Poetry+Links

[|Poetry 180] A poem a day for high school students provided by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins.

Read a poem aloud @ a National poetry month Function ft exchange. Post a poem in a conspicuous place Post a poem to the Wiki space. Write an original poem of your own. Create a poetry book including ten poems or more. Create and send a poetry greeting card to celebrate National Poetry Month. Podcast a poem Submit a poem for publication Add a poem to the poet's tree

- A division of a poem created by arranging the lines into a unit, often repeated in the same pattern of meter and rhyme throughout the poem; a unit of poetic lines (a “paragraph” within the poem). The stanzas within a poem are separated by blank lines. Stanzas in modern poetry, such as //free verse,// often do not have lines that are all of the same length and meter, nor even the same number of lines in each stanza. Stanzas created by such irregular line groupings are often dictated by meaning, as in paragraphs of prose.

Line The line is fundamental to the perception of poetry, marking an important visual distinction from prose. Poetry is arranged into a series of units that do not necessarily correspond to sentences, but rather to a series of metrical feet. Generally, but not always, the line is printed as one single line on the page. If it occupies more than one line, its remainder is usually indented to indicate that it is a continuation. There is a natural tendency when reading poetry to pause at the end of a line, but the careful reader will follow the punctuation to find where natural pauses should occur. In traditional verse forms, the length of each line is determined by convention, but in modern poetry the poet has more latitude for choice.

Couplet Point of view/Voice: The author’s point of view concentrates on the vantage point of the speaker, or “teller” of the story or poem. This may be considered the poem’s “voice” — the pervasive presence behind the overall work. This is also sometimes referred to as the //persona.//

• 1st Person: the speaker is a character in the story or poem and tells it from his/her perspective (uses “I”). • 3rd Person limited: the speaker is not part of the story, but tells about the other characters through the limited perceptions of one other person. • 3rd Person omniscient: the speaker is not part of the story, but is able to “know” and describe what all characters are thinking.

Line: The line is fundamental to the perception of poetry,

Meter Free Vese: Lines with no prescribed pattern or structure — the poet determines all the variables as seems appropriate for each poem

Onomatopoeia Imagery: The use of vivid language to generate ideas and/or evoke mental images, not only of the visual sense, but of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly used in reference to figurative language, imagery can apply to any component of a poem that evoke sensory experience and emotional response, and also applies to the concrete things so brought to mind. Poetry works it magic by the way it uses words to evoke “images” that carry depths of meaning. The poet’s carefully described impressions of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch can be transferred to the thoughtful reader through imaginative use and combinations of diction. In addition to its more tangible initial impact, effective imagery has the potential to tap the inner wisdom of the reader to arouse meditative and inspirational responses. Related images are often clustered or scattered throughout a work, thus serving to create a particular

mood or **//tone.//** Images of disease, corruption, and death, for example, are recurrent patterns shaping our perceptions of Shakespeare’s //Hamlet.//

Examples:

• Sight: Smoke mysteriously puffed out from the clown’s ears.

• Sound: Tom placed his ear tightly against the wall; he could hear a faint but distinct thump thump thump.

• Touch: The burlap wall covering scraped against the little boy’s cheek.

• Taste: A salty tear ran across onto her lips.

• Smell: Cinnamon! That’s what wafted into his nostrils.

Consonance: Repeated consonant sounds at the ending of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines//.// These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel

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sounds that are unaccented. This produces a pleasing kind of near-rhyme.

Example: boa**t**s into the pas**t**

Example: coo**l** sou**l**

Assonance: Repeated vowel sounds in words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines//.// These should be in sounds that are accented, or stressed, rather than in vowel sounds that are unaccented.

Example: He’s a bruisin’ loser In the second example above, the short //A// sound in //Andrew, patted,// and //Ascot// would be assonant.

Rhyme: This is the one device most commonly associated with poetry by the general public. Words that have different beginning sounds but whose endings sound alike, including the final vowel sound and everything following it, are said to //rhyme//.

Example: time, slime, mime

Double rhymes include the final two syllables. //Example:// revival, arrival, survival

Triple rhymes include the final three syllables. //Example:// greenery, machinery, scenery A variation which has been used effectively is called slant rhyme, or half rhyme. If only the final consonant sounds of the words are the same, but the initial consonants and the vowel sounds are different, then the rhyme is called a //slant rhyme// or //half rhyme.// When this appears in the middle of lines rather than at the end, it is called //consonance.// Example: soul, oil, foul; taut, sat, knit Another variation which is occasionally used is called near rhyme. If the final vowel sounds are the

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same, but the final consonant sounds are slightly different, then the rhyme is called a //near rhyme.// Example: fine, rhyme; poem, goin’ Less effective but sometimes used are sight rhymes. Words which are spelled the same (as if they rhymed), but are pronounced differently are called //sight rhymes// or //eye rhymes.// Example: enough, cough, through, bough

Rhye Scheme The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines, such as the

ababbcc of the //Rhyme Royal// stanza form. Capital letters in the alphabetic rhyme scheme are used for the repeating lines of a refrain; the letters

x and //y// indicate unrhymed lines. In quatrains, the popular rhyme scheme of //abab// is called //alternate rhyme// or //cross rhyme//. The //abba//

scheme is called //envelope rhyme//, and another one frequently used is //xaxa// (This last pattern, when working with students, is generally easier for them to understand when presented as //abcb,// as they associate matched letters with rhymed words).

Repetition: The purposeful re-use of words and phrases for an effect. Sometimes, especially with longer phrases that contain a different key word each time, this is called **//parallelism.//** It has been a central part of poetry in many cultures. Many of the Psalms use this device as one of their unifying elements.

Example: I was glad; so very, very glad.

Example: Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward… … Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d…

Alliteration: Repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words placed near each other, usually on the same or adjacent lines//.// A somewhat looser definition is that it is the use of the same consonant in any part of adjacent words.

Example: fast and furious

Example: Peter and Andrew patted the pony at Ascot

Metaphor: A direct comparison between two unlike things, stating that one //is// the other or //does the action// of the other.

Example: He’s a zero. //Example:// Her fingers danced across the keyboard.

Simile

Personification: Attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object, animal, or abstract idea. Example: The days crept by slowly, sorrowfully.

Tone: The means by which a poet reveals attitudes and feelings, in the style of language or expression of thought used to develop the subject. Certain tones include not only irony and satire, but may be loving, condescending, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, and a host of other emotions and attitudes. Tone can also refer to the overall mood of the poem itself, in the sense of a pervading atmosphere intended to influence the readers’ emotional response and foster expectations of the conclusion. Another use of tone is in reference to pitch or to the demeanor of a speaker as interpreted through inflections of the voice; in poetry, this is conveyed through the use of connotation, diction, figures of speech, rhythm and other elements of poetic construction.

Synesthesia: An attempt to fuse different senses by describing one kind of sense impression in words normally used to describe another.

Example: The sound of her voice was sweet.

Example: a loud aroma, a velvety smile

Elegy Epiphany Limerick Ode: any of several stanzaic forms more complex than the lyric, with intricate rhyme schemes and irregular number of lines, generally of considerable length, always written in a style marked by a rich, intense expression of an elevated thought praising a person or object. “Ode to a Nightingale” is an example.

Sonnet: a fourteen line poem in iambic pentameter with a prescribed rhyme scheme; its subject was traditionally love. Three variations are found frequently in English, although others are occasionally seen.

• Shakespearean Sonnet: a style of sonnet used by Shakespeare with a rhyme scheme of //abab// cdcd efef gg

• Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet: a form of sonnet made popular by Petrarch with a rhyme scheme of

abbaabba cdecde or //cdcdcd//

• Spenserian Sonnet: a variant of the Shakespearean form in which the quatrains are linked with a chain or interlocked rhyme scheme, //abab bcbc cdcd ee.//

• Sonnet Sequence: a series of sonnets in which there is a discernable unifying theme, while each retains its own structural independence. All of Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, were part of a sequence.