What Is Poetry? Essay, Research Paper
What is Poetry?
What is poetry? What is a poem? How can you tell the difference between poetry
and prose?
I usually try to provide a defintion, knowing that the definition is little more
than a simplified starting point for this elusive and irresistible genre. I
developed this one collaboratively with my colleague at TCC, Stan Barger, who
team-taught English 112 with me several summers:
Poetry is the concentrated, rhythmic, verbal expression of observations,
perceptions, and feelings.
Poetry looks different from prose on the page. In prose, the words go to the
margin without regard to position in space. In poetry, ends of lines depend on
sound, meaning, and appearance. Often, lines begin with capital letters even
when they are neither the beginnings of sentences nor proper nouns. These
conventions make poetry instantly recognizable.
Reading a variety of poems will help you understand both individual poems and
the concept of poetry. Poetry Guidelines: Reading and Writing for Understanding
is intended to give you some strategies for understanding poems.
Dona Hickey at the University of Richmond and I developed Poetry Portals, a
resource list of poems, poetry scholarship, poetry classes, and poetry zines,
for our students and for other teachers at workshops we conduct on using
computers for poetry instruction. Other collaborators recommended sites for us
to include. If you suggest sites that we use, we’ll add your name to the
credits.
Don Maxwell at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond has been
teaching a poetry writing class, for which he has posted some electures on
poetry that I recommend. Here you can read a local poet’s explanation of What
Makes a Poem a Poem? and The Sound of Poetry, including a poem by and picture of
Emily Dickinson, one of the United States’ earliest and best poets.
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Glossary of Poetry Terms
Concentrated diction and syntax: highly selective language uses few words to
express many thoughts and feelings, depends on suggestions as well as
conventional meanings
Diction: choice of words
denotation: basic dictionary definition
connotation: attitudes and meanings suggested through usage or tradition
or context, for example, “landlord” has one connotation to an upper middle
class family, quite another to a slum family barely able to scrape
together the rent; in “Ulysses” the speaker uses “mete and dole” rather
than “distribute”
Usage levels
Slang, colloguialisms, and other informal usages
Standard usages that are acceptable in formal speech and writing
Elegant “poetic” diction that may seem pretentious to 20th century
readers
Imagery: words and phrases that appeal to the emotions, intellect, or senses
concrete or abstract
concrete: appeals to senses (visual, auditory/aural, olfactory,
gustatory, tactile + kinetic, synaesthesia)
abstract: appeals to imagination and intellect (brutal armies)
literal or figurative
literal images mean what they seem to mean
figurative images are not literal; they depend on comparisons and
relationships
Rhythm: patterns of stresses and silences in language
Syntax: arrangement of words in intentional rather than accidental patterns
for sound effects (to make particular rhythmic or rhyming patterns)
for meaning: to create units of expression other than standard sentences
Prosody: the study of the rhythms and other sound patterns of poetry
Observations, perceptions, and feelings: ideas, attitudes, opinions, feelings,
stories, interpretations, explanations of aspects of the human condition
Nature of these perceptions
Personal: based on individual experience and reflection on that experience
Cultural: experiences or feelings common to a group of people
Universal: experiences or feelings common to all human beings
Subjects: the literal and particular surface matter that can be summarized
or paraphrased
Speaker: the persona adopted by the poet to sing the poem; a sort of
narrative voice that may be identifiable only slightly or very precisely
Situation: similar to plot and setting in narratives, the situation
involves the entire context of the poem: physical, mental, emotional,
cultural, and spiritual elements
Tone: author’s attitude or speaker’s attitude or both
Primary genres
Narrative poems emphasize the telling of stories: conflict, action,
dialogue
Lyric poems emphasize deeply felt emotions
Individual’s perspective, usually first person speaker
Personal feelings, highly subjective, even intimate (often love or
death, often misery)
Short
Musical rhythms (from lyre)
Themes: meanings that can be expressed as a generalized statement about the
subject or subjects of the poem.Themes may be new angle of perception or new
insight or philosophical position. A statement about a poem’s themes can and
should be stated as a complete sentence that generalizes beyond the
particulars of the individual work, stating not that this speaker is
fretting about his life being too short to enjoy cherry blossoms but
generalizing that for human beings life is short and should be enjoyed as
much as possible during the time available as exemplified by life being too
short to enjoy cherry blossoms.
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Tone
Tone is the expression of the poet’s attitude or the speaker’s attitude toward
subject, theme, or audience. Some examples are anger, joy, despair, reverence,
objectivity, irony, satire, amusement, affection.
Irony: presentation of elements which involve a discrepancy or contrast
between apparent meaning and actual meaning
Situational irony: outcome very different from normal expectations or from
what text leads readers to anticipate
Verbal irony: words suggest the opposite or something quite different from
what they seem say or literally mean
Dramatic (tragic) irony: words of a speaker in a drama are understood quite
differently by the audience than by the speaker as in Oedipus’s references
to avenging Laios as if he were his own father
Ambiguity: expression of an idea in language that suggests more than one
plausible meaning–but which enriches the possibilities of meaning (not the
same as obscure)
Satire: criticism of behavior or institutions through amusement or laughter,
ridiculing the human condition in order to show the need for reform
Horatian: gentle
Juvenalian: biting (invective is malicious)
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Imagery
An image is a word or phrase that appeals to the senses or the intellect or
imagination.
1. Abstract images appeal to the imagination or intellect while concrete images
appeal to the physical senses.
2. Imagery refers to the collection of images within a given work or portion of
a work.
Senses: visual, auditory (aural), gustatory, olfactory, tactile (touch), thermal
(temperature), kinetic (movement through sight and sound), tactile (touch–nerve
endings) plus synaesthesia (appeal to more than one sense at the same time or
description of one sensation in terms of another, for example, “blueblack cold”
in “Those Winter Sundays”)
Literal imagery: an actual sensation and sensory response is evoked, for
example, “the sky is blue,” “the silver bells jingle,” and “the moon is round
and full tonight”
Figurative imagery or figures of speech
These nonliteral sensory appeals present one element in terms of another to
increase and limit understanding–serving to enrich meaning and heighten sense
perceptions
allegory: extended metaphor in which objects and characters in a narrative
represent specific abstract concepts or qualities. Typically, abstractions are
personified through characters, and the plot and setting dramatize the
relationship among the abstractions
allusion: brief, usually indirect reference to another work or to a real or
historical event or person, traditionally as a way of drawing connections
between those elements and enriching the meaning of the current work through
associations with the other. Allusions imply a shared cultural experience and
shared knowledge.
anadiplosis (the last word of a sentence or clause repeated at the beginning of
the next sentence or clause): Time article “Americans are eating out more than
ever, and more than ever they are eating fast food” (26 Aug. 1985: 60).
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analogy: comparison typical of formal argument in which acceptance of one item
as true implies acceptance of the other; in analogy the elements being compared
usually have some obvious points of literal similarity
antimetabole (repetition of words in reverse order): “Woe unto them that call
evil good, and good evil” (Isiah 5:20)
antithesis: close placement of strongly contrasting words, phrases, or ideas in
balanced structures (”Man proposes, God disposes”)
apostrophe: direct address to an absent, abstract, invisible or nonexistent
element as if it were real and capable of hearing and responding: “O death,
where is thy victory?” “Hail to thee, Blithe Spirit”)
conceit: sometimes called metaphysical conceit, is an extended metaphor or
simile, usually of strikingly different elements “yoked together” (S. Barger)
such as salvation to the making of clothing in Jonathan Edwards’ “Huswifery” or
the breaking in of a car to a first sexual experience in e. e. cummings’s “she
being brand”
epistrophe: repet
clauses: from a Newsweek ad for Bryant’s National Gas Company “Call us, buy us.
Bill us.”
epithet: an adjective or adjective phrase or adjective-noun phrase used together
so that they become closely associated and one suggests the other (rosy-fingered
dawn; the trumpet of the dawn; the wine-dark sea–all Homeric)
hyperbole: exaggeration of characteristics (Lady Macbeth’s “my hand will rather
the multitudinous seas incarnadine / Making the green one red”)
litotes: form of understatement in which something is affirmed through the
statement of the negative of its opposite (”If this be not true, and upon me
proved, / I never writ nor no man ever loved”; “This is no small problem”)
meiosis (understatement): language that suggests something is less important
than it really is
metaphor: assertion of similarity as an indirect comparison between unlike
elements so that the characteristics of the second element become associated
with the first element (”the moon is a pink balloon”)
implied metaphor: does not mention the second item in the comparison, for
example, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul” bu Emily
Dickinson does not mention a bird
metonymy: use of a word or phrase to represent or substitute for a closely
related object or concept (”White House” or “Oval Office” for President;
“scepter and crown” for king or queen)
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oxymoron: phrase which pairs contradictory or opposite terms in a phrase (wise
fool; cheerful pessimist; authentic reproduction)
paradox: apparent contradiction in which what appears to be untrue or absurd is
revealed as true and significant (for example, “Stone walls do not a prison
make, nor iron bars a cage”)
periphrasis: circumlocution
personification or prosopopeia: attribution of lifelike traits to things which
are not alive or attribution of human traits to animals (’the pitiful trees
moaned” or “the fogcrept in on little cat feet”)
prolepsis: foreshadowing a future event as is it were already influencing the
present
prose poem: concentrated use of imagery and figurative language without the
standards of verse, line, and meter typical of poems. One handbook says, “In
forfeiting verse rhythms, the prose poem directs more attention to the poet’s
vision and less to the language itself. The result is an unusually private and
ethereal form, more like an interior monologue than an intentional revelation.”
pun or paranomasia: play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same
word or similar senses or sounds of differing words
simile: direct comparison between unlike elements in which a comparative term
signals the similarity and in which characteristics of the second item apply to
the first item. Typical comparative terms are like, as, seems, resembles, than,
and appears, for example, “My cat’s eyes glow like firey coals” or “like a
thunderbolt he falls” or “the moon is like a pink balloon.” Literal comparisons
are analogies, not similes: “My cousin is as tall as your cousin” or “My house
is dirtier than yours”
symbol: element that has a literal meaning in its own right plus special usually
abstract meanings and associations that evolve from the way that element is
presented in the work or genre, for example, bats in horror movies, the rug in
“Barn Burning.” Some symbols are traditional and universal, for example, the egg
for fertility, thorns on the rose for the problems of love or the defects in all
beauty
synechdoche: a variation of metonymy in which the whole represents the part or
the part represents the whole–but involving a significant part (”The sail flows
into the harbor”; the strong arm of the law)
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Prosody: Sound and Meaning
To supplement the excellent information on the sounds of poetry in your textbook
and in other resources on poetry and prosody, this section suggests additional
resources and offers some notes and examples for understanding the sounds of
poetry. You should read poems aloud and listen to others read poetry aloud.
Tapes and CDs and videos about poets’ lives and works often include readings.
And some online resources include readings. Here are a few. If necessary,
download RealAudio Player to listen to them; it’s free. Please let me and your
classmates know if you find others to recommend.
The Sound of Poetry: Don Maxwell’s Notes on Prosody and Reading of “I Like To
Hear It Lap the Miles”
http://nthsrv1.jsr.cc.va.us/courses/eng217/lectures/pomsound/pomsound.htm
Contemporary Poets Read: Internet Poetry Archive at University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill
http://sunsite.unc.edu:80/dykki/poetry///
Prosody is the system of principles of versification in poetry: aspects of
rhyme, rhythm, stanza patterns, and other sound devices.
Rhythm is the pattern of sound, stress and silence in language, including
syllable length.
Meter (metrics) describes and identifies the units of rhythm; each unit is
called a foot. The metric feet are listed here with some examples. A —
represents an unstressed syllable. a / represents a stressed syllable.
IAMB — /
Begone you ghost of night
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
TROCHEE / —
Happy days are here again
ANAPEST — — /
Like a ghost from the tomb / He floats through the room
DACTYL / — —
Bring me a rose and a lily too
SPONDEE / /
and know not me
PYRRHUS— — rare to have two unstressed syllables
PAEON — — — rarer to have three
AMPHIBRAC rocking foot — / —
AMPHIMACER / — /
Scansion
To scan is to identify the rhythmic patterns (noun scansion) and count the
metric feet per line.
monometer 1
dimeter 2
trimeter 3
tetrameter 4pentameter 5
hexameter 6
heptameter 7
octameter 8
Sound Devices
rhyme: repetition of identical or similar sounds in stressed syllables in
corresponding positions, usually at ends of lines. Earliest poetry did not rhyme
but depended on alliteration, rhythm, syllabication, epithets (e.g. Homer,
Beowulf)
end rhyme: ends of lines
internal rhyme: within lines
masculine rhyme: final accented syllable (night, fight, light, tonight, polite)
feminine rhyme: 2 consecutive syllables, second being unstressed (lighting,
fighting: fellow, bellow)
triple rhyme: correspondence in 3 consecutive syllables (glorious,
victorious)—most commonly used in humorous or satirical verse
alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds in proximity (usually successive or
closely associated words or syllables:, usually but not always initial
consonant: “The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,/The furrow followed
free”; “The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/And murmuring of innumerable
bees.”
assonance: repetition of same or similar vowel sounds between differing
consonants: lake, fate, steak, haven
consonance: repetition of ending consonant sounds preceded by differing vowel
sounds (bolt, welt; cake, folk), also called half rhyme or slant rhyme
onomatopoeia: sound that echoes sense or meaning: hiss, whisper, buzz, “The wren
whistles from the garden/And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”
caesura: a silence rather than a sound but it affects the perception of sound
and rhythm; usually a pause or break in the metrical pattern of a verse, often
signalled by punctuation or syntactical unit such as prepositional phrase,
subject-verb inversion; noted by double diagonal //
end-stopped line: syntactical pause at end of line
enjambment/run-on line: syntactical sense carries over to next line
Diction and syntax affect sound as well as meaning: monosyllabic words have
different sound and rhythm than polysyllabic words even when meter is same.
“wandering” is dactylic and wanders (meandering meanders)
“run for it” is also dactylic but includes pauses that make it a less gentle
and flowing phrase than “wandering”
“Take her up // tenderly” (Thomas Hood) is dactylic dimeter; first dactyl
seems to have a different rhythm from the second because of a combination of
sounds
Stanza Patterns
couplet: two-lines, frequently a rhyming pair
heroic couplet: rhymed iambic pentameter unit of thought, syntactically complete
tercet/triplet: AAA
quatrain: 4 lines
ballad stanza: alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter ABCB
heroic quatrain: iambic pentameter ABAB
blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (19th century dramatic monologues,
Shakespeare’s plays)
free verse/vers libre: irregular rhythm and rhyme, often unpredictable or absent
patterns, characterized instead by
repetition of sounds, words, phrases, images
parallel grammatical structure
significant line length and arrangement
other sound devices: alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, sprung rhythm (see
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”)
nonmetrical cadences
Free Verse (open form): Free verse has predecessors in the nonmetrical rhythms
of Greek poetry, the cadences of the King James Bible Psalms, Milton’s poetry;
however, the true groundbreaker for free verse rhythms was America’s Walt
Whitman in the nineteenth century
Some Familiar Fixed (Closed) forms
Sonnet
Villanelle
“Venus and Adonis” stanza: ABABCC (see Puritan poetry)
Closed couplets
Terza rima: ABA BCB CDC (”Acquainted with the Night”)