Introduction to the Aspects of Poetry

1. Introduction to the Aspects of Poetry Ms. Klanderman

2. How to use this PowerPoint • This PowerPoint is designed to help you understand what makes poetry such a creative and wonderful form of self-expression. It will prepare you to write your own poetry. • Anything typed in red is something you need to write down in your journal and/or do in your journal. • If you are absent, go to my website to make up what you missed. (google “Klanderman and Creative Writing I”)

3. Poetic expression is hard to define and even harder to label since in itself it can comprise so many styles, ideas, lengths and forms. • In this class we will focus on these poetic aspects: • Idea and Emotion • Type and Form • Style of the Line • Concise Word Choice

4. When students tell me they write for their own enjoyment, most students tell me they like to write poetry. Answer in your journal: Why is this so? Why do some teens write and/or read poems?

5. “We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for.” Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poet’s Society

6. Idea and Emotion Poetry is the one type of writing that truly comes from an emotional response to an image, an event or experience, or a memory. Most poets say they are inspired to write a poem. "A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.”-Robert Frost “If you know what you are going to write when you’re writing a poem, it’s going to be average.”–Derek Walcott

7. Emotion- Some poets begin writing a poem for an emotional release. Idea- Some poets begin writing a poem because they are inspired by something they’ve experienced.

8. Answer the following questions in your journal: What are typical emotions and topics shown in poetry? Are there bad poetry topics?

9. Answer in your journal: What does a poem need to look like and contain to be a poem? Things to think about in your answer: Do most poems rhyme? Are poems about emotions? Are poems a certain length? What is the goal of a poem? Can poets ignore grammar rules like capital letters and punctuation? Can poems be funny? What types of word choice or language do you see in poems?

10. IS THIS A POEM? A Supermarket In California by Allan Ginsberg What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15306

11. Is this a poem? l(a l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness

12. Is this a poem?

13. Coming Up by Ani DiFranco Our father who art in a penthouseSits in his 37th floor suiteAnd swivels to gaze downAt the city he made me inHe allows me to stand andSolicit graffiti untilHe needs the land I stand onI in my darkened thresholdAm pawing through my pocketsThe receipts, the bus schedulesThe urgent napkin poemsThe matchbook phone numbersAll of which laundering has renderedPulpy and strangeLoose change and a keyAsk meGo ahead, ask me if I careI got the answer hereI wrote it down somewhereI just gotta find it Is This A Poem?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2VYg-qKWU

14. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fairAnd having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that, the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:two roads diverged in a wood, and I --I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG24ohpacDk Is This A Poem? The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

15. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein There is a place where the sidewalk endsAnd before the street begins,And there the grass grows soft and white,And there the sun burns crimson bright,And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind.Let us leave this place where the smoke blows blackAnd the dark street winds and bends.Past the pits where the asphalt flowers growWe shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,And watch where the chalk-white arrows goTo the place where the sidewalk ends.Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,For the children, they mark, and the children, they knowThe place where the sidewalk ends

16. The answer ? • They are all poems. • When you write a poem, it should have a subject, a goal, a tone, and a flow. It should contain specific, condensed word choice and literary devices like metaphor, simile and imagery.

17. If I asked you to write a poem right now, how would you write a poem?

18. One way is to follow a specific formula. Another way is to just write. On the next five slides pick one or more pictures and write what comes to mind. Try to write it as a poem.

24. Type and Form There are MANY different types or forms of poems. Some fit a specific format and some fit a specific theme. Some examples of format poems: Acrostic: a word or set of words is written down the page and each line starts with that letter. Sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter, with a specific rhyme scheme and intro/conclusion style. Sestina: Each stanza must use the same end words as the first stanza, but in a different pattern each time.

25. More Formats Haiku- A three line poem with specific syllable lengths of 5-7-5. Limerick- Usually a funny poem with a AABBA rhyme scheme and specific syllable length. Villanelle- A poem where certain lines are repeated to make more of a refrain Pantoum: Each stanza reuses different lines in a specific pattern from the previous stanzas.

26. “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

27. Haiku: Falling to the ground, I watch a leaf settle down In a bed of brown. Limerick: There once was a lady named Cager,Who as the result of a wager,Consented to fartThe entire oboe partOf Mozart's quartet in F-major.

28. Types of poems written based on themes: Elegy: A poem about something lost Ode: A poem celebrating something Road: A poem about a time of travel Metaphor: The whole poem is a metaphor Object Obsession: A poem written about an object Narrative: A poem that tells a story Ballad: A narrative poem with a refrain, usually about love Prose: A poem written more like a paragraph

29. ELEGY (SONG) "My Immortal“by Evanescence I'm so tired of being hereSuppressed by all my childish fearsAnd if you have to leaveI wish that you would just leave'Cause your presence still lingers hereAnd it won't leave me aloneThese wounds won't seem to healThis pain is just too realThere's just too much that time cannot erase[Chorus:]When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tearsWhen you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fearsAnd I held your hand through all of these yearsBut you still haveAll of me You used to captivate meBy your resonating lightNow I'm bound by the life you left behindYour face it hauntsMy once pleasant dreamsYour voice it chased awayAll the sanity in meThese wounds won't seem to healThis pain is just too realThere's just too much that time cannot erase[Chorus]

30. Elegy to My Summer Writing Spot by Ms. K It’s nights like these like friends forever leaving that are so hard to say goodbye to, let go of. So many things I’ve written from this stoop of cool cement, rough as a craftsman’s hands. My light bulb toes curl upon it for the last night write of fall. The words come like raindrops in spring, quickly covering this page and the next until my body feels clean. Even the cat stays out tonight. Body a rectangle of charcoal fleece, green eyes encircling dying spirea, his pupils the size of dimes, tail curled in a J until his cheek finds my outstretched hand and the rectangle becomes an ellipse poised for a rubdown. His hind leg sticks out, white paw pointing like a compass needle. In the distance, a motorcycle revs its engine. The winds swings on the chimes’ pendulum, whooshing through an evening I’d like to keep in a jar on the counter, a clear glass delight to open some clotted January night when it hurts to keep your eyes open.

31. “ODE to Guitar Hero” by Josh Lefeber A video game none the less. But an addiction at the most. Oh Guitar hero, you are my escape. When the world is just too much. Depending on my mood. I can play many different levels. Easy, Medium, Hard, or Even Expert. Just getting lost in the songs. Easy Mode has become just like breathing. Medium like riding a bike. Hard can be like taking a calc test. Expert almost like a chance of winning the lottery. Green, Red, Yellow, Blue and Orange. The colors of the frets on your neck. The boring black guitar oh so plain. The whammy bar at the base.

32. I can personalize you anyway I want. I can paint you, put stickers you. Even change your face plate. To make our time together a blast. What life would be like without you? Maybe I would actually get something done. We have spent many countless hours together I wouldn't trade them for a thing. Oh Guitar Hero, The greatest part about you is being able to play along with friends. Enjoying every minute together. Guitar hero is starting to rule my life. Late at night my friends become Slash and Tommy. Were jamming out like were best friends. Whether I am Rocking the 80's With songs like “What I Like About You,” “Nothing but a Good Time,” or “I Wanna Rock.” I also can be reliving the Legends of Rock. “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” “Paint it Black” or “Barracuda.” Are just a few of the songs I am jamming too. Either a strap around my neck, or sitting down with you in my lap. I manage to play with such ease, praying that I don't mess up. Playing you instead of doing homework, and sleeping less and less. You are my nicotine, in a plastic guitar. Oh Guitar Hero.

33. An Ode to Anticipating Autobiographical Incident Essays by Ms. K It’s Friday morning and twenty-five futures type in neat rows atop a scuffed hardwood floor that’s seen 2000 times as many futures pass in and out of its paneled doors. They type their lives in clicks and taps, the sound of percolating thoughts steady and constant like the in/out breath of someone sleeping a dream. Their ideas tick along as the second hand sweeps its sixty second circle behind me on the wall. On white rectangular screens, one black Times New Roman letter at a time, words appear faster than raindrops on dry pavement. Their ideas flow like the colors in woven rag rugs, and branch out like the streets they traveled to get here. I say, “Record a memory with a lesson learned,” and walk around to see screens filled with first boyfriends, prank stalker calls, stolen garden gnomes. One vandalized picnic tables with swear words, another placed 100 orange caution flags in a friend’s front yard. They show me the hiding spots parents never catch, where only silent voices play tag and this time I get to be “it” and chase them all down.

34. A Metaphor Song: “TIME” by Pink Floyd Ticking away the moments that make up a dull dayYou fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand wayKicking around on a piece of ground in your home townWaiting for someone or something to show you the wayTired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rainYou are young and life is long and there is time to kill todayAnd then the one day you find ten years have got behind youNo one told you when to run, you missed the starting gunAnd you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinkingAnd racing around to come up behind you againThe sun is the same in the relative way, but you're olderAnd shorter of breath and one day closer to deathEvery year is getting shorter, never seem to find the timePlans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled linesHanging on in quiet desparation is the English wayThe time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

35. Style of the Line • As a poet you want to think about how you will write your lines: • Are you following a formula? • If not do you want it have a “beat” or more natural flow? • When will you make a new line? • How will you divide your poem?

36. Some poems, and especially songs will have a specific rhythm. You can feel it (like the beat in music). Many rhyming poems have a rhythm or beat. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe is an example of a poem that relies heavily on a specific rhythm and rhyme. It is also a narrative poem (one that tells a story). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXU3RfB7308 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.‘ Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrowFrom my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -Nameless here for evermore.

37. Poems without a specific rhythm or beat are called Free Verse. • Invented in the 1800s by Walt Whitman • Usually Non-rhyming • Line breaks and line lengths are up to the poet. • It is the most popular form used by contemporary poets today.

38. From “Song of Myself” from the book Leaves of Grass http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm-n9wFZMiE I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

39. The ideas in a poem are organized by line breaks and stanzas. Stanza- is like a poetry paragraph. The next slide will show you examples of stanzas (and me really happy because I met one of my favorite poets at 2008’s Fox Cities Book Festival )

40. “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide. or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, Or walk inside the poems’ room And feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to water-ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdAOjATmusc

41. Concise Word Choice “Poets must seek “complex” thoughts and feelings and compress such complexity into a single moment.” –Ezra Pound Some people write out their feelings when they are having a hard time. Pretend you can take all of those words and feelings into your hand. Squeeze them as hard as you can. What leaks through your fingers is the essence; that is what you use to write a poem. -Ms. K

42. Sensory Language and Visual Imagery Since most poems express emotions and ideas, a writer must SHOW what is being written about. Poets and song writers use visual imagery and sensory language to show ideas. Sensory language is using words that appeal to the five senses. Showing what something sounds, smells, tastes, looks, and feels like. Visual imagery is “painting a picture with words.” Visual imagery uses aspects of sensory language, specifically sight, to recreate images, ideas and emotions. Strong verbs and specific adjectives/ adverbs are used.

43. Blue- personification Green- visual imagery Example of Sensory Language and Visual Imagery “The Round” by Stanley Kunitz Light splashed this morningon the shell-pink anemonesswaying on their tall stems;down blue-spiked Veronicalight flowed in rivuletsover the humps of the honeybees;this morning I saw light kissthe silk of the rosesin their second flowering,my late bloomersflushed with their brandy.A curious gladness shook me…

44. The Student by Ted Kooser The green shell of his back pack makes him lean Green- visual imagery into wave after wave or responsibility, Red- simile and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands, paddling ahead. He has extended his neck to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak, breaks the cold surf. He’s got his baseball cap on backward as up he crawls, out of the froth of a hangover and onto the sand of the future, and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

45. My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy;But I hung on like death:Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother's countenanceCould not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wristWas battered on one knuckle;At every step you missedMy right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my headWith a palm caked hard by dirt,Then waltzed me off to bedStill clinging to your shirt. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/18045

46. Pick one picture and describe it using the five senses:

48. One of the hardest things about writing poetry is making a topic that has already been written about seem new. Derek Walcott helps answer this question. “Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.”Salvatore Quasimodo Therefore, poetry must come alive in a way that makes readers feel as if they are experiencing events and emotions for the first time. Everyone has had relationship troubles, mourned the death of a loved one, or witnessed injustice. How do you write about your experience so the reader sees it as your own?

49. Showing VS. Telling If your emotion is sadness, how do you show us? If your emotion is happiness, how do you show us?

50. Girlfriend My girlfriend broke my heart. She crushed my soul. She destroyed my being. She is with another. She has betrayed me. I wish she could see, How miserable she has made me. She will never know, What I can show, She will be lost someday Knowing that what we had will not stay. I want her back But understand our relationship would lack. Someday, She will know. Is this a good poem? How can it be made better?