POETRY NOTES SCANSION

 Analysis of the meter and feet versical structure

POETRY is… of a poetic line
 a type of literature that expresses ideas and  ICTUS (´) is marked over the syllable to indicate
feelings, or tells a story in a specific form that it is accented
(usually using lines and stanzas)  BREVE (˘) is marked over the syllable to indicate
that it is unstressed (not accented)
POETIC FORM
 SLASH (/) is used to divide or separate one foot in
 FORM – the appearance of the words on the page
a line
 LINE – a group of words together on one line of
the poem STANZAIC FORMS
 STANZA – a group of lines arranged together  Stanzas are classified according to the number of
Example: lines they regularly contain in a poem:
A word is dead  Types of Stanzas:
When it is said,  Monostich: One Line
Some say.  Distich/Couplet: Two Lines
 Triplet/Tercet: Three Lines
I say it just
 Quatrain: Four Lines
Begins to live
That day.  Cinquain/Quintet: Five Lines
 Sextet/Sestet: Six Lines
-Emily Dickinson  Septet: Seven Lines
 Octet/Octave: Eight Lines
POETIC SOUND EFFECTS
 Spenserian Stanza: Nine Lines
1. RHYTHM  Decima: Ten Lines
 The beat created by the sounds of the words  Sonnet: 14 Lines
in a poem.  Villanelle: 19 Lines
 Rhythm can be created by using, meter,  Free Verse: No meter
rhymes, alliteration, and refrain.  Blank Verse: No rhyme but contains meter
2. METER
RHYMES
 A pattern of stressed (strong) and unstressed
 Words sound alike because they share the same
(weak) syllables ending vowel and consonant sounds.
 Each unit or part of the pattern is called a  A word always rhymes with itself.
“foot” LAMP
 Types of Feet: STAMP
 Iambic -unstressed, stressed Share the short “a” vowel sound
Share the combined “mp” consonant sound
 Trochaic -stressed, unstressed
 Anapestic -unstressed, unstressed, RHYME SCHEME
stressed  a pattern of rhyming words or sounds (usually
 Dactylic -stressed, unstressed, unstressed end rhyme, but not always).
 Spondaic –stressed, stressed  Use the letters of the alphabet to represent
sounds to be able to visually “see” the pattern.
 Pyrrhic –unstressed, unstressed
 TYPES OF METER
SAMPLE RHYME SCHEME
 Monometer – One Foot A mighty creature is the germ, A
 Dimeter – Two Feet Though smaller than the pachyderm. A
 Trimeter –Three Feet His customary dwelling place B
 Tetrameter – Four Feet Is deep within the human race. B
His childish pride he often pleases C
 Pentameter – Five Feet
By giving people strange diseases. C
 Hexameter – Six Feet Do you, my poppet, feel infirm? A
 Heptameter – Seven Feet You probably contain a germ. A
 Octameter –Eight Feet - “The Germ” by Ogden Nash
END RHYME 2. CONNOTATION vs DENOTATION
 A word at the end of one line rhymes with a word  Connotation: an emotional or social association
at the end of another line with a word, giving meaning beyond the literal
Hector the Collector A definition
Collected bits of string B  Denotation: the specific, literal image, idea,
Collected dolls with broken heads C concept, or object that a word or phrase refers to
And rusty bells that would not ring. B
” Hector the Collector” by Shel Silverstein Word Denotation Connotation
INTERNAL RHYME star ball of light/gas in the a wish
sky
 A word inside a line rhymes with another word on
famil group of related love, trust, closeness
the same line.
y individuals
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak dog four-legged mammal friend, protector, pet
December
FIGURATIVELANGUAGE
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
1. SIMILE
NEAR RHYME  Comparison of two unlike things using “like”
 Also known as imperfect or “close enough” or “as”
rhyme. Friends are like chocolate cake,
 The words share EITHER the same vowel or you can never have too many.
consonant sound BUT NOT BOTH Chocolate cake is like heaven –
ROSE
always amazing you with each taste or feeling.
LOSE
Different vowel sounds (long “o” and “oo” sound) Chocolate cake is like life
Share the same consonant sound (“s”) with so many different pieces.
Chocolate cake is like happiness,
OTHER TYPES OF POETIC DEVICES you can never get enough of it.
- “Chocolate Cake “by Anonymous
1. REFRAIN 2. METAPHOR
 A sound, word, phrase or line repeated regularly  Comparison of two unlike things where one
in a poem, usually at the end of each stanza or word is used to designate the other (one is
verse, such as the chorus in a song. the other)
There lived a lady by the North Sea shore, A spider is a black dark midnight sky.
Lay the bent to the bonny broom Its web is a Ferris wheel.
Two daughters were the babes she bore. It has a fat moon body and legs of dangling string.
Fa la la la la la la la. Its eyes are like little match ends.
As one grew bright as is the sun, - “Spider” by Anonymous
Lay the bent to the bonny broom 3. EXTENDED METAPHOR
So coal black grew the other one.  Continues for several lines or possibly the
Fa la la la la la la la. entire length of a work
-” The Cruel Sister” by Francis J. Child The fog comes
on little cat feet.
2. TONE It sits looking
 Used in poetry to convey feeling and emotion, over the harbor and city
and set the mood for the work. on silent haunches
and then, moves on.
 This can be done through word choice, the
- “Fog “by Carl Sandburg
grammatical arrangement of words (syntax),
4. HYPERBOLE
imagery, or details that are included or omitted.
 An intentional exaggeration or overstatement,
often used for emphasis
I met a traveler from an antique land.
Here once the embattled farmers stood
-from "Ozymandias” by Shelley And fired the shot heard round the world
This line immediately generates a story-telling -from "The Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo
atmosphere, just as it is with the phrase, "Once Emerson
upon a time." An audience is clearly implied.
5. LITOTES 11.CONSONANCE
 Intentional understatement, used for humor  Similar to alliteration EXCEPT:
or irony - repeated consonant sounds can be
 (Example- naming a slow-moving person anywhere in the words, not just at the
“Speedy”) beginning!
6. PERSONIFICATION And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day
 A nonliving thing given human of life-like …How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
qualities
Gush! —
Hey diddle, Diddle, -From “The Wreck of the Deutschland” by Gerald
The cat and the fiddle, Manley Hopkins
The cow jumped over the moon;
12.IDIOM
The little dog laughed To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.  The literal meaning of the words is not the
-from “The Cat & the Fiddle” by Mother Goose meaning of the expression.
 It means something other than what it
7. ALLITERATION actually says.
 Consonant sounds repeated at the beginnings Feeling under the weather
of words you could have knocked me down with a feather.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, It was like a bolt out of the blue, when I met you.
how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? an English rose, in the flower of youth;…
-from “My Sweet Idiom” by Paul Williams
8. ALLUSION 13.IMAGERY
 From the verb “allude” which means “to refer  Language that provides a sensory experience
to” using sight, sound, smell, touch, taste
 A reference to someone or something Soft upon my eyelashes
famous. Turning my cheeks to pink
A tunnel walled and overlaid Softly falling, falling
With dazzling crystal: we had read Not a sound in the air
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave, Delicately designed in snow
And to our own his name we gave. Fading away at my touch
-from “Snowbound” by John Greenleaf Whittier Leaving only a glistening drop
And its memory
9. ANALOGY - “Crystal Cascades” by Mary Fumento
 Comparison of two or more unlike things in 14.ONOMATOPOEIA
order to show a similarity in their  Words that imitate the sound that they are
characteristics naming
 Two main types: Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it?
 Simile The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance?
 Metaphor
Were they deaf that they did not hear?
10.ASSONANCE -from “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes
 Repeated VOWEL sounds in a line (or lines) of 15.OXYMORON
a poem  Combines two usually contradictory terms in a
 Often creates Near Rhyme compressed paradox, as in the word bitter sweet
A leal sailor even or the phrase living death
In a stormy sea And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true…
Drinks deep God’s Name -from Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In ecstasy
-” Peaceful Assonance” by Sri Chinmoy I do here make humbly bold to present them with a
short account of themselves...
Slow the low gradual moan came in the snowing. -from A Tale of a Tubby the poet and author
-From “Dauber: a poem” by John Masefield Jonathan Swift
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep. Work entitled “She’s All My Fancy Painted Him" by
-From Othello by William Shakespeare the poet and author Lewis Carroll
16.SYMBOLISM 6. BLANK VERSE POEMS
 The use of a word or object which represents a  Does have a regular meter, usually iambic
deeper meaning than the words themselves pentameter (five sets of stressed/unstressed)
 It can be a material object or a written sign used  Does NOT have rhyme
to represent something invisible.  Used by classical playwrights, like
I shall be telling this with a sigh Shakespeare
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— ˘/˘/˘/˘/˘/
I took the one less traveled by, To swell the gourd, and plump the ha-zel shells
And that has made all the difference.
-from “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost OTHER FORMS OF POETRY
1. COUPLET
SOME TYPES OF POETRY THAT WE WILL BE
 A poem of only two lines
STUDYING
 Both lines have an end rhyme and the same
1. NARRATIVE POEMS meter
 Longer and tells a story, with a beginning,
 Often found at the end of a sonnet
middle, and end
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
 Generally, longer than the lyric styles of
is idle, biologically speaking.
poetry because the poet needs to establish
-at the end of a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
characters and a plot
2. HAIKU
 Example: “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes
 Japanese style poem written in three lines
2. LYRICAL POEMS
 Focuses traditionally on nature
 Short poem (only a few lines, 1-2 stanzas)
 Lines respectively are 5 syllables, 7 syllables,
 Usually written in first person point of view
and 5 syllables
 Expresses an emotion or an idea, or describes
Whitecaps on the bay:
a scene
A broken signboard banging
 Does not tell a story and are often musical
In the April wind.
 Many of the poems we read will be lyrical
-untitled haiku by Richard Wright
3. CONCRETE POEMS 3. LIMERICK
 Words are arranged to create a picture that
 A five line poem with rhymes in line 1, 2, and
relates to the content of the poem
5, and then another rhyme in lines 3 and 4
 Example: See “Shoes” by Morghan Barnes
What is a limerick, Mother? A
4. ACROSTIC POEMS It's a form of verse, said Brother A
 The first letter of each line forms a word or In which lines one and two B
phrase (vertically). Rhyme with five when it's through B
 An acrostic poem can describe the subject or And three and four rhyme with each other. A
even tell a brief story about it. - untitled and author unknown
After an extensive winter 4. BALLAD
Pretty tulips  Tells a story, similar to a folk tale or legend
Rise from the once  Usually set to music
Icy ground bringing fresh signs of  simple repeating rhymes, often with a refrain
Life. Oh the ocean waves may roll,
-” April “by Anonymous And the stormy winds may blow,
5. FREE VERSE POEMS While we poor sailors go skipping aloft
 Does NOT have any repeating patterns of And the land lubbers lay down below, below, below
stressed and unstressed syllables And the land lubbers lay down below.
 Does NOT have rhyme -from “The Mermaid” by Anonymous
 Very conversational -sounds like someone
talking with you
 Example: See “Fog” by Carl Sandburg
5. SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET
 Fourteen lines with a specific rhyme scheme
 Written in 3 quatrains and ends with a couplet
 Rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg
 Example: See sonnet in notes
6. PERSONA POEMS
 a poem written in the 1st person point of view
 writer imagines s/he is an animal, an object, a
famous person - anything s/he is not
I still remember the sun on my bones.
I ate pomegranates and barley cakes.
I wore a necklace of purple stones.
And sometimes I saw a crocodile
Slither silently into the Nile.
-from “The Mummy’s Smile” by Shelby K. Irons

7. POINT OF VIEW
POET
 the author of the poem, the person who
actually wrote it

VS

SPEAKER
 the “narrator” of the poem, the voice telling
us the thoughts/feelings/story