poetry

Poetry is a wonderful way to grasp the excitement and richness of any language. Everyone writes poetry (admit it, you have haven't you?), but even if you don't yearn to be an immortal bard, try reading some poetry. Then try writing some. It can be challenging but more fun than you might think.

Types of Verse	Stanzas	Sounds of Poetry
Meter & Foot	Rhymes	Rhyme Schemes
*Figures of Speech in Poetry*		More Poem Forms
Limericks	You're a Poet!	to Learning English

Types of Verse

There are three kinds of verse forms:

1. rhymed verse--which has a regular meter and an end rhyme (what most people think of when they think of "poetry")

I felt a cleavage in my mind

As if my brain had split;

I tried to match it, seam by seam,

But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to join

Unto the thought before,

But sequence ravelled out of reach

Like balls upon a floor.

Emily Dickinson

2. blank verse--which has lines of iambic pentameter but usually no end rhyme. (Notice that the end of each stanza in this poem does have an end rhyme.)

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

by

Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

3. free verse--which has no rhyme and no regular meter.

Oread

by H.D.

Whirl up, sea--

whirl your pointed pines,

splash your great pines

on our rocks,

hurl your green over us,

cover us with your pools of fir.

Meter and Foot (things you don't have to know to enjoy or write poetry, but I am telling you anyway, because I don't want to waste all the research I did).

Meter is a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry--the rhythm of the poem. A foot is a unit of a meter. A foot can have two or three syllables, usually one stressed and one or more unstressed. A line of poetry is classed by the number of feet in the line. The following are the six most well-known types of metrical feet:

1. iambic: a two-syllable foot with the stress on the second syllable. This is the most commonly used in English poetry. (NOTE: stressed syllables are in capital letters) Try saying these words and phrases aloud to understand the rhythm of them. Sometimes the type of foot changes within a line. This is not unusual.

a DORE be WITCH to DAY the CAR to READ a BOY I LOVE

The BOY | stood ON | the BURN | ing DECK

A BOOK | of VER | ses UN | der NEATH | the BOUGH,

A JUG | of WINE, | a LOAF | of BREAD | --and THOU.

2. trochaic: another two-syllable foot, but with the stress in the first syllable.

NEV er UN der HAP py AN nie PE ter BA by MUS tard SWIM ming

ONCE up | ON a | MID night | DREAR y,

WHILE I | POND ered | WEAK and | WEAR y

3. anapestic: a three-syllable foot, accent on the last syllable.

in a MESS ris ing SUN dy ing LIGHT in ter WEAVE ap ple PIE in sin CERE

Whose broad STRIPES | and bright STARS| through the PER | i lous FIGHT

O'er the RAM| parts we WATCHED | were so GAL | lant ly STREAM| ing?

4. dactylic: also three syllables, but the first syllable is stressed.

WHIS per ing AN ge la HAR mon y THUN der clouds HAP pi ness

BEARDED with |MOSS and in |GAR ments green, | IN dis tinct| IN the twilight,

5. spondaic: is two stressed syllables. Compound words are often spondees. (BASE BALL, HUB CAP, EARTH WORM) This rhythm is not found much in poetry, but it is in speaking--especially interjections.

6. pyrrhic: A foot with two unstressed syllables. This is so rarely found, that I can't even think of examples. It can be found mixed in with other feet for variation.

There are eight kinds of meters: Read the examples aloud and feel the rhythm.

monometer: a one-foot line--each line would be two or three syllables only. Not many poems are written in monometer. EXAMPLE:
dimeter: two-foot line--each foot has two to three syllables. EXAMPLE:
trimeter: three-foot line--EXAMPLE:
tetrameter: four-foot line--EXAMPLE:
pentameter: five-foot line- EXAMPLE:
hexameter: six-foot line--found in Latin and Greek epics. Not easily found in English poetry. EXAMPLE:
heptameter: seven-foot line--EXAMPLE:
octameter: eight-foot line--EXAMPLE:

Rhymes

A rhyme happens when the sounds of words are similar.

1. Perfect rhymes are when the syllables are identical and the stress is identical, only the initial letters are different (tree/free, sack/back, cat/rat).

2. Slant or imperfect rhymes are when words almost rhyme--but not quite.

Baa Baa black sheep have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.

One for my master and one for my dame,

And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Samson Agonistes by Ogden Nash

I test my bath before I sit,
And I'm always moved to wonderment
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament.

3. An eye rhyme or sight rhyme is when words look alike, even though they are pronounced differently (though/rough, love/move, good/mood)

4. Half rhymes are when final consonants match, but not the vowels. It was used often in old Nordic poetry.

My yard's full of moles

Who tunnel for miles.

5. A masculine rhyme happens when one syllable of a word rhymes with another word. The final syllable of these

words is always accented. In many cases a masculine rhyme is with one syllable words. (moon/tune, sky/pie,

love/glove) For some reason, masculine rhyme has been considered "more serious" than feminine or triple rhyme.

(In the poem below, the first and third lines of each stanza are masculine rhyme.)

Miniver Cheevy

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

    Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
        Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
     He wept that he was ever born,
         And he had reasons.
     Miniver loved the days of old
         When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
     The vision of a warrior bold
         Would set him dancing.
     Miniver sighed for what was not,
       And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
   He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
       And Priam's neighbors.
   Miniver mourned the ripe renown
       That made so many a name so fragrant;
   He mourned Romance, now on the town,
       And Art, a vagrant.

   Miniver loved the Medici,
     Albeit he had never seen one;
   He would have sinned incessantly
       Could he have been one.
   Miniver cursed the commonplace
       And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
   He missed the medieval grace
       Of iron clothing.
   Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
       But sore annoyed was he without it;
   Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
       And thought about it

   Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
       Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
   Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
       And kept on drinking.

6. Feminine (double) rhyme means that the last two syllables of a word rhyme with another word. The last syllable is unaccented in these words. (cattle/battle, tangled/wrangled, wonder/blunder, daisy/lazy) Feminine rhyme is traditionally associated with a lighter, sometimes comic type of verse. Notice in the poem below that the end rhymes are made not with two or more syllable words, but with two one-syllable words (sat in/ that in, miss'd me/kiss'd me).

Jenny Kissed Me

by

James Leigh Hunt

Jenny kiss'd me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in! Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have miss'd me, Say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kiss'd me.

7. A triple rhyme happens when the last three syllables of a word or a line rhyme--a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. You may find slant, or imperfect rhymes used here also, especially in comic verse. (kissable/permissible, gladiator/radiator, lightning/frightening) Triple rhyme is mostly used in satirical verse:

EXAMPLE

and humorous verse:

EXAMPLE

8. A forced rhyme occurs when the poet uses a word that was obviously "made up" or changed (usually by a spelling change) to make the rhyme happen. As you might think, this is more common in light (humorous) verse.

Parsely

Is gharsely

Farewell, Farewell, you old rhinocerous

I'll stare at something less prepocerous.

both by Ogden Nash (who was famous for this type of rhyme)

There are two positions for rhymes in a poem: end rhymes and internal rhymes.

An end rhyme is when the words at the end of two or more lines rhymes:

The Centipede
by Ogden Nash

I objurgate the centipede,
A bug we do not really need.
At sleepy-time he beats a path
Straight to the bedroom or the bath.
You always wallop where he’s not,
Or, if he is, he makes a spot.

An internal rhyme is when two or more words in the same line of the poem rhyme:

Jesse James

It was Robert Ford, that dirty little coward**,
I wonder how he does feel,
For he ate of Jesse's bread and he slept in Jesse's bed,
Then he laid poor Jesse in his grave.

Poor Jesse had a wife to mourn for his life,
Three children, they were brave;
But the dirty little coward that shot Mr. Howard
Has laid Jesse James in his grave.

Anonymous

** a "partial" rhyme

Rhyme Schemes (see Stanzas )

A rhyme scheme is the pattern of the rhyme. Usually the first rhyme sound is a, the second is b, etc. When a rhyme sound is repeated, it is also a, and so on through-out the poem.

Trees

by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see     a

A poem as lovely as a tree.       a

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest             b

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;     b

A tree that looks to God all day,     c

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;     c

A tree that may in summer wear     d
A nest of robins in her hair;             d

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;    e
Who intimately lives with rain.          e

Poems are made by fools like me,     a

But only God can make a tree.          a

from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds     a

Admit impediments. Love is not love           b

Which alters when it alteration finds,            a

Or bends with the remover to remove:          b

Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,                   c

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; d

It is the star to every wandering bark,              c

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.    d

Try marking the rhyme schemes on some of the poems you have already read earlier on the page.

The Sounds of Poetry

I think everyone agrees that to really get a "feel" for poetry--to really experience the rhythm, the emotion, and the richness of language and image--you have to read it aloud. Here are some devices that poets (and prose writers) use to get a desired effect in their writings:

Alliteration is repeating the initial letter or sound in two or more words in a line. Tongue twisters use this device.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

How many peppers did Peter Piper pick?

(More tongue twisters)

The classics also used alliteration:

The Windhover

by Gerald Manly Hopkins

I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight's

dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding

  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,

  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding

  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Onomatopoeia is the use of a word to imitate a sound. (pow, crunch, moo, buzz, tinkle). In poetry however, certain sounds or combination of sounds is also considered onomatopoeia--it is not just a single word.

"The moan of doves in immemorial elms / And murmuring of innumerable bees" from The Princess by Alfred Lord Tennyson is one example. Poe also used onomatopoeia with great skill:

EXAMPLE

Assonance means the repetition or similarity of vowel sounds in two or more words (race/ stake, mole/lode, pan/cat). This is can be similar to "partial" rhyme. The words in boldface are the words with sound repetition.

from The Hollow Men--T. S. Eliot
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Emily Dickinson
The Soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door,

On her divine majority

Obtrude no more.

Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing

At her low gate;

Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling

Upon her mat.

I've known her from an ample nation

Choose one;

Then close the valves of her attention

Like stone.

Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in a line of verse. Alliteration is repeated initial sounds, while consonance can be repeated sounds within a word also. Robert Frost uses consonance in many of his poems:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold (g)
Her hardest hue to hold. (h, t, d)
Her early leaf's a flower; (f)
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf. (l, f, s)
So Eden sank to grief, (s)
So dawn goes down to day. (s, d, n)
Nothing gold can stay. (d)

The Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one, (w, s, d)

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground (w, s)

What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself; (w, t, n)

Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun, (s, t)

Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—

And that was why it whispered and did not speak. (w)

It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,

Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: (f)

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak (th, t, d)

To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows, (t, l)

Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers (t, f, s)

(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. (s)

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. (s)

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make (s)

A refrain is like the chorus of a song. It is repeated usually after each stanza, sometimes after each line of a poem.
Repetition is the repeating of a word or phrase within a poem.

EXAMPLE--repetition & refrain

EXAMPLE--refrain

Figures of Speech in Poetry

A figure of speech is like an idiom. The words are not used literally. They present or represent a thought or image about something.

There are ten common figures of speech used in poetry. (They are also used in prose.)

1. Similes: This is a direct or definite comparison between two generally unlike things which still have some likeness between them. Similes use like and as to indicate the comparison.

Douglas sings like a bird. Melissa has a voice like an angel. Joan has a mind like a steel trap.

Of course Douglas does NOT sing like a bird--not literally. He would have to whistle and chirp then. But we know that bird songs are lovely and sweet, so we understand that Douglas has a sweet, pleasant singing voice.

Harlem

by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stinklike rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

3. Metaphors are implied comparisons between two unrelated things. Metaphors indicated a likeness or some sameness between those things. While a simile uses like or as to show comparison, the metaphor does not.

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players." As You Like It--Shakespeare
Brian was a real tiger tonight!

MY HEART IS A LUTE

by Anne Barnard

Alas, that my heart is a lute,
Whereon you have learned to play!
For a many years it was mute,
Until one summer's day
You took it, and touched it, and made it thrill,
And it thrills and throbs, and quivers still!

I had known you, dear, so long!
Yet my heart did not tell me why
It should burst one morn into song,
And wake to new life with a cry,
Like a babe that sees the light of the sun,
And for whom this great world has just begun.

Your lute is enshrined, cased in,
Kept close with love's magic key,
So no hand but yours can win
And wake it to minstrelsy;
Yet leave it not silent too long, nor alone,
Lest the strings should break, and the music be done.

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

THE fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

3. Personification is attributing human characteristics to objects, idea, and animals.

The wind howled. Stars danced in the sky.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest /Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks to God all day,/And lifts her leafy arms to pray; from Trees--Joyce Kilmer

EXAMPLE

4. Synecdoche is mentioning part of something to represent all of it. "Give this day our daily bread . . ."(bread=food) "All hands to battle stations!" (hands=personnel)

Ten thousands eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands in the dirt,

Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt; from Casey at the Bat--Ernest Thayer

EXAMPLE

5. Metonymy is a lot like synecdoche, but it is the substitution of a word for an object that is close to another word. (White House for the President, crown for the King or Queen, city hall for the local government). The pen (thought) is mightier than the sword (muscle). She brings home the bacon (money or food for the household).

The Lion and the Unicorn
Were fighting for the crown;
The Lion beat the Unicorn
All about the town.

Some gave them white bread
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
And drummed them out of town!

(The Scottish Royal Arms had two unicorns as shield supporters. The English Arms had a lion. Both have been regarded as king of the beasts--the unicorn ruling through peace and the lion ruling through strength.)
6. Hyperbole is exaggeration for emphasis--not to be understood as a literal statement. I told you a thousand times. She is as old as the hills. Sheila's eyes are bottomless pools.

"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss."

Doctor Faustus--Christopher Marlowe

EXAMPLE

7. Litotes means understatement made for intensification by stating the opposite of the thing being affirmed (litotes is the other side of hyperbole), such as calling a bald man "Curly" or a tall person "Shorty".

: One Perfect Rose

by

Dorothy Parker

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet- One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;

"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."

Love long has taken for his amulet One perfect rose. Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get One perfect rose.

8. Antithesis is balancing or contrasting one thing against another.

All in due time

by J.V. Cunningham

All in due time: love will emerge from hate,

and the due deference of truth from lies.

If not quite all things come to those who wait

They will not need them: in due time one dies.

excerpt from A Psalm of Life

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Life is real! Life is earnest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
    Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
       Was not spoken of the soul.

   Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
      Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
    Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

9. Apostrophe is a device used to address someone or something that is not present, but being addressed as if it were.

Leave Me, O Love

by Sir Philip Sidney

      Leave me, O Love which reachest but to dust ;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things ;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust,
Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be ;
Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold ;  let that light be thy guide
In this small course which birth draws out to death,
And think how evil becometh him to slide,
Who seeketh heav'n, and comes of heav'nly breath.
    Then farewell, world ;  thy uttermost I see ;
    Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

EXAMPLE

10. A symbol is a word or image that stands for something else (a cross for Christianity, a sickle moon for Islam, a crane for hope (Japan), a lotus for purity and perfection (China), a rose for love, etc.)

EGYPTIAN LOVE POEM

(found inscribed in a tomb at least 3000 years old)

I hear thy voice, O turtle dove-
The dawn is all aglow-
Weary am I with love, with love,
Oh, whither shall I go?

Not so, O beauteous bird above,
Is joy to be denied....
For I have found my dear, my love;
And I am by his side.
We wander forth, and hand in hand
Through flowery ways we go-
I am the fairest in the land,
For he has called me so.

EXAMPLE

Home

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

THE fog comeson little cat feet.

One Perfect Rose

THE fog comes
on little cat feet.