Reading Poetry - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Reading Poetry

English Literature and Composition APSlide2

Elements of Poetic Style

Diction

: selection of words

Syntax

: order of words

Imagery:

details of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch

Figurative Language:

non literal ways of expressing one thing in terms of another

Symbolism

Metaphor

Sound Effects

Rhyme

Assonance

Consonance

Alliteration

Meter

StructureSlide3

Parts of a Poem

Stanza:

any unit of recurring meter and rhyme – or variations of them – used in an established pattern of repetition an separation in a single poem.

Lines can be the same length or different lengths.

Meter:

Greek word for “measure.” Lines of a poem.

Three meters most commonly used in English

Accentual meter (accents are counted)

Syllabic meter (syllables are counted)

Accentual-Syllabic meter (both are counted)Slide4

Accentual-Syllabic Meter

Dominates English poetry.

Is measured in “feet”

Feet

: patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Where the force and power of meter occurs. Slide5

Common “Feet”

Iamb

: the most common foot, a short stress followed by a long one.

About. A (short) Bout (long)

Trochee

: less common, long stress followed by a short one.

This is

. This (long) is (short)

Dactyl:

a long stress followed by two short ones.

Happily

. Hap (long)

i

(short)

ly

(short)

Anapest:

two short stresses followed by a long one

In a tree

. In (short) a (short) tree (long)

Spondee

: two long stresses

Humdrum.

Hum (long) drum (long)Slide6

Check For Understanding

Write an example of an iamb.

What is a pentameter?

What is a dactylic tetrameter?

Write an example of a spondee.Slide7

Verse Forms

Verse forms do not define poetic form: they simply express it.

Variations in poems do not make them abstract, but human.

Forms can express feeling as well as historical context.Slide8

Villanelle

Villanelle

: 19 lines, 5 stanzas. Rhyme scheme is

aba

. Alternates in repeating the first and last lines of the first stanza at the end of every following stanza. They then repeat together in the last stanza.

Absence of narrative possibility.

Mood, emotion, and memory

Does not progress forward.Slide9

The gates fly open with a pretty sound,

No offer opposition to the knight.

A sensual world, remote, extinct is found.

In walls that like luxurious thorns surround

The exquisite lewdness of the sybarite,

The gates fly open with a pretty sound.

Where venery goes hunting like a hound,

And all the many mouths of pleasure bite,

A sensual world, remote, extinct, is found.

A passionate pilgrim stayed beneath the ground

Meets only death, until, to his delight,

The gates fly open with a pretty sound

In Venus’ clutches, under Venus’ mound,

He whiles away the long venereal night.

A sensual world, remote, extinct, is found.

The single function on which Venus frowned

Was birth; and, maybe life has proved her right.

The gates fly open with a pretty sound.A sensual world, remote, extinct, is found.

Under the HillDaryl HineSlide10

Sestina

Sestina

: 39 lines, 6 stanzas of 6 lines. The same six end words must repeat but in changing order. Does not rhyme.

Purpose was to entertain.

Fashion forward.

Troubadours: court poets.Slide11

Ye wasteful

woodes

bear witness of my woe,

Wherein my plaints did oftentimes resound:

Ye

carelesse

byrds

are

privie

to my cries,

Which in your songs were wont to make a part:

Thou

pleasaunt

spring hast

luld

me oft to sleep,Whose streames my tricklinge tears did oft augment.Resort of people oft my

greefs augment,The walled townes do worke my greater woe:The forest wide is fitter to resoundThe hollow echo of my cries,I hate the house, since thence my love did part,Whose watleful want debarres mine eyes from sleep.

Ye Wasteful woodes

, bear witness to my woe

The

Shepheardes

Calendar

(August, lines 151-162)Edmund SpencerSlide12

Pantoum

Pantoum

:

Unspecified length, first and last line must be the same, second and fourth lines of the first quatrain become the first and third lines of the next and so on, rhyme scheme is

abab

, final quatrain changes this pattern.

evokes a past time.

Not a straight forward narrative.Slide13

Grandmothers sing their song

Blinded by the suns’ rays

Grandchildren for whom they long

For

pomelo

-golden days

Blinded by the sun’s rays

Gold bracelets, opal rings

For

pomelo

-golden days

Tiny fingers, ancient things

Gold bracelets, opal rings

Sprinkled with Peking dust

Tiny fingers, ancient things

So young they’ll never rust

Sprinkled with Peking dust

To dance in fields of mudSo young they’ll never rustProud as if of royal bloodTo dance in fields of mudOr peel shrimp for pennies a dayProud as if of royal bloodCoins and jade to put awayOr peel shrimp for pennies a day

Seaweed washes up the shoreCoins and jade to put awayA camphor chest is home no moreSeaweed washes up the shore

Bound feet struggle to loosen free

A camphor chest is home no more

A foreign tongue is learned at three

Bound feet struggle to loosen free

Grandchildren for whom they long

A foreign tongue is learned at three

Grandmothers sing their song

Grandmothers’s

Song

Nellie WongSlide14

Sonnet

Sonnet:

14 lines, usually iambic

Two forms of sonnet

Petrarchan

:

Italian, octave 8 lines and a sestet of 6, rhyme scheme of the octave is

ababcdcd

, of the sestet

cdecde

.

Shakespearean

: English, rhyme scheme is.

ababcdcdefefgg

. No octave/sestet structure to it. Slide15

Shall I compare the to summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath too short a date;

Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And very fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou

ow’st

;

Nor shall breath brag thou

wand’rest

in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou

gow’st;

So long as men can breath, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and gives life to thee.Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Sonnet 18William ShakespeareSlide16

Ballad

Ballad:

usually 4 line stanzas, alternates between iambic tetrameter (lines 1 &3) and iambic

trimeter

(lines 2&4), a short narrative, rhyme scheme is

abab

or

abcb

.

Always stories of lost love, supernatural happenings, or recent events.

Uses local speech.Slide17

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

Real Cool

Thee Pool Players

Gwendolyn BrooksSlide18

Blank Verse

Blank Verse:

iambic line with ten stresses and five beats, unrhymed.

Associated with dramatic speech and epic poetry.

Often identified as the poetic form closest to human speech.Slide19

It was a summer’s night, a close warm night,

Wan, dull, and glaring, with a dripping mist

Low-hung and thick that covered all the sky,

Half threatening storm and rain; but on we went

Unchecked, being full of heart and having faith

In our tried pilot. Little could we see,

Hemmed round on every side with fog and damp,

An, after ordinary travelers' chat

With our conductor, silently we sunk

Each into commerce with his private thoughts.

Was nothing either seen or heard the while

Which took me from my musings, save that once

The shepherd's cur did to his own great joy

Unearth the hedgehog in the mountain-crags,

Round which he made a barking turbulent.

From

The Prelude

(Book Thirteenth, 1805, 10-25)William WordsworthSlide20

Heroic Couplet

Heroic Couplet:

A rhyming pair of lines, usually iambic pentameter or tetrameter, rhyme scheme is

aabbcc

.

Involved high subject matter.

Was often the form Greek and Latin epic poetry was translated into.Slide21

Of all the causes which conspire to blind

Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind,

What the weak head with strongest bias rules,

Is pride, the never-failing voice of fools.

Whatever Nature has in worth denied,

She gives in large recruits of needful pride;

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find

What wants in blood and spirits swelled with wind:

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defense,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense.

If once right reason drives that cloud away,

Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.

Trust not yourself: but your defects to know,

Make use of every friend – and every foe.

From

An Essay on Criticism

(lines 201-214)

Alexander PopeSlide22

Identifying Parts of a Poem to Glean Meaning

Identify the type of poem, meter, any figurative language, and historical context.

Analyze the content.Slide23

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art –

Not in lone splendor hung aloft in the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless

Ermite

,

The moving waters at their

priestlike

task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –

No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel forever its soft fall and swell,

Awake forever in sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever – or else swoon to death.Bright StarJohn Keats