poetry, Reading, responding and writing

James Dickey

"A poet is someone who notices and is enormously taken by things that somebody else would walk by."

Percy Bysshe Shelley

"The major purpose of poetry is to let us see in a new way."

Mary Oliver

"To make a poem we must make sounds. not random sounds, but chosen sounds."

William Wordsworth

"a poem is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" poems are the result of years of revision.

poetry in the west

In the west, we seem to think that poetry doesn't have popular appeal or political potency.

A good poem is not a secret

a good poem is not a secret message one needs a special decoder or an advanced degree to decipher.

ode

a poem with irregular meter meant to be sung. A lyric poem. Focuses primarily on feelings, impressions or thoughts of a single person speaker.

"prince of poets"

a show in which poets compete for audience votes.

Dramatic monologue

a sub genre of poetry between dramatic poetry and lyric poetry. Example, Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen

Elegy

any poem about death

Argue

argue with others, both, out loud and in writing.

brevity

brevity is one way some poems can achieve the "concentration" and "intensity" it can teach us to slow down and pay attention.

investigate the poem

does the poem uses traditional verse form such as a blank verse, or a traditional stanza such as a ballad stanza.

responding to poetry

experience will give you a sense of how to respond to poetry. Knowing what to expect isn't everything. A reader of poetry should be ready for new experiences, feelings, ideas and forms of expression.

formulate answers

formulate answers of why should the poem matter to anyone other than the poet, or what might the poem say to readers.

how is the poem organized?

how is the poem organize in the page, lines or stanzas, are they all alike or do they vary, are lines enjambed or end-stopped.

read the syntax literally

identify the sentences. reorder sentences. replace pronouns with the antecedent noun it replaces. translate sentences into modern prose. note any ambiguities.

cadence

in poetry, every line should have cadence.

people turn to poetry

people turn to poetry to express their feelings and longings precisely because poetry is in certain vital ways, distinct from other forms of writing.

sonet

poem with 14 lines, defined broadly.

are poems fragile?

poems are not nearly as fragile as we take them to be. We can "over read them" or "analyze them to death."

poetic subgenres

poems can be classified in sub-genres based on their lengths, appearance and formal feature.

poetry itself isn't one thing

poems differ as much as people who write them or reads them, or as much as music and movies do.

do poems have a plot?

poems don't have plot, but they have conflicts just as stories and plays do.

poems need you

poems need you, poems must be read, re-read, and ponder over them. you can't kill a poem, but a poem can go under a sort of living death if you do not read and re-read them.

dramatic poem

poems that consist of dialogue among characters, have a plot and no narrator.

narrative poem

poems that have a plot and a narrator. It tells a story. It includes book-long epics, romances, and ballads.

poetry offers

poetry offers the possibility of modulating our pace

poetry is arcane?

poetry seems to many of us as arcane, different and difficult thus irrelevant in our lives.

start with the title.

poets often try to surprise readers, but you can appreciate such surprises only if you define your expectations.

lyric poems (ode and elegy)

short poems that lack plot, they focus on the feelings and thoughts of a single first-person speaker.

what poems invite to

sometimes poems simply invite us to pay attention to something we wouldn't otherwise.

questions and techniques of a poem

the questions and techniques of a poem we use to understand are simply variations of the same as the ones we use in reading fiction or drama.

ask: who, where, when, and what.

the questions will depend on if the poem is narrative, dramatic, or lyric.

descriptive lyrics

they describe something without bringing much attention to the speaker's personal state of mind or feelings. They let us see more closely the world around us.

consult reference works

use a dictionary to define unfamiliar or ambiguous words, look for anything you don't understand.

Ways of reading poetry

ways of reading poetry and reasons for doing it differ almost as poems themselves.

what?

what is the situation? what happen during the course of it? what action does describe?

listen to a poem first.

when you encounter a poem, listen to it first, try reading it once without thinking too much about what it means.

where?

where is the speaker? where do the action take place? where is the setting?

who?

who is the speaker? Who is the auditor? who are the characters?

write notes

write informal notes, effective writing depends on the willingness to listen carefully to the poem and to ask genuine questions about it.

poem

writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm.

steps to analyze poetry

1. listen to a poem first. 2. articulate your expectations start with the title. 3. read the syntax literally 4. consult reference works 5. figure out who, where, when, and what happened.

steps to analyze poetry, continue.

6. formulate answers to the questions 7. consider how the poem contribute to its effect and meaning. 8. Investigate the way the poem uses and departs from poetic conventions. 9. Argue

poetry versus prose

Prose writers think in sentences, poets think in lines.