WHAT IS POETRY?
Poetry is often considered
mystical or spiritual. It has been
called “the most intimate and volatile form of literary discourse” that can
deepen “our capacity for personhood, our achievement of humanity.” Poetry also “conveys heightened forms of
perception, experience, meaning, or consciousness in heightened language”
(Brogan 938). As a “heightened mode of discourse,” poetry exhibits “intensified
speech” by using conventions that are considered defining characteristics (Hirsch
27).
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
DICTION
Diction refers to the poet’s
choice of words. Poets often choose
words that contribute to the poem’s meaning on both a denotational and a connotation
level.
·
Denotation: the object or idea that the word represents;
the dictionary meaning
·
Connotation: the subjective, emotional association that a
word has for one person or a group of people.
·
Wordplay: double meanings and puns.
SYNTAX
Syntax is sentence structure,
the way words go together to make sentences. Poets often invert the normal word
order so that they can make a sentence rhyme, to fit a metrical pattern, or to
emphasize an idea. Further difficulties
arise because sentences are so long that we forget how they begin.
CHARACTERIZATION, POINT OF VIEW, PLOT, SETTING AND
THEME
Poems do not always offer a
“story” in a conventional sense, but action may be implied, a place or time may
be important, and characters may dramatize the key issues of the poem.
POINT OF VIEW
According to T.S. Eliot, in
any poem there is always a speaker, “I” of the poem. The first voice is the voice of the poet
talking to himself (or to nobody). The
second voice is the voice of the poet addressing an audience, whether large or
small. The third is the voice of the
poet when he is saying, not what he would say in his own person, but only what
he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another
imaginary character. (Eliot, 96)
IMAGERY
Descriptive Language:
The poet often uses
descriptive imagery to underscore other elements in a poem, such as tone,
meaning, and characterization. All of
the senses can be engaged (touch, visual, motion, sound, thermal/temperature)
Figurative Language:
A second consideration about
imagery refers to a conscious departure from normal or conventional ways of
saying things.
·
Tropes
(literally “turns”) extend the
meaning of words beyond their literal meaning.
·
Similes: Using comparative words (like or as), a simile
makes an analogous connection between two items.
·
Metaphors: Generally, a metaphor is any analogy which
shows similarity between things that are basically different. Specifically, a metaphor is a type of
figurative language that assumes a connection or comparison without using like or as.
·
Personification: A more indirect analogy, personification
bestows human characteristics to any inanimate object, animal, or abstract
quality.
·
Extended Metaphor: When a poet carries out a singular analogy throughout
an entire poem, he has written an extended metaphor.
·
Symbolism: Symbolism appeals to poets because symbols are highly
suggestive. A symbol is an object that
represents an abstract idea or ideas.
The most powerful symbols are those that do not exactly specify the
ideas they represent and carry meaning on multiple levels.
THE SOUND OF POETRY:
MUSICAL ELEMENTS
Rhythm: One of the most naturally pleasing elements
of poetry, rhythm, is related to the pulse, the heartbeat, the way we
breathe.
Meter: All human speech has rhythm, but poetry
regularizes that rhythm into recognizable patterns. These are called meters. Metrical patterns
vary depending on the sequence in which the poets arrange the accented (รก) and unaccented (ฤ) syllables. The unit that
determines that arrangement is the foot;
a foot is one unit of rhythm.
Word Sounds
·
Devices using word sounds:
·
Onomatopoeia: the use of words that sound like what they
mean (“buzz,” “boom,” “hiss,” “pop,” etc.)
·
Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds at the
beginning of words or at the beginning of accented syllables.
·
Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds followed by
the different consonant sounds.
·
Consonance: the repetition of final consonant sounds that
are preceded by different vowel sounds.
Consonance is the opposite of alliteration which features initial
consonance sounds.
·
Rhyme: the repetition of accented vowels and the
sounds that follow. There are
subcategories of rhyme:
STRUCTURE
Structure is
the way the whole poem is organized and put together. Poets give structure to their poems in two
overlapping ways: by organizing ideas
according to a logical plan and by establishing a pattern of units.
Lines: Poetry is organized in lines while prose is
divided into paragraphs. They use various criteria for choosing line
lengths. The best known criterion is
meter – the number of feet per line.
Enjambment: Enjambment is the continuance of a phrase
from one line to the next so that there is no pause at the end of the
line. An end-stopped line has a definite
pause at the end. Enjambed and
end-stopped lines create different effects.
Blank Verse:
A line form that is always enjambed is blank verse. The sentences run from line to line as if the
lines don’t exist.
Stanza: Stanzas in a poem typically resemble one
another structurally. The have the same
number of lines, length of lines, metrical patterns, and rhyme schemes. They are physically separated by a space.
Rhyme scheme:
Any pattern of end rhyme is a traditional method of organizing
stanzas. Rhyme scheme refers to that
pattern.
TYPES OF STRUCTURES
The Sonnet:
The most famous fixed form in English, sonnets consist of fourteen lines
of iambic pentameter. A Shakespearean
sonnet rhymes abab/cdcd/efef/gg and
has a structural division of three quatrains and a couplet. A Petrarchan
sonnet rhymes abbaabba in the octave
and cdecde in the sestet. Each kind of
sonnet has a turn, a point in the poem at which the poet shifts from one
meaning or mood to another. The turn in
the Shakespearean sonnet occurs between lines 12 and 13. In the Petrarchan sonnet the turn occurs
between the octave and the sestet.
The Ballad:
Defined as “a song, transmitted orally, which tells a story,” (Abrams,
18), ballads feature intense conflicts, emotional and melodramatic narratives,
and are condensed retelling of portions of the whole story.
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Abrams,
M.H. A
Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th
ed. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
Brogan,
T.V. F. “Poetry.” The New Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Ed. Alex
Hirsch,
Edward. How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. San Diego:
Harcourt, 1999.
Preminger
and T.V.F. Brogan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
UP, 1993.
Eliot,
T. S. “The Three Voices of Poetry.” On Poetry and Poets. New York: Octagon Books, 1975, 96 – 112.
), but they are always reading to learn. 