Poetry Intro

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EngelsMiddelbare schoolhavo, vwoLeerjaar 4

This lesson contains 19 slides, with text slides.

time-iconLesson duration is: 45 min

Items in this lesson

Slide 1 - Slide

What is poetry
  • Popular definition: a song without a melody
  • Two essentials: form and content

Slide 2 - Slide

Different forms of Poetry
  • Haiku
  • Free Verse
  • Sonnet
  • Acrostic
  • Limerick
  • Ballad 

Slide 3 - Slide

Tools for analysing poetry
  • Form:
    Metre and scansion
    Rhyme scheme
    Stanza division
  • Content:
    Situation
    Theme
    Symbolism
    Metaphors
    Imagery

Slide 4 - Slide

Rhyme Scheme

Using the letters of the alphabet to show the rhyme scheme. 
For example: AABB CCDD. 

What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? 
Autumn -Joan Mitchell

The rusty leaves crunch and crackle,
Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky,
The fields are matted with sun-tanned stalks —
Wind rushes by.

The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree,
The last red leaves fall to the ground.
Bleakness, through the trees and bushes,
Comes without sound.

Slide 5 - Slide

Stanza Division

  • A stanza is a group of lines followed by a space.
  • Are the stanzas related to one another? 
Streemin

Im in the botom streme
Which meens Im not brigth
Don't like reedin
Cant hardly ryt

But all these divishns
Arnt reely fair
Look at the cemetery
No streemin there

Roger McGough



Slide 6 - Slide

Situation
  • A poem always describes a situation: what is going on?
  • Ask the ‘wh-questions’!
  • Once a reader knows the situation, he tries to discover the deeper meaning.
  • You need to read between the lines. 

Slide 7 - Slide

Theme
  • Like short stories, poems have themes.
  • It is important to find evidence for the theme.
  • This evidence must come from the poem itself.

Slide 8 - Slide

Turn/Volta (twist)

Sometimes the poet gives his poem a twist, where the first stanza is about the shining sun and the second stanza is about the darkness. We call this a turn or a volta. Not all poem have this twist. 
Dusk - Rae Armentrout

Spider on the cold expanse
of glass, three stories high
rests intently
and so purely alone.
I’m not like that!

Slide 9 - Slide

Symbolism

  • Poems can have a symbolic meaning: a deeper, bigger, universal meaning. 

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
  and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

Slide 10 - Slide

Metaphors
  • A metaphor is a different name for something, often in nice poetic language.
    Example: the golden eye => the sun
    Example: eternal sleep => death
  • Poets may use the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ in a metaphor, to compare.
    Example: He was so pale, he looked like a dead man.

Slide 11 - Slide

Simile -Comparison using like or as
Both are Similes

Slide 12 - Slide

3. Simile      4. Metaphor

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Imagery
imagery makes use of particular words that create visual representation of ideas in our minds. The word “imagery” is associated with mental pictures. However, this idea is but partially correct.

Slide 14 - Slide

Personification
  • A figure of speech in which a thing, an idea or an animal is given human attributes.

  • For example, when we say, “The sky weeps” we are giving the sky the ability to cry, which is a human quality. Thus, we can say that the sky has been personified in the given sentence.


Slide 15 - Slide

Irony
verbal irony
  • when someone says something totally different from what they mean
situational irony
  • when a the result of a situation is totally different from what you expect it to be.
dramatic irony
  • audience knows something important that the character doesn't know
  • makes you scream 'don't go in there!' at a horror movie

Slide 16 - Slide

What is the irony here?

Slide 17 - Slide

What is the irony here?

Slide 18 - Slide

What is the Irony here? 

Slide 19 - Slide