Poetry Words Set Two

Front 1

Free Verse

Back 1

No certain form-
After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,
After the white-grey sails taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,
Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displace the surface
-After the Sea-ship by Walt Whitman

Front 2

Connotation

Back 2

The wall is metaphoric and physical-
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

Front 3

Ode

Back 3

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
-Ode to My socks by Neruda

Front 4

Complication

Back 4

In Of Mice and Men:
-Lennie got kicked out of their old town
-Lennie and George have to stay at the ranch in order to make money for their house
-Lennie befriends the puppies and Curley's wife
-Lennie accidently kills Curley's wife

Front 5

Understatement

Back 5

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated"
-Mark Twain

Front 6

Subplot

Back 6

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, there is the subplot concerning Gloucester and his sons Edmund and Edgar: Edgar attempts to convince his father of the lie (with Edmund’s complete compliance) that Edmund, who is illegitimate, is trying to murder him. This subplot dealing with the father’s persecution of one son and the ingratitude of the other is juxtaposed with King Lear’s struggles with the villainy of his daughters, Regan and Goneril, and the innocence of his daughter, Cordelia.

Front 7

Epigram

Back 7

Early to bed, early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
-Ben Franklin

Front 8

Aubade

Back 8

Tis true, ‘tis day, what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ‘tis light?
Did we lie down because ‘twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.
-Break of Day by John Donne

Front 9

Ballad

Back 9

Listen, ladies, while I sing
The ballad of John Henry King.

John Henry was a bachelor,
His age was thirty-three or four.

Two maids for his affection vied,
And each desired to be his bride,

And bravely did they strive to bring
Unto their feet John Henry King.

John Henry liked them both so well,
To save his life he could not tell

Which he most wished to be his bride,
Nor was he able to decide.

Fair Kate was jolly, bright, and gay,
And sunny as a summer day;

Marie was kind, sedate, and sweet,
With gentle ways and manners neat.

Each was so dear that John confessed
He could not tell which he liked best.

He studied them for quite a year,
And still found no solution near,

And might have studied two years more
Had he not, walking on the shore,

Conceived a very simple way
Of ending his prolonged delay--

A way in which he might decide
Which of the maids should be his bride.

He said, "I'll toss into the air
A dollar, and I'll toss it fair;

If heads come up, I'll wed Marie;
If tails, fair Kate my bride sha

Front 10

Elision

Back 10

Saying o'er instead of over-
Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet,
Whiles crooning o'er an auld Scots sonnet,
Whiles glow'ring round wi prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares:
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.
-Tam O' Shanter by Robert Burns

Front 11

Metonymy

Back 11

"The B.L.T. left without paying."
(waitress referring to a customer)

Front 12

Open Form

Back 12

No form-
Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water
in a Charleston harbor
so redcoats wouldn't find them.
Can't find what you can't see
can you?
American History by Micheal Harper

Front 13

Satire

Back 13

But that dashing, dauntless, delphic, diehard, diabolic cracker likes his fiction turned with a certain elegance and wit; and that anti-anti-anti-slum-congestion clublady prefers romance;
Search through the mothballs, comb the lavender and lace;
Were her desires and struggles futile or did an innate fineness bring him at last to a prouder, richer peace in a world gone somehow mad?

We want one more compelling novel, Mr. Filbert Sopkins Jones,
All about it, all about it,
With signed testimonials to its stark, human while-u-wait, iced-or-heated, taste-that-sunshine tenderness and truth;
One more comedy of manners, Sir Warwick Aldous Wells, involving three blond souls; tried in the crucible of war, Countess Olga out-of-limbo by Hearst through the steerage peerage,
Glamorous, gripping, moving, try it, send for a 5 cent, 10 cent sample, restores faith in the flophouse, workhouse, warehouse, whorehouse, bughouse life of man.
-$2.50 by Kenneth Fearing

Front 14

Synecdoche

Back 14

One word for another-
“The western wave [sea] was all aflame,”
-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Front 15

Rhyme

Back 15

The wind in her hair
The chair that sat there
Eyes on eyes
Fire and lye
in the river sky

Front 16

Elegry

Back 16

"Here Captain! dear father!/This arm beneath your head;/It is some dream that on deck,/You've fallen cold and dead."
-"O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman.

Front 17

Epic Poem

Back 17

Long story about a hero-
“Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them"
-The Odyssey

Front 18

Parody

Back 18

"You are old, Father William," the young man cried; "The few locks which are left you are gray;You are hale, Father William-a hearty old man; Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In the days of my youth," Father William replied; "I remembered that youth would fly fast,And abused not my health and my vigor at first, That I never might need them at last."
-- Southey, "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them"

"You are old, Father William," the young man said, "And your hair has turned very white,And yet you incessantly stand on your head- Do you think at your age it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain;But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why I do it again and again."
-Lewis Carroll

Front 19

Quatrain

Back 19

Four lines-
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
-The Tyger by William Blake

Front 20

Irony

Back 20

The water is as pure and transparent as the mud.