Elements Of Poetry

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Poetry

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• “Reframed language”—words, phrases, images, and observations taken from the flow of “everyday life” and made to signify more or differently than they usually do.

•Poetry makes language newly visible to our renewed attention.

•Poetry experiments with language’s capacity to generate meaning, feeling, and experience: it uses every part of language—what it looks like, sounds like, feels like, connotes, etc. to build, generate, and play with meaning.

• Its strategies and designs are poetic devices and forms.

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Chiasmus

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Repetition of any group of verse elements in reverse order.

e.g. No/ On

No turn

On red

e.g. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by Keats

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"

Effect: Self-referential, gives a sense of closure and finality to the poem

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Metaphor

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meta (over, across) + pherein (to bear or carry)

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money).

2 different parts:

1. tenor - object, person or concept

2. vehicle - image used to portray the tenor

e.g 1. "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Shoes as a metaphor for man-made structures preventing us from experiencing Earth as God intended.

e.g 2. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by Keats

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

Tenor: Urn, Vehicles: unravish'd bride, foster child, Sylvan historian

e.g. 3: "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

Compares the father to a Nazi, a fascist.

e.g. 4: "Kindness" by Sylvia Plath

You hand me two children, two roses.

Effect: Suggests children are beautiful, yet prickly.

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Simile

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Using a bridge of “like” or “as” to carry the meaning over.

e.g. 1: "Butterfly Bones" by Avison

"The cyanide jar seals life, as sonnets move toward final stiffness."

Effect: Compares the death of an insect to a sonnet. Suggest a poem can leach life out of a living thing, but also that it has a terrible beauty.

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Rhyme (Sound device)

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The repetition of sound at the end of two or more words.

Internal rhyme: rhyming words within a line

Ex 1. "Ode on a Grecian urn" by John Keats

"BoldLover, never, never canst thou kiss,"

End rhyme: rhyming words at the end of lines. A way of tying together lines which might not at first seem connected to one another.

Ex 1. "Poetry" by Marianne Moore

Hands that can grasp, eyes

that can dilate, hair that can rise

Effect: The human body as something that is moving, alive, happening.

Ex 1. "Bright Star" by John Keats

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live forever - or else swoon to death.

Effect: Creates a conceptual paradox, a poignant impossibility.

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Assonance (Sound device)

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The repetition of the same vowel sound across multiple words.

Ex 1. "Poetry" by Marianne Moore

Hands that can grasp, eyes ("a" sound)

that can dilate, hair that can rise ("i" sound)

Ex 2. "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent ("o" sound)

Ex 3. "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe (oo sound, long o sound)

Effect: soothing sound, soft flow, indicating the narrator is infantilized (nursery rhyme rhythm)

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Consonance (Sound device)

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The repetition of the same consonant sound across multiple words (not necessarily at the beginning).

e.g. 1: "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things

e.g. 2: "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night

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Alliteration (Sound device)

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The same sound (vowel or consonant) at the beginning of two or more words.

e.g. 1: after he's been hooked

e.g. 2: "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins - ooze of oil

e.g. 3: "Butterfly Bones" by Avison - like Adam's lexicon locked in the mind?

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Rhythm

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The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. All English language has rhythm, but poetry formalizes it.

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Metre

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How the rhythm is organized - how many syllables per line, in what rhythmic pattern.

e.g. iambic pentameter

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Feet

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Units of metre.

The metre is identified by the kind of feet predominantly used, and the number of feet per line.

Iamb: U / (da da)

Trochee: / U (da da)

Spondee: / / (da da)

Pyrrhic: U U (da da)

Dactyl: / U U (da da da)

Anapest: U U / (da da da)

Amphibrach: U / U (da da da)

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Iamb

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U / (da da)

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Trochee

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/ U (da da)

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Spondee

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/ / (da da)

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Dactyl

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/ U U (da da da)

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Anapest

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U U / (da da da)

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Amphibrach

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U / U (da da da)

Rare in formal English poetry; common in humour, children's prose, limericks.

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Sibilance

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Consonance with the "s" sound.

The embodied quality of fricatives; an occasion to think about how breath moves through the human body; links the act of exhaling to the expression of language.

Ex 1. "Poetry" by Marianne Moore

"Hands that can grasp, eyes..."

Ex 2. "[I heard a fly buzz"] by Emily Dickinson

"Uncertain stumbling Buzz"

Ex 3. "Ode on a Grecian urn" by John Keats

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

Effect: Soothing, music

Ex 4. "Butterfly Bones" by Margaret Avison

The cyanide jar seals life, as sonnets move

towards final stiffness. Cased in a white glare

Effect: Sinister, hissing sound

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Syllabic verse (Syllabics)

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A form of poetry organized around the number of syllable per line, regardless of stress.

Numeric rather than metric structure - no regular pattern of U or / , just a regular number of them per line. A "hidden" structure - you can't hear the regularity of numbers as you can hear rhythm and metre.

Suggests there is a form in everything, even when we can't perceive it.

Ex. "Poetry" by Marianne Moore

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Minimalism

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Focus our perception on certain things - such as each word and the blank space on the page.

Associated with imagism: poetry focusing intently and concisely on a single, static image rather than an action (a 20th century movement emphasizing clear imagery over florid, sentimental Victorian styles).

e.g 1. "Landscape with the fall of Icarus" by William Carlos Williams

Effect: The shape of the poem mimics the trajectory of Icarus's fall.

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Lyric form

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Particular types of poems defined by formal structures including number of lines, stanza types, rhyme schemes, meter, and patters of repetition.

e.g. sonnets

Follow, bend and break their own rules to generate meaning.

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The sonnet

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A 14-line lyric poem, typically in iambic pentameter, with a strict and intricate rhyme scheme.

Traditionally, has an "argument".

The first part offers a problem, and the second part offers a resolution.

The transition from problem to resolution is called the turn or volta.

Italian (Petrarchan) :

2 sections - an octave (abbaabba) + sestet (cddcee or cdcdcd or cdecde)

Turn occurs between the octave and the sestet.

English (Shakespearan):

4 sections - 3 quatrains (abab cdcd efef) + couplet (gg)

Turn occurs between the last quatrain and the concluding couplet.

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Stanza types

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Couplet = 2 lines

Tercet = 3 lines

Quatrain = 4 lines

Quintrain = 5 lines

Sextain/ Sestet = 6 lines

Septet = 7 lines

Octave = 8 lines

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Half-rhyme / Near rhyme

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Repetition of the same consonant sounds, but not the same vowel sounds.

e.g. 1: "unchangeable" and "swell" in "Bright Star" by John Keats

e.g. 2: an imperfect B rhyme ("glare" and "safari") in "Butterfly Bones" by Margaret Avison

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Enjambment

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When a line flows over the line break.

e.g. 1: "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Effect: Emphasizes the words which comes after the line break.

e.g. 2: "Sheep in Fog" by Sylvia Plath

The hills step off into whiteness.

People or stars

Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

Effect: The speaker is constantly trying to locate herself.

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Caesura

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A break in the middle of a line.

E.g. 1: "God's Grandeur" by Hopkins

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

Effect: Creates a pause in our reading.

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Paradox

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The coexistence of two contradictory elements or ideas.

e.g. In Keats' "Bright Star", the poet wants to perpetually inhabit a state of "sweet unrest".

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Blank verse

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Iambic pentameter with no rhyme scheme.

e.g. 1: "Blank Sonnet" by George Elliott Clarke

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Africadia

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A term coined by George Elliot Clarke, describing the unique cultural geography of African Canadian communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (Acadia).

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Apostrophe

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A rhetorical device of directly addressing a dead or missing person, or a thing or a concept.

e.g. "Bright star!" in Keats

e.g. "Lovely Shelley,..." - reference to Romantic poet P.B. Shelley, who used a "measured, cadenced verse" ("Blank Sonnet", Clarke)

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Syncopation

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The emphasizing of "off-beats" - mimicking the rhythm of Jazz.

e.g. "Blank Sonnet", Clarke

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Palinode

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A poem in which a poet retracts a view or sentiment expressed in a previous poem.

E.g. Keats' "Ode on a Grecian urn" and Stevens' "Anecdote of a jar"

We can understand Stevens’ rejection as a “vow to stop imitating Keats (his Helenic ideal) and seek a native American language that will not take the wild out of the wilderness”.

By refusing the theme of the idyllic pastoral as the inheritor of the Western tradition, Stevens embraces the exuberance and independence of American nature.

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Personification

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An anthropomorphic figure of speech where the poet describes describes an abstraction, a thing, or a non-human thing as if it were a person.

e.g. "Kindness" by Sylvia Plath

Kindness is described as a woman who flows around her home, and has a personality.

"Kindness glides about my house.

Dame Kindness, she is so nice!"

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Free verse

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Rhythmical but non-metrical, non-rhyming lines. These may have a deliberate rhythm or cadence but seem to disappoint the reader's expectation for a formal metre, such as iambic pentameter.

e.g. 1: "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath

e.g. 2: "Musee des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden

- but has rhyming words within (poem is an exercise in noticing extraordinary things in the context of ordinariness).

e.g. 3: "Kindness" by Sylvia Plath

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Vilannelle

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A lyric poem of 19 lines: five tercets and one quatrain. Elaborate scheme of rhyme and line reptition: two rhymed sounds (a and b), two repeated rhymed lines (A1 and A2).

No formally dictated metre, though usually in a song-like trimeter, tetrameter, or petameter.

e.g. 1: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas

e.g. 2: "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop

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Poetic devices

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Sound devices: rhyme, half rhyme, consonance, assonance, sibilance, alliteration, onomatopoeia

Spatial devices: line breaks, stanza breaks, typography (e.g. italics), blank space

Temporal devices: metre, caesura, enjambment, end stops

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Free indirect discourse

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A special type of third-person narration that slips in and out of characters' consciousness. In other words, characters' thoughts, feelings, and words are filtered through the third-person narrator in free indirect discourse.

e.g. 1: "Ice Wagon Going Down the Street", Mavis Gallant: "Enough."

e.g. 2: "A clean, well-lighted place" by Ernest Hemingway. Monologue about clean well-lighted places by the older waiter.