The Form - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Form of Poetry

Yes, there is method to the madness…Slide2

Components of Form

Spacing

Shape

Enjambment/End-stopped

Rhyme SchemeSlide3

Spacing

Space between words and lines in a poem.

Changes the pace for the reader.

Used to organize concepts and ideas.Slide4

Shape

The physical shape that the poem is written in.

Also called visual rhythm.

Can help convey meaning.

Ex: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes written to look like a river.Slide5

Enjambment vs. End-stopped

Enjambment: The continuation of a sentence or clause over a line break.

Ex : “Passing, before they strip the old tree bare/ One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes/ An everlasting song, a singing tree.”

End-stopped: The line of poetry ends in a grammatical unit (. , ? ! Etc)

Ex: “To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,/ Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.” Slide6

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of rhymes between lines of a poem.

Alternate Rhyme: ABAB CDCD EFEF

Limerick: AABBA

Couplet: AA BB CC DD

Triplet: AAA BBB CCC DDD

Sonnet: ABAB CDCD EFEF GGSlide7

Types of Poetry

Just to make the definition a

little

more complicated.Slide8

Free Verse

In free verse there are no rules.

There can be some rhyme and meter, but there is no regular pattern.Slide9

“Free Verse” by Robert Graves

I now delight

In spite

Of the might

And the right

Of classic tradition,

In writing

And reciting

Straight ahead,

Without let or omission,

Just any little rhyme

In any little time

That runs in my head;

Because, I’ve said,

My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed

Like Prussian soldiers on parade

That march,

Stiff as starch,Foot to foot,Boot to boot,Blade to blade,Button to button,Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.No! No!

My rhymes must goTurn ’ee, twist ’ee,Twinkling, frosty,Will-o’-the-wisp-like, misty;Rhymes I will makeLike Keats and BlakeAnd Christina Rossetti,With run and ripple and shake.How prettyTo takeA merry little rhymeIn a jolly little timeAnd poke it,And choke it,Change it, arrange it,Straight-lace it, deface it,Pleat it with pleats,Sheet it with sheetsOf empty conceits,And chop and chew,And hack and hew,And weld it into a uniform stanza,And evolve a neat,Complacent, complete,Academic extravaganza!Slide10

Blank Verse

Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter

Easy to recognize:

Count each line to ensure most have10 syllables.

Then make sure there is NO fixed rhyme scheme.Slide11

Blank Verse Example

Excerpt from Robert Frost’s “The Mountain”

The mountain held the town as in a shadow

I saw so much before I slept there once:

I noticed that I missed stars in the west,

Where its black body cut into the sky.

Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall

Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.

And yet between the town and it I found,

When I walked forth at dawn to see new things,

Were fields, a river, and beyond, more fields.

The river at the time was fallen away,

And made a widespread brawl on cobble-stones;

But the signs showed what it had done in spring;

Good grass-land gullied out, and in the grass

Ridges of sand, and driftwood stripped of bark.

… Slide12

The Ballad

Narrative poem - tells a story.

Often about universals such as love, honour, courage…

Connection to songs

Very strong rhythm

Plain rhymesSlide13

Ballad Example

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

…

"The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.

The sun came up upon the left,

Out of the sea came he!

And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea.

…Slide14

The Epic

LONG

Often about a heroic character

Elevated style to represent religious or cultural idealsSlide15

Epic Example

Homer’s

Illiad

…

‘Honor the gods, Achilles; pity him.

Think of your father; I'm more pitiful;

I've suffered what no other mortal has,

I've kissed the hand of one who killed my children.’

He spoke, and stirred Achilles' grief to tears;

He gently pushed the old man's hand away.

They both remembered; Priam wept for Hector,

Sitting crouched before Achilles' feet.

Achilles mourned his father, then again

Patroculs, and their mourning stirred the house.

…Slide16

The Lyric

Short poem.

Expresses the emotions or thoughts of the writer directly.

Examples:

Sonnets

Odes

ElegiesSlide17

Lyric Example

Dying

(aka I heard a fly buzz when I died )

By Emily Dickinson

I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form

Was like the stillness in the air

Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,

And breaths were gathering sure

For that last onset, when the king

Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away

What portion of me I

Could make assignable,-and then

There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,

Between the light and me;And then the windows failed, and then

I could not see to see.Slide18

Sonnet

Fourteen lines long

Iambic pentameter

Shakespearean Sonnet:

Three quatrains (4-line stanzas) and a couplet (two lines)

STRICT end-rhyme scheme

Abab cdcd efef ggSlide19

Sonnet Example

Sonnet 18

By William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.Slide20

Ode

Expresses lofty emotion

Often celebrate an event

Often addressed to nature, person, place, or thing.Slide21

Ode Example

Ode To A Nightingale

By John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

… Slide22

Elegy

A mournful poem

A lament for the deadSlide23

Elegy Example

Captain! My Captain!

By Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

…