Tools for Making Great Poems

1. Tools for Making Great Poems

2. Structure • Difference from Prose • The Stanza • Stanza:Poem = Paragraph:Prose • The Line • The Meter • The rhythm of the stress syllables and the number of syllables in a line.

3. The Meter • Poetry emerged as an oral tradition and needed to be remembered • Humans “get” rhythm; it’s natural • Iambic pentameter: SUSUSUSU • Approximate length of a human breath • Almost a rocking rhythm; soothing and natural

4. The Line • Line length is a tool • to complete or not complete a thought on a line: a reader needs to concentrate when a thought is broken unnaturally between two lines • The breath • Enjambing: jumping the ditch: speeding the reader to the next and creating urgency • Long lines (beyond the breath create stress and the sense of being dragged through something prolonged) • The look: Poetry is NOW a visual tradition

5. Word Choice • Rhyme • Sounds • Alliteration • Assonance • Onomatopoeia • Hard consonants versus soft Rock versus Stone

6. Rhyme • End rhymes: occur at the end of a line • The “scheme” is the pattern in which the rhymes occur For example: Whose woods these are I think I know (a) His house is in the village though (a) He will not see me stopping here (b) To see his woods fill up with snow (a) • Rhyme Scheme = a, a, b, a

7. Other Kinds of Rhymes • Internal rhymes: occur within a line • “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,” • Slant or soft rhymes: “heart” and “star” • Eye rhymes: “rough” and “bough”

8. Alliteration: Several words begin with the same sound For example: Softly Sally snores on the sand Build on your alliteration by putting that same sound in other parts of words too. Alliteration

9. Assonance • Assonance: Several words contain the same primary vowel sound: For example: The rolling stone knows no home.

10. Sounds Can Create Feeling • In general, hard consonants like “K” or hard “G” feel harsher • In general, soft consonants like “S” or “R” have a quieter feeling (“S” can also be used to create a sense of wind or a sinister feeling)

11. Vowels Also Create Feeling • Long vowel sounds can make things feel more soothing, open and soft • Short vowel sounds can feel disruptive and, again, a little harsher • Notice the difference both in the vowel and consonant sounds between the feeling embedded in the word “ROCK” versus the word “STONE”

12. Allusion • Cultural reference points: poems, songs, myths, stories, movies… “So it goes with my Phoenix heart.”

13. Personification • Giving something non-living the qualities of a person or something living. For example: “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes”

14. Playing with Words • One of the fun things about writing is playing with words and inventing new words or phrases that create a fuller more original image • Gerard Manly Hopkins is the master of creating new nouns with hyphens: • “Through the cobbled foam-fleece.” • Ogden Nash is the master of smooshing words together to create a new meaning (often just to get them to fit his rhyme scheme) • “waspitality”

15. Practice • Use “Whose Woods These Are” to test yourself • Make some observations about the sound choices: what content do they go with • What’s the rhyme scheme?

16. Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening