Poetry Intro

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo, vwo
• Leerjaar 4

Poetry

Poetry

Are you interested in (Dutch) poetry? Have you ever done something with rhyme/poetry?

What is Poetry?

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

Different forms of Poetry (1)

• Haiku
    Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and
    five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.
    The most popular haiku ever written is likely Matsuo Basho's
    "An old silent pond / A frog jumps into the pond— / Splash! Silence
    again."
• Free Verse
   Poetry without rules

Different forms of Poetry (2)

• Sonnet
  
    Poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes,
    in English typically having ten syllables per line.
• Limerick
    Short, funny poem with five lines that follows a specific rhyming pattern
    and often has a playful or humorous tone.

Tools for analysing poetry

• Form:
  Metre
  Rhyme scheme
  Stanza division
• Content:
  Situation
  Theme
  Symbolism
  Metaphors
  Imagery

Rhyme Scheme

Using the letters of the alphabet to show the rhyme scheme. 

For example: AABB 

What is the rhyme scheme of the poem My Papa's Waltz?

The sky is very sunny. (A)

The children are funny. (A)

Under the tree we sit, (B)

But just for a bit. (B)

Stanza Division

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

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed

My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

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. 

Theme

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

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!

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.

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.

Simile = comparison using like or as

Both are Similes

3. Simile      4. Metaphor

Imagery

imagery makes use of particular words that create visual representation of ideas in our minds. The word “imagery” is associated with mental pictures. 

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.
  

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

What is the irony here?

What is the irony here?