Poetry

Simile

A figure of speech in which two essentially unalike things are directly compared, usually with the words like or as.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech that uses an exaggeration to emphasize strong feeling or to create comic or satiric effects; eg. "I'm so hungry I could eat a bear".

Stanza

A group of lines (number may vary) that are set off and form a division of a poem.

Ode

A long, serious lyric poem that is elevated in tone and style. Some odes celebrate a person, an event, or even a power; others are more private meditations. They are traditionally written in three stanzas and include rhyme.

Sonnet

A lyric poem of 14 lines typically written in rhymed iambic pentameter and usually following strict patterns of stanza division and rhythm.

Extended Metaphor

A metaphor that compares two unlike things in various ways throughout a paragraph, stanza, or selection.

Poetry

It is as ancient as language, is used by all walks of life to explore deeper meaning, is based on understanding, states things more intensely, is the truest form of literature, and can be written or interpreted by anyone.

Ballad of Birmingham

Written by Dudley Randall; it is about a mother and her daughter. Her daughter asks to go to the Freedom March, but her mom tells her to go to church instead, and the church gets bombed.

The River Merchant's Wife

Written by Ezra Pound; it is about a wife and her relationship with her husband.

Coda

Written by Ezra Pound; it is about how he wonders why his songs look so deeply into people, as if they are trying to find their lost dead.

In a Station of a Metro

Written by Ezra Pound; it is comparing the faces that you see on the subway to the petals of a tree.

.05

Written by Ishmael Reed; it is about how he has been rejected many, many times, but that it is okay because his one love makes him happier than anything else ever could.

I Am Offering This Poem

Written by Jimmy Santiago Baca; it is about a man offering the poem to show his love even though he cannot offer anything else.

Ex-Basketball Player

Written by John Updike; it is about a star athlete and how after high school he ends up with a bad life.

The Clouded Morning

Written by Jones Very; it is an extensive description of a cloudy morning.

You and I Belong in this Kitchen

Written by Juan Felipe Herrera; it is about something idk??

The Dry Spell

Written by Kevin Young; it is about his grandmother and grandfather's loving (but odd) relationship

Mother to Son

Written by Langston Hughes; it is a mother telling her son about her difficulties in life that she went through so that he could have a good life.

Motto

Written by Langston Hughes; it is about how his motto is "dig and be dug in return".

Harlem

Written by Langston Hughes; it is about how if you ignore your dreams they can do many things, and it is up to you to fulfill your dreams.

Dream Boogie

Written by Langston Hughes; it is about how we think of boogie as a happy thing, but there are undertones of sadness.

Love Without Love

Written by Luis Llorens Torres; it is about how she loves someone and hopes they do not hurt her.

Three Haiku

Written by Matsuo Basho; it is about the change from winter to spring and a love for spring.

The Flying Cat

Written by Naomi Shihab Nye; it is about how she is taking her cat with her when she flies on an airplane and how she is worried about him.

The Road Not Taken

Written by Robert Frost; it is about how when the road diverged, he took the less traveled one and it has made a difference in his life.

Those Winter Sundays

Written by Robert Hayden; it is about a man remembering his grandfather's silent love for him; it can be classified as a discovery moment.

Preludes

Written by T.S. Eliot; it is four different beginnings of stories.

This is Just to Say

Written by William Carlos Williams; it is a note that is left saying that he ate the plums.

A Love Song

Written by William Carlos Williams; it is about how he cannot stop thinking about his love and how he wonders if he will continue to love her.

Sonnet 18

Written by William Shakespeare; it is about a man comparing his love to spring and saying how much more beautiful and lovely she is.

Goals of New Criticism

To search for opposition in the text, eg. paradox, ambiguity, irony; study poetic elements closely; and from parts to organic wholeness

Oxymoron

A figure of speech in which opposite ideas are combined, as in the phrase "wise fool".

Personification

A figure of speech in which human characteristics are assigned to nonhuman things, or life is attributed to inanimate objects.

Refrain

A passage repeated at regular intervals with variations, usually in a poem or song.

Pun

A play on words based on the similarity of sound between two words with different meanings. For example, "son" and "sun", or "eye" and "I".

Meter

A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that gives a line of poetry a predictable rhythm. Basically, it means structuring a line of poetry in regular and equal units of rhythm. Both the number of syllables and the location of stressed syllables are used to structure a line.

Elegy

A serious poem of lament, usually mourning a death or other great loss. Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H" is an example of this.

Epigram

A short, witty poem; a saying. Ben Johnson and Robert Herrick excelled at writing these.

Free Verse

A type of poetry written with rhythm and other poetic devices, but without a fixed pattern of meter, rhyme, line length, or stanza arrangement; it generally imitates natural forms of speech.

Organic Unity (T. S. Eliot)

All parts of a poem are interpreted and interconnected with each part reflecting and helping to support the poem's central idea... allows for harmonization of conflicting ideas, feelings, and attitudes.

Tools for Poetry

Always read more than once; learn every single word; pay attention to what you hear and understand; always read aloud; find the theme; ask questions (what does the title tell us? who is the speaker? what is the purpose? etc.)

Metaphor

An implied comparison between two seemingly unlike things to help readers perceive the first thing more vividly and to suggest an underlying similarity between the two. These do not use like or as. Sidney's Sonnet 39 contains one of these: "Come sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace/ The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe.

Imagist Poetry

Designed to create an image in a reader's mind, this type of poetry is always free verse and dependent on words of value with shorter stanzas. Sight is the primary sensory structure, and it uses synesthesia. It is not open to much interpretation (the image is the intent), and rhyme and rhythm are often absent with words and images creating the quality.

Understatement

Figure of speech in which the literal sense of what is said falls short of the magnitude of what is being talked about. For example, saying something is "pretty fair" when you mean it is excellent.

Synesthesia

Imagery appealing to two senses at once; eg. hot pink

Feet

Groups of syllables; monometer (1), dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7)

Foot

In a verse, a group of syllables usually consisting of one accented syllable and all unaccented syllables associated with it (or, in the case of spondee, two accented syllables). Lines of poetry may be measured in terms of the number and type of these used, eg. Iambic pentameter

Figurative Language

Language that is not meant to be interpreted literally and is used for descriptive effect, often to imply ideas indirectly. This is especially prominent in poetry. Among the common figures of speech are simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole. An effective use of this is brief and forceful, surprising but appropriate.

Woman with Kite

Written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni; it is about a women with loses herself while flying a kite.

Spondaic

Metering made up of stressed/stressed; eg. SPACEWALK

Dactylic

Metering made up of stressed/unstressed/unstressed; eg. WONderful

Trochaic

Metering made up of stressed/unstressed; eg. WONder

Iambic

Metering made up of unstressed/stressed; eg. aGAIN

Anapastic

Metering made up of unstressed/unstressed/stressed; eg. on the BEACH

Rhyme Scheme

The name for the pattern when sounds are repeated at the ends of lines. One may describe this by representing sounds at ends of lines with letters of the alphabet (eg. ab, ab, cd, cd, etc.)

Internal Rhyme

Rhyming words within lines that may or may not rhyme at the end; eg. "The fat cat sat on the mat"

Scansion

The analysis of the meter of a line of verse. To do this means to note the stressed and unstressed syllables and to divide the line into its feet, or rhythmical units.

Rhythm

The arrangement of stressed and unstressed sounds in speech and writing. The rhythm in a poem may have a single, dominant beat; it may be varied within the poem to fit different situations and moods; it may be casual or regular like speech.

Style

The expressive qualities that distinguish an author's work, including word choice, sentence structure, and figures of speech.

Octave

The first eight lines of a Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet. The octave usually presents a situation, idea, or question.

Alliteration

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning or within words, particularly in accented syllables (eg. far and fast the falcon flew). It is used to create melody, establish mood, call attention to certain words, and point up similarities and contrasts.

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds that are preceded by different vowel sounds (eg. around/head, crumb/home, seam/swim)

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in stressed words of syllables (eg. opened/rose, out/down). It may be used instead of rhyme.

Rhyme

The repetition of the same stressed vowel sounds plus and succeeding sounds in two or more words (eg. first/burst).

Imagery

The representation in language of sense experience: what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled, as well as what can be felt internally. These appeal to the senses of the reader, help recreate the experience being communicated, and suggest the emotional response appropriate to the experience.

Couplet

Two lines of rhymed verse that work together as a unit to express an idea or make a point. For example, the closing lines of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 29": For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings/That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Blank Verse

Unrhymed iambic pentameter; each line has a pattern of five unstressed syllables alternating with five stressed ones. The beat of a blank-verse line can be indicated as follows: ta DUM ta DUM ta DUM ta DUM ta DUM. Poets who write in this may vary the beat. Much of "Romeo and Juliet" is written in this.

Lyrical Poetry

Usually a short poem in which a single speaker expresses thought and emotion. It may follow traditional form or be free verse, but it never tells a full story by sharing a single experience and leaving it up to the reader to share it. The intent is to find the emotion being shared (Symbol), and it contains a musical element in its word structure

Affective Fallacy

We are imbedded in a fallacy, so we are impacted while reading poems.

New Critics

While trying to retain human values, these people redirect critical attention from the external to the internal (textual). They uphold liberal humanism in the face of worldly chaos (the most valuable is our free will)

Principles of New Criticism

With a "text and text alone" approach, poems are viewed as autonomies (Singular organism that does work on its own), and are more accurate without bias. We should compare what we think to be true with what the poet actually meant. We need to remember affective fallacy, the text's meaning residing within its own structure, and organic unity.