POETRY

1. POETRY Structure, Sound, and Figurative Language

2. Structure of a Poem • The rhyming pattern, meter, grammar and imagery used to convey the poet’s meaning

3. Rhyme • Occurs when the final accented syllables of words sound identical • Ex: flow/show, heard/bird/word • Makes a poem “catchy” or musical…BUT can also cause it to sound childish or sing-songy

4. Rhyme Scheme • Shows the pattern of rhyme in a poem • Important because: 1. Certain kinds of poems require a specific rhyming pattern (limerick) 2. A Break in the pattern could indicate something important

5. To complete a rhyme scheme: Roses are red Violets are pink Eddie might be cute But his feet really stink. Lillies are white Daisies are yellow John is polite And a quiet fellow. • 1. Look at last word in line 1. • 2. Assign letter “A” • 3. Look at last words in following lines. • 4. Rhyming words receive same letter. • 5. Non rhyming words get next letter of the alphabet.

6. Quatrain • A four-line stanza. Quatrains are the most common stanzaic form in the English language; they can have various meters and rhyme schemes.

7. Couplet • Two lines that rhyme; this pair often end a poem with a conclusion

8. Internal Rhyme • A poetic device in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end of the same metrical line. Internal rhyme appears in the first and third lines in this excerpt from Shelley's "The Cloud": 1.I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 2. And out of the caverns of rain, 3. Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the 4. tomb, 5. I arise and unbuild it again.

9. Other terms: • STANZA: lines of poetry grouped together (paragraphs in poems) • PERSONA: The narrator or speaker in a poem

10. SOUND TECHNIQUES Making poetry sing

11. Meter • Use MBC video • http://www.mybigcampus.com/library/425465 • Uses music as examples to understand rhythm and meter with examples from poetry read aloud ( 14 minutes)

12. Onomatopoeia • Words that replicate sounds • Ex: meow, moo, crash, hiss, kaboom • Adds emphasis and description (Imagery)

13. Alliteration • Repetition of beginning sounds in a line of poetry • Ex: Freddy phoned Phoebe on Friday. • Adds “flow” or musical sound, makes a poem memorable

14. Consonance • A common type of near rhyme that consists of identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds: home, same; worth, breath.

15. Consonance Examples • Her finger hungered for a ring. • The satin mittens were ancient. • You could paddle through the spittle in the bottle.

16. Assonance • The repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end the same; for example, "asleep under a tree," or "each evening." Similar endings result in rhyme, as in "asleep in the deep." Assonance is a strong means of emphasizing important words in a line.

17. Assonance: Examples • He saw the cost and hauled off. • Will she read these cheap leaflets. • The snow in the rose garden groaned.

18. Figurative Language • These devices are also found on prose. • Also known as the "ornaments of language” •  does not mean exactly what it says, but instead forces the reader to make an imaginative leap in order to comprehend an author's point

19. Personification • A form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things. • Personification offers the writer a way to give the world life and motion by assigning familiar human behaviors and emotions to animals, inanimate objects, and abstract ideas.

20. Hyperbole • He ate everything in the house." • Hyperbole (also called overstatement) may be used for serious, comic, or ironic effect.

21. Metonymy (me-TAH-nah-me) •  which substitutes one term with another that is being associated with the that term • In the book of Genesis 3:19, it refers to Adam by saying that “by the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food.” • Sweat represents the hard labor that Adam will have to endure to produce the food that will sustain his life. The sweat on his brow is a vivid picture of how hard he is working to attain a goal.

22. Allusion •  a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature. •  used to summarize broad, complex ideas or emotions in one quick, powerful image • Cain is an excellent example to convey banishment, rejection, or evil, for he was cast out of his homeland by God (Genesis 4:12)

23. Enjambment • The continuation of the sense of a phrase beyond the end of a line of verse (run on). EXAMPLE: T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire,….

24. Problems in poems? • Enjambment: the continuation of a thought ACROSS a line break in poetry. • SOLUTION: Read like you would read anything else– keep going until you hit a punctuation mark (ignore rhyme for the time being!)

25. Problems and solutions: • REREAD! Most poems require multiple readings before you “get” it. • Be willing to TRY. • Remember that words are NOT always taken literally! (figurative language)

27. Problems in poems? • Reversed word order! Sometimes poets will change the “normal” order of words in a sentence to maintain rhyme scheme • Ex: It had begun, the heavy snow Through the air it started to blow To the store I will not go! • Solution: think about the information, NOT the order of it