Poetry - Content

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

Poetry

What do you remember from last lesson on the form of poetry?

Tools for content

Situation

Theme

Symbolism

Metaphors

Imagery

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. 

What is the situation in Funeral Blues?

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.

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.