READING POETRY: INTRODUCTION

Approaches to poetry
Define poetry
What is the major difference between narrative and everyday language and the
language used in poetry?
Poetry language is characterised by precision and exactness, in contrasts to the
language of everyday usage

True art conceals artifice

Wordsworth described all good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful

feelings”

What is this definition telling us about the notion of poetry?

“The end of Poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of
pleasure”
Compare with Horace´s Docere et delectare

 John Keats (1795-1821): “If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree
it had better not come at all”
 Shelley (1792-1822): “[It] is an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry
are produced by labour and study (…) A great statue or picture grows under the
power of the artist as a child in the mother´s womb”
 T.S. Eliot (1888-1965): No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning
alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the
dead poets and artists

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the
expression of personality, but an escape from personality.
But of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to
want to escape from these things

MODES OF IMITATION: PLATO

Plato´s The Republic
1) Mimetic mode (imitation): literacy works where only characters speak (theatre)
2) Diegetic mode: literacy works where only the author speaks (poetry, lyrical genre)
3) Mixed mode: literacy works where both author and characters speak (epic works:
The Odyssey novel nowadays?)

 Lyric (poetry) has no mythos or fabula (plot); tragedy and epic work does
 Contemporary theory of genres (Hegel): Lessons of Aesthetic (1835-1838)
 Hegel: epic genre (Homer): based on extrospection, i.e. the author looks
outward
 Then comes the lyric: the author looks inside (introspection).
 Epic is the thesis; lyric is the antithesis and the synthesis of both produces
theatre (introspection and extrospection)
“ART AS TECHNIQUE” (1917)
VIKTOR SCHKLOVSKY

The purpose of art is to impact the sensation of things as they are perceived and not
as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar”, to make
forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process
of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged

DEFAMILIARIZATION
“In studying poetic speech in its phonetic and lexical structure as well as in its
characteristic distribution of words and in the characteristic thought structures
compounded from the words, we find everywhere the artistic trademark-that is, we
find material obviously created to remove the automatism of perception; the
author´s purpose is to create the vision which results from that deautomatized
perception”

LYRIC
“In the original Greek, lyric signified a song rendered to the accompaniment of a lyre”

Meaning:
Imagery: “mental pictures” which (…) are experienced by the reader of a poem: “a
picture made out of words” (Day Lewis). “Imagery is said to make poetry concrete, as
opposed to abstract” (Abrams, 121)

“The term diction signifies the types of words, phrases, and sentence structures, and
sometimes also of figurative language, that constitute any work of literature”
(Abrams,228)

Metre: the rhythm of the utterance; “the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent
feature in the sequence of speech-sounds of language” (Abrams,159)

Context: “(…) contextual information certainly affects our sense of the ultimate
significance of the “poem”, as is often the case” (Barry9.

[Everything is displayed on the poem!]: think of Edgar Allan Poe’s detective story
“The Purloinned letter”. The meaning of the poem is not hidden is openly displayed
like the letter in the story.

IMAGERY
“A basic definition of poetic image would be that it is an evolved object (in the
broadest sense) which is used to suggest an idea (in the broadest sense)”
(Barry,2013:21)

• Terry Eagleton on modernist images:

• "How, the reader wonders, can the evening look like an anaesthetized
body? Yet the point surely lies as much in the force of this bizarre image as
in its meaning. We are in a modern world in which settled correspondences
or traditional affinities between things have broken down". (Eagleton,
2007:93)
• Incongruity between the object evoked and the idea which is represented
(consider Pound's "The apparition of these faces in the crowds/petals on a wet
 black bough". Compare with Renaissance sonnets (i.e., Thy eternal summer
shall not fade).
• What makes us identify an image as an image, rather than as a literal element
(that is, as a phrase which means precisely what it literally says
• Literal vs. metaphorical sense: an image is usually interpreted in metaphorical
terms rather than literally:"The apparition of these faces in the crowd: /Petals on
a wet, black bough".

Subjective image: the sky like a patient etherized is not about how the sky looks but
about how the poet sees/feels/perceives that sky

Modernism: a shift from the objective to the subjective; or rather; a higher degree of
(more room for) subjectivity
Subjective imagen: image is telling more about who perceives the image than the
perceived object

DICTION
Fundamental aspects of poetic diction
 Register (style)
 Cohesion (how phrases are linked)
 Tone (verbal colouring that produces the mood of the poem)
 Sequencing (the ordering of phrases)
 Pace (how the poem gives the impression of acceleration or deceleration)
(punctuation, enjambments…)
 Collocation (combinations of words expected in ordinary language usage)

Example:
John Clare´s poem (written in confinement and abandonment)
I am-yet what I am none cares or knows; [end-stopped thought)

My friends forsake me like a memory lost: [new thought; disjunctive effect].

The grass below-above the vaulted sky. [formal register, balanced symmetry]; no
cohesive word [and?) between the two halves; this slows down the pace and
intensifies the solemnity of the tone. The sequencing of the two halves juxtaposes
the down to earth (grass) world and the world beyond (vaulted sky). Collocation
pattern conveys closure: grass-sky; below-above.

Notion of “diction” as words in action.

Assess how the aspects of diction operate in a poem.
Close Reading: zooming in vs.standing back

READING THE LINES

“What is it that creates in the reader´s mind the feeling that a poem is also […] about
something other than it stated if foregrounded subject? In many poems, the
transformative use of metaphor marks the transition point, the moment when the act
or object being described gathers new associations

RHETORICAL FIGURES
Figurative language
"[It] is a conspicuous departure from what users of a language apprehend as the
standard meaning of words, or else the standard order of words, in order to achieve
some special meaning or effect. […]
• Figures of thought, or tropes (meaning "turns", "conversions"): (…) words
and phrases are used in a way that effects a conspicuous change in what we
take to be their standard meaning. The standard meaning, as opposed to its
meaning in the figurative use, is called the literal meaning.
• In a simile, a comparison between two distinctly different things is explicitly
indicated by the word "like" or "as". [See Robert Burns, "O my love's like a
red, red rose".)
Conceit

• In a metaphor, a word or expression that in literal usage denotes one kind of

thing is applied to a distinctly different kind of thing, without asserting a
comparison. -) If Burns had said "O my love is a red, red rose" he would have
uttered, technically speaking, ametaphor.

Here is a more complex metaphor from the poet Stephen Spender:

Eye, gazelle, delicate
wanderer,
Drinker of horizon's fluid line.

[In these two examples] we can distinguish two elements, the metaphorical
tenn and the subject to which it is applied.
In a widely adopted usage, IA. Richards introduced the name tenor for the
subject ("my love" [in Burn's poem] and "eye" [in Spender’s) and the name
vehicle for the metaphorical term itself ("rose" in Burns, and "gazelle",
"wanderer" and "drinker" in Spender).
 A dead metaphor is one which, like the “leg of the table" or "the heat of the
matter" has been used so long and become so common that its users have
ceased to be aware of the discrepancy between vehicle and tenor.
 In metonymy (Greek for "a change of name") the literal term for one thing is
applied to another with which it has become closely associated because of a
recurrent relationship in common experience. Thus "the crown” […] can be used
to stand for a King and "Hollywood” for the film industry
 In synecdoque (Greek for “taking together”), a part of something is used to
signify the whole, or (more rarely) the whole is used to signify a part
[“ten hands" for ten workmen, "wheels" stand for an automobile.
 Personification, or in the Greek term, prosopopoeia, in which either an
inanimate object or an abstract concept is spoken of as though it were endowed
with life or with human attributes or feelings
[Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Then, land-then, England Oh, the frosty cliffs
/Looked cold upon
me]
 Alliteration is the repetition of a speech sound in a sequence of nearby words.
The term is usually applied only to consonants, and only when the recurrent
sound begins a word or a stressed syllable within a word, […] In later English
versification, however, alliteration is used only for special stylistic effects, such
as to reinforce the meaning, to link related words, or to provide tone color and
enhance the palpability of enunciating the words.
When to the session of sweet silent
thought
I summon up remembrance of things
past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought
And with old woes new wail my dear
time's waste.
  Consonance is the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but
with a change in the intervening vowel
“O where are you going?” said reader to
rider,
“Out if this house” said rider to reader
“Yours never will” – said farer to fearer,
“They´re looking for you”-said hearer to
horror
 Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowels- especially in stressed
syllables-in a sequence of nearby words.
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou Foster child of silence and slow time…
 Allegory narrative in prose or verse in which characters, actions and setting are
arranged by the author so as to make sense both on the “literal" level of
meaning and on a second, correlated order of signification (i.e. Kafka's novels).

 Oxymoron a paradoxical utterance that unites two terms that in ordinary

language are contraries: "O Death in life, the days that are no more" (Tennyson).
See also the Petrarchan conceit: "pleasing pains”, “loving hate".

 Irony a statement in which the meaning that a speaker implies differs from the
meaning that is expressed: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single
man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" (Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice).

 Chiasmus (Greek for the letter X): a sequence of two phrases or clauses which
are parallel in syntax, but reverse the order of the corresponding words" (272).
i.e. The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind. (Yeat' "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death"
1919).
i.e. "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and
best minds".

RHETORIC'S IN THE AIR: TAILORED VERSION

• ALLITERATION: The use of the same letter or sound at the beginning of
connected words.
"Balancing on breaking branches" Exile
"I polish plates until they gleam and glisten" tolerate it.
• ALLUSION: An implied or indirect reference to a person, event, thing, or
another test.
"Now you hang from my lips like the Gardens of Babylon"- Cowboy like me.
"Your Midas touch on the chevy door". Champagne problems.

• ANAPHORA: the repetition of a word or phrase in successive danses.

But I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss
I knew you'd haunt all of my what ifs
The smell of smoke would bang around
this long
Cause I knew everything when I was
young
I knew I'd curse you for the longest time
Chasin´ shadows in the grocery line
 I knew you'd miss me once the thill
expired
And you'd be standin´ in my front porch
light
And I knew you'd come back to me
"Cardigan"
I HAVE A DREAM
• ANASTROPHE: inversion of the usual order of words/causes.
"Gold was the color of the leaves when I showed you around Centennial Pak"
Invisible strings.
• ASYNDETON: Omission of conjunctions from a phrase or sentence.
"I made you my temple, my mural, my sky". - tolerate it.
• ANTITHESTS: The two opposing elements are juxtaposed in a sentence with
parallel grammatical structure.
"The more that you say, the less I know". Willow.
• CHIASMUS: words in the first half of the first sentence are inverted in the
second hall.
"Never be so kind you forget to be clever, never be so clever you forget to be
kind".

 EPIZEUXIS: the repeated use of a word for vehemence or emphasis, generally

in the same
sentence.
“I´ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try".
 HYPERBOLE: the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or
heightened effect. "Fifteen years, fifteen million tears, begging ´til my knees
bled” it’s time to go.

 METAPHOR:
"We were a fresh page on the desk"-
 OXYMORON:
“I´ve never heard silence quite this loud".
• PARADOX: Seemingly self-contradictory statement that can be true
"Hell was the jommey but it brought me beaver"
• PERSONIFICATION: non-living things showing displaying human behavior
"I asked the traffic lights it I’ll be alight; they say I don’t know?
• POLYPTOTON: a word changes form as it is repeated.
"You had a speech, you're speechless"
• PUN: wordplay
"Tell me what are my Wordsworth” -
• SIMILE
“Angust sipped away like a bottle of wine”

METRE

Is the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent feature in the sequence of speech-

sounds of language.
Classical Greek and Latin: the metre was quantitative [recurrent pattern of long and
short syllables]

 Blank verse: Unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called heroic rese This 10-
syllable Iine is
the predominant rhythm of traditional English dramatic and epic poetry, as it is
considered the
 closest, to English speech patterns Poems such as John Milton's Paradise Lart,
Robert
Browning's dramatic monologues, and Wallace Stevens “Sunday Morning" are
written predominantly in blank verse. Browse more blank verse poems.

 Free verse: Nonmetrical, nonrythyming lines that closely follow the natural day
rhythms of speech.
A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the
poet does not
adhere to a metrical plan in their composition. Matthew Arnold and Walt
Whitman explored
the possibilities of nonmetrical poetry in the 19th century: Since the early 20th
century, the majority of published lyric poetry has been written in free verse.
See the work of William Carlos Williams, TS. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and H.D. Browse
more free-verse poems

The lines are in iambic pentameter. Traditional metre in English poetry (Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales, most of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, Milton's Paradise Lost,
etc.).

lambic pentameter: fixed length of 10 syllables; each line has five main stresses and
five feet.

Lines in iambic pentameter can be either rhymed or unrhymed (blank verse).