in beginning of “Those Winter Sundays”

5. Figurative Language • Painting images with comparisons. • You should be familiar with these comparisons as metaphor, simile, personification, hyperbole, and more.

6. Similes • Comparisons using like or as. • The river is peaceful, like a sleeping newborn. • The river is as peaceful as a sleeping newborn.

7. Fog Carl Sandburg The fog comes 
on little cat feet. 
   It sits looking 
over harbor and city on silent haunches 
and then moves on. How are metaphors used in the poem, “Fog”

8. Direct comparisons that do NOT use like or as. Metaphors “Oh, bright angel, speak again!” “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” Romeo, “Romeo and Juliet”, William Shakespeare

9. Personification Comparison made by giving human traits to non-human things. the clock’s hands the table’s legs

10. 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. I’ve lived this way long enough, But when my old woman died her soul Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust And the woolen mice, and begin to howl How does Howard Nemerov personify a vacuum in the beginning of this poem?

11. Hyperbole • Comparisons using exaggeration, usually with humor

12. Onomatopoeia • Written words that are comparable to sounds Wind Song By Lilian Moore When the wind blows the quiet things speak. Some whisper, some clang, some creak. Grasses swish. Treetops sigh. Flags slap and snap at the sky.

13. Poetic Form • Any type of writing must have something to hold it together and give it shape. • Form is the term used to describe the poem’s structure. Tools for Structure • Techniques • Forms

14. Stanzas • A stanza in poetry is like a paragraph in prose. • The author organizes the poem by grouping lines into 1 or more stanzas. • Stanzas are named by the number of lines they contain: • 2 lines = couplet 3 lines = tercet • 4 lines = quatrain 5 lines = cinquain • 6 lines = sestet 8 lines = octave

15. Rhythm • Rhythm is the beat of a poem. • It is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. • I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

16. Rhyme • Exact rhyme words have the exact same ending sounds, like cat and hat • Slant rhyme words sound similar, but aren’t exact, like one and down.

17. Practice… There was an old man from Peru,da DUM da da DUM da da DUM who dreamed he was eating his shoe. da DUM da da DUM da da DUM He awoke in the night da da DUM da da DUM with a terrible fright, da da DUM da da DUM and found that it all was quite true. da DUM da da DUM da da DUM A A B B A Let’s look at the following limerick and see if we can identify the rhythmic and rhyming pattern

18. You try it… We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

19. Repetition • Repetition of initial consonant sounds in a poem is called alliteration. • Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers • Repetition of other consonant sounds is called consonance. • All mammals named Sam are clammy • Repetition of vowel sounds is called assonance. • Hear the mellow wedding bells

20. Fog Carl Sandburg The fog comes 
on little cat feet. 
   It sits looking 
over harbor and city on silent haunches 
and then moves on. How is repetition used in the poem, “Fog”?

21. Analyzing a poem through close reading • Read it once silently and again aloud. What do you think is happening in the poem? Jot down your first impressions. • Read again slowly. What elements of poetry can you find (sensory detail, figurative language, structure techniques and form)? Mark your text! What new ideas are your getting about the poem’s meaning? • Read it again with new awareness of the poet’s craft. What’s the big idea? What do you think he/she is trying to express about life? What questions do you have?

22. 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 Fueled By Marcie Hans Analyze this poem using the close reading steps on the previous slide.