NAME: _____________________________________________
FORM: _____________________________________________
YEAR 8 SPRING TERM 2: POETRY UNIT OUTLINE
FOCUS SPLIT: 60% reading analysis (with emphasis on form and structure) / 40% composition WHAT WE WILL COVER: Free verse, blank verse and closed form 2. Meter, including the iamb, trochee and spondee 3. Specific analysis expectations: e.g. assessed annotation; single poem analysis; explanation of how your own poem has used style model of original and what the impact is 4. The following five poetic forms plus other class selections. 1.
Acrostic. A form for hidden messages. https://www.youngwriters.co.uk/types-acrostic
Epic. Long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds. https://www.britannica.com/art/epic
Haiku (into Renga) and Tanka. Japanese verse form. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/haiku-or-hokku
Odes. A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ode
Shakespearean Sonnet. Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, which employ one of several rhyme schemes and adhere to a tightly structured thematic organization. http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/sonnetstyle.html
LIST OF POETIC FORMS: https://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/list-of-50-poetic-forms-for-poets THE POETRY FOUNDATIONS’S GLOSSARY OF POETIC TERMS : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms
WEBSITES YOU MIGHT ENJOY: THE POETRY SOCIETY / YOUNG POETS: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/young-poets/
YOUNG POETS’ NETWORK: http://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/ , with writing challenges within: http://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/category/workshop/
FOYLE’S YOUNG POETS OF THE YEAR AWARD (POETRY SOCIETY) : https://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/foyle-young-poets-of-the-year-award/
THE POETRY ARCHIVE: https://www.poetryarchive.org/ ACUMEN / PROSE AND POETRY REVIEWS: https://www.acumen-poetry.co.uk/young-poets/
HAIKU, TANKA, RENGA
FOCUS:
TITLE:
Matsuo Basho Here are three examples of haiku poems from Basho Matsuo (1644-1694), considered the greatest haiku poet:
An old silent pond... A frog jumps into the pond, splash! Silence again.
Autumn moonlighta worm digs silently into the chestnut.
In the twilight rain these brilliant-hued hibiscus A lovely sunset.
Yosa Buson Here are three examples of haiku poems from Yosa Buson (1716-1784), a haiku master poet and painter:
A summer river being crossed how pleasing with sandals in my hands! Light of the moon Moves west, flowers' shadows Creep eastward. In the moonlight, The colour and scent of the wisteria Seems far away.
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
IMAGISM In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. —Ezra Pound
JOHN CLANG – PEOPLE FORMING THE TIME
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Self-portrait in the crowd (background centre-left), At the Moulin Rouge, 1892
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
ACROSTIC Poverty (Acrostic) - Poem by Melvina Germain Pining for a much better quality of life, Opened to great suffering and pain. Violence and hate, society's distain. Every step seems a step in the wrong direction. Realizing each day is a losing battle. Trampled by the powerful, frowned upon by middleclass. Yet always wondering, how long will it last.
LONDON — William Blake (1794) I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.
How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry Every blackning Church appalls; And the hapless Soldier’s sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot’s curse Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
SHAKESPEARIAN SONNET WITH CONTEMPORARY RESPONSE
SONNET XXII My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate.
Sonnet (inspired by Sonnet 22) Wendy Cope My glass can’t quite persuade me I am old – In that respect my ageing eyes are kind – But when I see a photograph, I’m told
For all that beauty that doth cover thee, Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me: How can I then be elder than thou art?
The dismal truth: I’ve left my youth behind.
And when I try to get up from a chair My knees remind me they are past their best.
O! therefore, love, be of thyself so wary As I, not for myself, but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain, Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.
The burden they have carried everywhere Is heavier now. No wonder they protest.
Arthritic fingers, problematic neck, Sometimes causing mild to moderate pain, Could well persuade me I’m an ancient wreck But here’s what helps me to feel young again:
My love, who fell for me so long ago, Still loves me just as much, and tells me so.
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
EPIC TRADITION – BEOWULF AND THE ODYSSEY, MANAGING MONSTERS
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Beowulf http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/changlang/activities/lang/beowulf/beowulfpage1.html BEOWULF (Old English version) BY ANONY M OUS
BEOWULF (modern English translation) BY AN ON YMO US T RANSL AT ED BY FR ANCES B. GR UMMER E
1. Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
1. LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
2. þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
2. of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
3. hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
3. we have heard, and what honour the athelings
4. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
won!
5. monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
4. Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
6. egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
5. from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
7. feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
6. awing the earls. Since erst he lay
8. weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
7. friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
9. oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra 10. ofer hronrade hyran scolde, 11. gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.
8. for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve, 9. till before him the folk, both far and near, 10. who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate, 11. gave him gifts: a good king he!
hwæt Etymological ancestor of ‘what’
Listen! We have heard of the might of the kings. As part of a complete exclamatory sentence—something like “How we have heard of the might of the kings.” Citing research that “there’s no record of the Anglo-Saxons using exclamation marks, or any other form of punctuation, besides the full stop (or ‘point’) and the occasional semicolon” Walkden declares all previous interpretations—“‘What ho!’ (Earle 1892), ‘Hear me!’ (Raffel 1963), ‘Attend!’ (Alexander 1973), ‘Indeed!’ (Jack 1994), and ‘So!’ (Heaney 2000)”—to be wrong. https://www.mhpbooks.com/did-everyone-get-the-first-line-of-beowulf-wrong-or-didseamus-heaney-get-it-right/
gardena (gardene) Þeodcyninga
Spear-Danes People-kings, (poetic) king, monarch, ruler https://www.litcharts.com/lit/beowulf/themes/good-warriors-and-good-kings
Æþeling
son of a king, man of royal blood, nobleman, chief, prince, king, Christ, God, man, hero, saint
Scyld Scefing
Scyld as Ideal King Scyld Scefing (whose name is sometimes translated into modern English as Shield Sheafson) is the great-grandfather of Hrothgar, king of the Danes during Beowulf's time. The first lines of the epic are devoted to Scyld's reign and to his elaborate funeral. Beowulf's preoccupation with a legendary heroic age and its passing can be seen as foregrounded in its account of Scyld Scefing. Scyld appears in Beowulf as a figure vital to the Danes, who united them after a long period without a leader. Scyld Scefing himself was an orphan, who gained power by his own skill as a warrior. He is described as the ''scourge of many tribes, / a wrecker of mead-benches, / rampaging among foes'' (lines 4-5).
egsode eorlas
terrifying warriors
þreatum
þrēat 1. crowd; swarm; throng; troop, army 2. violence; force; compulsion; oppression; punishment; retaliation; mistreatment
manegum
many
mǣġþ mægþum feasceaft
maiden, unmarried young female
findan
found, located, spotted, struck
hronrade
(poetic) ocean, ‘whale-road’
þæt wæs god cyning
He was a good king. / He was a god. Good / god.
destitute, miserable
The monsters now hold a ‘central importance … crucial to the very structure of the poem’ (Cambridge: D S Brewer, 1985). After all, Beowulf is – at its heart – the story of a heroic man who kills three monsters and then dies. So, to understand this ancient poem, we need first to understand its monsters.
Getting to Grips with Grendel https://www.bl.uk/medieval-literature/articles/monsters-and-heroes-in-beowulf First up is Grendel: in many ways an unknown quantity. He’s a shadowy figure (literally, a ‘mearcstapa’, [‘border-stepper’], (l. 103)), whose eyes glow with a ‘leoht unfæger’ [‘grim light’], (l. 727). He’s descended from Cain, the fratricidal son of Adam and Eve, whose murder of his own brother sees him cast out by God and fated to wander the world in exile (Genesis 4. 1–16). This gives the impression that Grendel is human, or at least humanoid, and we’re told that he goes on ‘weres wæstmum’ [‘in the shape of a man’], (l. 1352). But he’s much larger than that: it takes four warriors simply to lift his head (l. 1637). He lives in a gloomy underwater lair somewhere beyond the ‘myrcan mor’ [‘dark moor’], (ll. 1402–41). He eats his victims – bones and all – and fights without weapons or armour in frenzied attacks that leave dozens dead in his wake (ll. 120– 25, 730–44). These details emerge in fits and starts over the course of the poem: always suggestive, never specific. In the best traditions of horror narratives, the more that’s left to the imagination the better.
Grendel attacks the Danes night after night for years, until Beowulf comes to their aid in an epic encounter that literally shakes the Danish hall to its foundations (ll. 744–835). Grendel’s final incursion into Heorot begins with a bloody assault on one of Beowulf’s sleeping warriors:
[Grendel] slat unwearnum, bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc, synsnædum swealh; sona hæfde unlyfigendes eal gefeormod, fet ond folma (ll. 741–45) Grendel tore without hesitation, bit the bone-locks, drank the blood of the veins, swallowed sinful bites; soon he had entirely consumed the unliving one, down to his feet and hands.
Emboldened, Grendel reaches for his next victim – only to find himself grappling with Beowulf himself. The monster soon realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew: ‘he ne mette middangeardes, / eorþan sceata on elran men / mundgripe maran’ [‘he had not met in the world, in any corner of the earth, a greater handgrip in another man’], (ll. 751–53). In a stark reversal, the monster who began the evening feasting on human flesh now finds that his own ‘seonowe onsprungon, / burston banlocan’ [‘sinews snapped, bone-locks burst’], (ll. 817–18). Grendel flees, but Beowulf never relinquishes his grip. Once the dust has settled, our hero is left holding the monster’s ‘hond … earm ond eaxle … Grendles grape’ [‘hand … arm and shoulder … Grendel’s grasp’], (ll. 834–36).
Meeting Grendel’s mother Beowulf emerges from this first fight a bona fide hero. But we’re only a third of the way into the poem, and Grendel was only the start of Beowulf’s monstrous troubles. The very night after Grendel limps back to his lair, minus one arm, to die in peace, the Danes are attacked again (ll. 1279–99).This time it’s Grendel’s mother, looking for vengeance. Her appearance is similar to Grendel’s, except ‘idese onlicnes’ [‘in the likeness of a woman’], (l. 1351), but her attack differs in some significant ways. Rather than wholesale destruction, she kills just one Dane before fleeing home with her son’s severed arm. The man she chooses is Æschere, Hrothgar’s closest advisor, in a tit-for-tat killing that’s meant to match the loss of her only son (ll.
1304–09). It’s a point the poet drives home with a grim pun – just as Beowulf took Grendel’s ‘earm ond eaxle’ [‘arm and shoulder’], (l. 835), now Grendel’s mother has taken Hrothgar’s ‘eaxlgestealla’ [‘shoulder companion’], (l. 1326).
Duelling with Dragons The final of the three monsters enters the poem late in Beowulf’s life. No longer a young warrior out to make a name for himself, our hero is now an aged king when he is called on to defend his people from a fire-breathing dragon (ll. 2550–2705). This is the most conventional of the monsters Beowulf encounters – we all know a dragon when we see one – yet it’s also the most challenging. Beowulf does his duty, kitted out with weapons and armour that even he seems to know will do him no good:
wisse he gearwe þæt him holtwudu helpan ne meahte, lind wið lige. Sceolde lændaga æþeling ærgod ende gebidan, worulde lifes, ond se wyrm somod. (ll. 2339–43) [he clearly understood that the forest-wood could not help him, the wooden shield against the flames. The foremost prince would have to endure the end of his transitory days, his life in the world, and the dragon with him.]
Aided by a young warrior called Wiglaf, Beowulf is able to strike a mortal blow right through ‘wyrm on middan’ [‘the belly of the dragon’], (l. 2705). But, true to the prophetic lines above, Beowulf is himself grievously wounded. As his injuries ‘swelan ond swellan’ [‘fester and boil’], (l. 2713), Beowulf is keenly aware ‘þæt he dæghwila gedrogen hæfde / eorðan wynne’ [‘that he had passed his share of days, his earthly joys’], (ll. 2725–27). He dies gazing on ‘enta geweorc’ [‘the works of giants’], (l. 2717) – the mound in which the dragon lived – beside the corpse of this final monstrous foe (ll. 2794–2820).
FROM BOOK IX OF THE ODYSSEY
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
from SONG OF MYSELF (1892 version) By Walt Whitman https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version 1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RED Anne Carson
BRIEF RESEARCH NOTES ON STESICHORUS AND THE GERYONEIS:
EMILY DICKINSON The reticent volcano keeps 1748 included in Autobiography of Red The reticent volcano keeps His never slumbering plan— Confided are his projects pink To no precarious man. If nature will not tell the tale Jehovah told to her Can human nature not survive Without a listener? Admonished by her buckled lips Let every babbler be The only secret people keep Is Immortality.
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
ODE Ode to Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda
The street filled with tomatoes, midday, summer, light is halved like a tomato, its juice runs through the streets. In December, unabated, the tomato invades the kitchen, it enters at lunchtime, takes its ease on countertops, among glasses, butter dishes, blue saltcellars. It sheds its own light, benign majesty. Unfortunately, we must murder it: the knife sinks into living flesh, red viscera a cool sun, profound, inexhaustible, populates the salads of Chile, happily, it is wed to the clear onion, and to celebrate the union we pour oil, essential
child of the olive, onto its halved hemispheres, pepper adds its fragrance, salt, its magnetism; it is the wedding of the day, parsley hoists its flag, potatoes bubble vigorously, the aroma of the roast knocks at the door, it's time! come on! and, on the table, at the midpoint of summer, the tomato, star of earth, recurrent and fertile star, displays its convolutions, its canals, its remarkable amplitude and abundance, no pit, no husk, no leaves or thorns, the tomato offers its gift of fiery colour and cool completeness.
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
SOUND POETRY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixgbtOcEgXg
Schtzngrmm - Ernst Jandl schtzngrmm schtzngrmm schtzngrmm t-t-t-t t-t-t-t grrrmmmmm t-t-t-t s---------c---------h tzngrmm tzngrmm tzngrmm grrrmmmmm schtzn schtzn t-t-t-t t-t-t-t schtzngrmm schtzngrmm tssssssssssssss grrt grrrrrt grrrrrrrrrt scht scht t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t scht tzngrmm tzngrmm t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t scht scht scht scht scht grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr t-tt
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
FOUND POETRY: ERASURE AS A POLITICAL ACT
Jenny Holzer, from ‘Redaction Paintings’ (2007)
Holocaust Jonathan Safran Foer's 2010 Tree of Codes is a book-length erasure of The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz. Schulz was killed by an officer of the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation of his hometown Drohobycz, after distributing the bulk of his life's work to gentile friends immediately prior to the occupation. All of these manuscripts have been lost. The Tree of Codes is Safran-Foer's attempt to represent the unrepresentable loss which occurred in the Holocaust by deleting text, rather than by writing another book about the Holocaust as a historical subject or context for a work of fiction. Safran-Foer's approach to the Holocaust as an "unrepresentable subject" recalls the use of negative space in the poetry of Dan Pagis. Freedom and Slavery US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith has written several erasure poems, including “Declaration" (drawn from the Declaration of Independence) and “The Greatest Personal Privation” (from letters about slaveholding).
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
Declaration (2018) BY T RACY K. SMIT H He has sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people He has plundered our— ravaged our— destroyed the lives of our— taking away our— abolishing our most valuable— and altering fundamentally the Forms of our— In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. —taken Captive on the high Seas to bear—
from THE BOOK THIEF (2005, Markus Zusak)
FOUND POETRY: BLACKOUT AND DÉCOUPÉ Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems. A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet. Cut-up and Remix Poetry (Découpé) Like Dada poetry, cut-up and remix poetry (called découpé in French) can be randomly generated. However, writers of cut-up and remix poetry often opt to organize the found words into grammatical lines and stanzas. Unwanted words are discarded. Beat writer William S. Burroughs championed the cut-up approach during the late 1950s and early '60s. He divided pages of a source text into quarters that he rearranged and turned into poems. Or, alternatively, he folded pages to merge lines and create unexpected juxtapositions.
To create a blackout poem, begin by scanning an old book’s pages for words or phrases you find provocative or interesting. You don’t need to know why, and when you start, it’s best to have no goal. Use a pencil to lightly circle the words you discover. After you’ve done this with a number of pages, pick one page that you especially like and begin blacking out the words that don’t interest you, leaving only those that work together to express a story, a thought, or a feeling that you probably didn’t even know you had in your mind until now.
TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently.
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
EPISTOLARY POEMS - from the Latin epistle meaning a letter - have a long history. Horace wrote famous verse epistles and the form continues to be used today. BJ Ward's "Letter to Some Students Whom I May Never See Again after a Five Day Writing Workshop" from Landing in New Jersey with Soft Hands is part of a sub-genre of poems addressed to poets. Try writing a poem addressed to a poet - perhaps a famous one, or to poets in general or, like Ward, to younger poets with advice on poetry. The salutation is sometimes part of the title, other times incorporated into the poem.
Mother to Son BY
LANGS TON H UGHES
Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair. It’s had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on, And reachin’ landin’s, And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark Where there ain’t been no light. So boy, don’t you turn back. Don’t you set down on the steps ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard. Don’t you fall now— For I’se still goin’, honey, I’se still climbin’, And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
ANALYTICAL RESPONSE
DRAFTING PAGE FOR OWN CREATIVE WRITING
GLOSSARY
Acrostic A poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, name, or phrase when read vertically. See Lewis Carroll’s “A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky.”
Alliteration The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line. Alliteration need not reuse all initial consonants; “pizza” and “place” alliterate. Example: “With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim” from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty.” Browse poems with alliteration.
Allusion A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement.
Ambiguity A word, statement, or situation with two or more possible meanings is said to be ambiguous.
Assonance The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme. See Amy Lowell’s “In a Garden” (“With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur”) or “The Taxi” (“And shout into the ridges of the wind”). Browse poems with assonance.
Blank verse Unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called heroic verse. This 10-syllable line is the predominant rhythm of traditional English dramatic and epic poetry, as it is considered the closest to English speech patterns. Poems such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, and Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning,” are written predominantly in blank verse. Browse more blank verse poems.
Cadence The patterning of rhythm in natural speech, or in poetry without a distinct meter (i.e., free verse).
Caesura A stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary, such as a phrase or clause. A medial caesura splits the line in equal parts, as is common in Old English poetry (see Beowulf).
Dramatic monologue A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader. Examples include Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and Ai’s “Killing Floor.” A lyric may also be addressed to someone, but it is short and songlike and may appear to address either the reader or the poet. Browse more dramatic monologue poems.
End-stopped A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break—such as a dash or closing parenthesis—or with punctuation such as a colon, a semicolon, or a period. A line is considered end-stopped, too, if it contains a complete phrase. Many of Alexander Pope’s couplets are end-stopped, as in this passage from “An Essay on Man: Epistle I”: Then say not man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault; Say rather, man’s as perfect as he ought: His knowledge measur’d to his state and place, His time a moment, and a point his space. If to be perfect in a certain sphere, What matter, soon or late, or here or there? The blest today is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago. The opposite of an end-stopped line is an enjambed line.
Enjambment The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped. William Carlos Williams’s “Between Walls” is one sentence broken into 10 enjambed lines:
the back wings of the hospital where nothing will grow lie cinders in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle
Epic A long narrative poem in which a heroic protagonist engages in an action of great mythic or historical significance. Notable English epics include Beowulf, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (which follows the virtuous exploits of 12 knights in the service of the mythical King Arthur), and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which dramatizes Satan’s fall from Heaven and humankind’s subsequent alienation from God in the Garden of Eden. Browse more epics.
Free verse Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition. Matthew Arnold and Walt Whitman explored the possibilities of nonmetrical poetry in the 19th century. Since the early 20th century, the majority of published lyric poetry has been written in free verse. See the work of William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and H.D. Browse more free-verse poems.
Haiku (or hokku) A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time. Not popularized in Western literature until the early 1900s, the form originates from the Japanese hokku, or the opening section of a longer renga sequence. In this context, the hokku served to begin a longer poem by establishing a season, often with a pair of seasonal images. Unlike the rest of the renga sequence, which was composed collaboratively, the hokku was often created by a single poet working alone, and was subsequently used as an exercise for students. Over time, the hokku began to be appreciated for its own worth and became distinct as a poetic form, formally mastered by poets such as Basho and Yosa Buson.
Hyperbole A figure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration. For example, see James Tate’s lines “She scorched you with her radiance” or “He was more wronged than Job.”
Iamb A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. The words “unite” and “provide” are both iambic. It is the most common meter of poetry in English (including all the plays and poems of William Shakespeare), as it is closest to the rhythms of English speech. In Robert Frost’s “After Apple Picking”the iamb is the vehicle for the “natural,” colloquial speech pattern: My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree Toward heaven still, And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill Beside it, and there may be two or three Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough. But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night, The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
Imagery Elements of a poem that invoke any of the five senses to create a set of mental images. Specifically, using vivid or figurative language to represent ideas, objects, or actions. Poems that use rich imagery include T.S. Eliot’s “Preludes,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” and Mary Oliver’s “At Black River.”
Metaphor A comparison that is made directly (for example, John Keats’s “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”) or less directly (for example, Shakespeare’s “marriage of two minds”), but in any case without pointing out a similarity by using words such as “like,” “as,” or “than.” See Emily Dickinson’s “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers— / That perches in the soul—.” Browse poems with developed metaphors.
Meter The rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse. The predominant meter in English poetry is accentual-syllabic. See also accentual meter, syllabic meter, and quantitative meter. Falling meter refers to trochees and dactyls (i.e., a stressed syllable followed by one or two unstressed syllables). Iambs and anapests(i.e., one or two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one) are called rising meter. See also foot.
Ode A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. Its stanza forms vary. The Greek or Pindaric (Pindar, ca. 552–442 B.C.E.) ode was a public poem, usually set to music, that celebrated athletic victories. (See Stephen Burt’s article “And the Winner Is . . . Pindar!”) English odes written in the Pindaric tradition include Thomas Gray’s “The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode” and William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Reflections of Early Childhood.” Horatian odes, after the Latin poet Horace (65–8 B.C.E.), were written in quatrains in a more philosophical, contemplative manner; see Andrew Marvell’s “Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland.” The Sapphic ode consists of quatrains, three 11-syllable lines, and a final five-syllable line, unrhyming but with a strict meter. See Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “Sapphics.”
Onomatopoeia A figure of speech in which the sound of a word imitates its sense (for example, “choo-choo,” “hiss,” or “buzz”). In “Piano,” D.H. Lawrence describes the “boom of the tingling strings” as his mother played the piano, mimicking the volume and resonance of the sound (“boom”) as well as the fine, high-pitched vibration of the strings that produced it (“tingling strings”).
Oxymoron A figure of speech that brings together contradictory words for effect, such as “jumbo shrimp” and “deafening silence.” For instance, John Milton describes Hell as “darkness visible” in Book I of Paradise Lost.
Personification A figure of speech in which the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a nonhuman form as if it were a person. William Blake’s “O Rose, thou art sick!” is one example; Donne’s “Death, be not proud” is another. Gregory Corso quarrels with a series of personified abstractions in his poem Almost.
Quatrain A four-line stanza, rhyming -ABAC or ABCB (known as unbounded or ballad quatrain), as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” -AABB (a double couplet); see A.E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young.” -ABAB (known as interlaced, alternate, or heroic), as in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”or “Sadie and Maud” by Gwendolyn Brooks. -ABBA (known as envelope or enclosed), as in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” or John Ciardi’s “Most Like an Arch This Marriage.” -AABA, the stanza of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Browse poems with quatrains.
Rhyme The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line. Rhymed words conventionally share all sounds following the word’s last stressed syllable. Thus “tenacity” and “mendacity” rhyme, but not “jaundice” and “John does,” or “tomboy” and “calm bay.” A rhyme scheme is usually the pattern of end rhymes in a stanza, with each rhyme encoded by a letter of the alphabet, from a onward (ABBA BCCB, for example). Rhymes are classified by the degree of similarity between sounds within words, and by their placement within the lines or stanzas.
Rhythm An audible pattern in verse established by the intervals between stressed syllables. “Rhythm creates a pattern of yearning and expectation, of recurrence and difference,” observes Edward Hirsch in his essay on rhythm, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.”
Shakespearean sonnet The variation of the sonnet form that Shakespeare used—comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg—is called the English or Shakespearean sonnet form, although others had used it before him. This different sonnet structure allows for more space to be devoted to the buildup of a subject or problem than the Italian/Petrarchan form, and is followed by just two lines to conclude or resolve the poem in a rhyming couplet. Learn more about sonnet forms here.
Simile A comparison (see Metaphor) made with “as,” “like,” or “than.” In “A Red, Red Rose,” Robert Burns declares: O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune.
“What happens to a dream deferred?” asks Langston Hughes in “Harlem”: Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?
Browse poems with developed similes.
Spondee A metrical foot consisting of two accented syllables. An example of a spondaic word is “hog-wild.” Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty” is heavily spondaic: With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
Stanza A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the stanza, like a prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought.
Stress A syllable uttered in a higher pitch—or with greater emphasis—than others. The English language itself determines how English words are stressed, but sentence structure, semantics, and meter influence the placement and perception of stress.
Tanka A Japanese form of five lines with 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables—31 in all. See Philip Appleman’s “Three Haiku, Two Tanka.” See also renga.
Tone The poet’s attitude toward the poem’s speaker, reader, and subject matter, as interpreted by the reader. Often described as a “mood” that pervades the experience of reading the poem, it is created by the poem’s vocabulary, metrical regularity or irregularity, syntax, use of figurative language, and rhyme.
Trochee A metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable. Examples of trochaic words include “garden” and “highway.” William Blake opens “The Tyger” with a predominantly trochaic line: “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright.” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is mainly trochaic.
Volta Italian word for “turn.” In a sonnet, the volta is the turn of thought or argument: in Petrarchan or Italian sonnets it occurs between the octave and the sestet, and in Shakespearean or English before the final couplet. See Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind” and William Shakespeare's Sonnet 129 [“Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame”] for examples of voltas of each type.