Poetry Terms and Techniques

1. Poetry Terms and Techniques Lynnette Shaw Snohomish High School

2. So.. you think you know All about poetry? Let’s see! Yes, you must take notes! I am not kidding!

3. Types of Poetry • Narrative Poetry- a narrative poem is one that tells a story. Types of narrative poetry include ballads and epics. • Lyric Poetry- a highly musical verse that expresses the emotions of the speaker. Common types are sonnets, odes, free verse and elegies. • Dramatic poetry- a dramatic poem is a verse that relies heavily on dramatic elements such as monologue, or dialogue. Two types of dramatic poetry are dramatic monologue and soliloquy.

4. What’s a Ballad? Come on… I know you can guess…

5. Ballad: a narrative poem, sometimes sung, that tells a dramatic story.

6. What about…. An acrostic poem? What’s that?

7. Acrostic poem: The first letters of the lines in an spell a word, often the subject of the poem. Another very incredibly Intelligent and intuitive Xena type warrior princess teacher with An attitude. Domo arigato gozaimashita

8. Ok hotshots! What’s an epic poem?

9. Epic : a long narrative poem centering on a heroic figure who represents the fate of a nation. Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, Grendel's mother; and, later in life after becoming a king, an unnamed dragon.

10. Ah…Obi-wan has taught you well. The force is with you young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet.- Darth Vader Define concrete poem.

11. Concrete poem is written in a shape that adds meaning to the poem.

12. A little too easy…- Darth Vader Define free verse..

13. Free verse : poetry with no set rhythm or rhyme.

14. Ha! Impressive… most impressive..- Darth Vader A challenge you say! Here you are! Define blank verse!

15. Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter.

16. A bit of tutoring you need hmmm..- Yoda And if a person is to become one with the force….what type of poem shall we write for them hmmmm?

17. Elegy or Elegiac poem: a meditative poem mourning the death of an individual.

18. What’s a … • Dramatic Monologue? • Soliloquy

19. Dramatic monologue: a poem in which a character addresses an audience. • A fictional character, at a critical or dramatic point in life, addresses a particular “audience”, which his identifiable but silent. In the course of the monologue, we learn a great deal, often ironically, about the character who is speaking and the circumstance that have led to the speech.

20. Soliloquy • A form of monologue found most often in drama. It differs from a dramatic monologue in that the speaker is alone, revealing thoughts and feelings to or for oneself that are intentionally unheard by other characters in Shakespeare’s plays for example the principal characters’ reflections on how to act or questions of conscience are revealed in their soliloquies. “To be or not to be…” (Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

21. See if you can get this clue… The next poem rhymes with the last word in the above sentence. It originated in an archipelago famous for natural disasters, especially tsunamis and earthquakes.

22. Haiku: a three-line poem usually about nature, with this syllable pattern: 5,7,5. This style originated in Japan. The old bicycleleaning against the lamp postWill it fall over?

23. Alright poetic geniuses… What is another poem similar to haiku but longer?

24. Tanka: a five-line poem usually about emotions with this syllable pattern: 5,7,5,7,7. The tanka poem is very similar to haiku but tanka poems have more syllables and it uses simile, metaphor and personification. There are five lines in a Tanka poem. Line one - 5 syllables Beautiful mountains Line two - 7 syllables Rivers with cold, cold water. Line three - 5 syllable White cold snow on rocks. Line four - 7 syllables Trees over the place with frost. Line five - 7 syllables White sparkly snow everywhere. Tanka poems are written about nature, seasons, love, sadness and other strong emotions. This form of poetry dates back almost 1200 years.

25. Ok champs.. Lets see you get this one… ???: a meditation or celebration of a specific subject.

26. Ode: a meditation or celebration of a specific subject. Excerpt from ODE ON A GRECIAN URN By John Keats What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

27. Let’s see if you get this one…. ___________ : a poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter.

28. Sonnet: a poem of fourteen lines in iambic pentameter. • The New ColossusNot like the brazen giant of Greek fame, (a) With conquering limbs astride from land to land; (b) Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand (b) A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame (a) Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name (a) Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand (b) Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command (b) The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. (a) • "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she (c) With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, (d)Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, (c) The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. (d) Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, (c) I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (d) • Emma Lazarus, 1883

29. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)Admit impediments. Love is not love (b)Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c)That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)It is the star to every wand'ring barque, (c)Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)Within his bending sickle's compass come; (f)Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (f)If this be error and upon me proved, (g)I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)

30. A quick quiz: Do you know… • Stanza_________________ • Rhyme ________________ • Rhyme scheme ______________

31. Stanza: grouping of lines within a poem. • Rhyme: repetition of the same sound. • Rhyme scheme: a regular pattern of end rhyme in a poem.

32. Ok, so lets now go over common FORMS OF STANZA!

33. What’s a couplet? What’s a couplet? Je nais se pas!

34. Couplet: two lines of poetry that usually rhyme. Avocado Girl By: Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez I am an ahuacatlof ancient days, Of both past and present ways. I am an aguacateof a familiar green, A nuyorbronxrican Queen. I am an avocadowith rough Bronx skin, both Latina and American.

35. Not bad.. Not bad.. How about a tercet? Or triplet?

36. Triplet or tercet: any three lines of poetry, whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or unrhymed, metered or unmetered. I am a yellow dog who wishes he was a purple-spotted frog.

37. You are getting it! And now.. a quatrain?

38. Quatrain: four lines of poetry that usually have a rhyme scheme. • A quatrain is a poem, or a stanza within a poem, that consists always of four lines. It is the most common of all stanza forms in European poetry. The rhyming patterns include aabb, abab, abba, abcb. Example: aabb (from William Blake, "The Tyger") Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

39. A cinquain? A quintain? It’s driving me insane! You can do it! USE THE FORCE!

40. Cinquain: a five-line poem In summertime on Bredon The bells they sound so clear; Round both the shires they ring them In steeples far and near, A happy noise to hear. -A.E. Houseman, “Bredon Hill”

41. Does it ever end? • Sestet: six lines O, young Lochnivar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; And save his good broadsword he weapons had none, He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war. There never was knight like the young Lochnivar. - Sir Walter Scott, “Lochnivar”

42. Nope…. • Heptastich: seven lines The flower that smiles today Tomorrow dies; All that we wish to stay Tempts and then flies; What is this world’s delight? Lightning, that mocks the night, Brief even as bright. - Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mutability”

43. Last one! I promise! • Octave: eight lines Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole? O body swayed to the music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? - William Butler Yeats, “Among School Children”

44. Quick quiz • Sestet: _________________________ • Heptastich: ______________________ • Octave: _________________________

45. Ok.. now Rhythm and Rhyme! Techniques of Poetry: Sound

46. Rhyme • End Rhyme- the use of rhyming words at the ends of lines. • Internal rhyme: use of rhyming words within lines • Slant Rhyme- use of rhyming sounds that are similar but not identical, as in rave and rove or rot and rock. (consonance is a type of slant rhyme).

47. Ok, ok… how about Alliteration and consonance?

48. Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds. Sometimes some students decide to stand instead of sitting, to speak when someone isspeaking and simply act silly.

49. Consonance: same consonant sound Avocado Girl By: Ms. Aixa B. Rodriguez I am an ahuacatlof ancient days, Of both past and present ways. I am an aguacateof a familiar green, A nuyorbronxrican Queen. I am an avocadowith rough Bronx skin, both Latina and American.

50. Ok keep it clean… What is assonance?