POETRY

English Literature
XI Grade
Teacher: Raisa Adyana
 What is Poetry?
 Poetry is an imaginative response to an experience
reflecting a keen awareness of language.

 Poetry is a type of writing that uses language to

express imaginative and emotional qualities instead
of or in addition to meaning.

 Poetry may be written as individual poems or

included in other written forms as in dramatic
poetry, narrative poetry, or lyrical poetry.
 Types of Poetry
 LYRICAL POETRY

A comparatively short, non-narrative poem in which a single speaker presents a state of

mind or an emotional state. Lyric poetry retains some of the elements of song.

Subcategories of the lyric:

 Elegy
 Ode
 Sonnet
 Dramatic monologue
 Occasional poetry (e.g.: wedding, death, etc.)
 Types of Poetry
 NARRATIVE POETRY
Gives a verbal representation, in verse, of a sequence of connected events, it propels
characters through a plot. It is always told by a narrator.

Examples of Narrative poems:

 Tennyson's Maud (a love story)
 Wordsworth's Michael (a father and son story)
 Walter Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel (te deeds of a hero or heroine).

Sub-categories of narrative poetry:

 Epics
 Mock-epic
 A ballad
 Types of Poetry
 DRAMATIC POETRY
Descriptive and Didactic Poetry
 Both lyric and narrative poetry can contain lengthy and detailed descriptions
(descriptive poetry) or scenes in direct speech (dramatic poetry).
 The purpose of a didactic poem is primarily to teach something. This can take
the form of very specific instructions, such as how to catch a fish, as in 
James Thomson’s The Seasons (Spring 379-442) or how to write good poetry
as in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism. But it can also be meant as
instructive in a general way. Until the twentieth century all literature was
expected to have a didactic purpose in a general sense, that is, to impart moral,
theoretical or even practical knowledge; Horace famously demanded that
poetry should combine prodesse (learning) and delectare (pleasure). The
twentieth century was more reluctant to proclaim literature openly as a teaching
tool.
 Elements of Poetry
 Stanza
 Imagery
 Rhyme
 Rhythm
 Language
 Tone / Mood
 Theme / Main Idea
 Stanza
A unit of lines grouped together.
Similar to a paragraph in prose.
The stanzas of a poem are usually of
the same length and follow the same pattern of
meter and rhyme.
 Kinds of Stanza
Name of Stanza Number of lines

Couplet a two line stanza

Triplet (Tercet) a three line stanza

Quatrain a four line stanza

Quintet a five line stanza

Sestet (Sextet) a six line stanza

Septet a seven line stanza

Octave an eight line stanza

 Examples of Stanza in Poetry
1. Couplet – TWO rhyming lines

 Example 1: Essay on Criticism (By Alexander Pope)

“True wit is nature to advantage dress’d;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.”

 Example 2: Sonnet II (By Edna St. Vincent Millay)

“Whether or not we find what we are seeking
is idle, biologically speaking.”

 Example 3: To Science (By Edgar Allan Poe)

“Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given”
 Examples of Stanza in Poetry
2. Tercet – three rhyming lines (aaa or aba)

 Example 1: Second Satire (By Thomas Wyatt) – Rhyming scheme a b a

“My mother’s maids, when they did sew and spin,
They sang sometimes a song of the field mouse,
That for because their livelihood was but so thin.

Would needs go seek her townish sister’s house.

Would needs She thought herself endured to much pain:
The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse…”

 Example 2: The Eagle (By Alfred Lord Tennyson) – a rhyming scheme a a a

“He clasps the crag with crooked hands:
Close to the sun it lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, it stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.”

 Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced tercet in the 16th century.

 Examples of Stanza in Poetry
3. Quatrain – four rhyming lines (a a a a,  a a b b,  a b a b)

 Popularized by a Persian poet, Omar Khayyam.

 Example 1: The Eagle (By Alfred Lord Tennyson)

“Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter–and the Bird is on the Wing.”

 Example 2: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (By Thomas Gray)

“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”
 Examples of Stanza in Poetry
4. Quitain – five rhyming lines
 Its invention is attributed to Adelaide Crapsey.

 Example 1: November Night (By Adelaide Crapsey)

“Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.”
 Examples of Stanza in Poetry
5. Sestet – six rhyming lines

 Example 1: The Better Part (By Mathew Arnold)

“So answerest thou; but why not rather say:
‘Hath man no second life? – Pitch this one high!
Sits there no judge in Heaven, our sin to see? –
More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!
Was Christ a man like us? Ah! Let us try
If we then, too, can be such men as he!'”

 The poet answers the rude inquirer passionately as soon as the sestet commences.
 Imagery
Words or phrases a writer selects to create a
certain pictre in the mind; based on sensory detail.
Imagery uses descriptive words to evoke
the five senses.
 I
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 Types of Imagery
a. Visual Imagery
 Describes what we see.

 Visual imagery may include:

 Color (burnt red, bright orange, dull yellow, verdant green, and Robin’s egg blue).
 Shapes (square, circular, tubular, rectangular, and conical).
 Size (miniscule, tiny, small, medium-sized, large, and gigantic).
 Pattern (polka-dotted, striped, zig-zagged, jagged, and straight).

 Example of Imagery using  visuals:

 The night was black as ever, but bright stars lit up the sky in beautiful and varied constellations

which were sprinkled across the astronomical landscape.

 In this example, the experience of the night sky is described in depth with color (black as ever,

bright), shape (varied constellations), and pattern (sprinkled).

 Types of Imagery
b. Auditory Imagery
 Describes what we hear.

 Auditory imagery may include:

 Enjoyable sounds (beautiful music, birdsong, and the voices of a chorus).
 Noises (the bang of a gun, the sound of a broom moving across the floor, and the sound of broken glass

shattering on the hard floor).

 The lack of noise (describing a peaceful calm or eerie silence).

 Example of Imagery using sounds:

 Silence was broken by the peal of piano keys as Shannon began practicing her concerto.
 Auditory imagery breaks silence with the beautiful sound of piano keys.
 Types of Imagery
c. Olfactory Imagery
 Describes what we smell.

 Olfactory imagery may include:

 Fragrances (perfumes, enticing food and drink, and blooming flowers).
 Odors (rotting trash, body odors, or a stinky wet dog).

 Example of Imagery using scent:

 She smelled the scent of sweet hibiscus wafting through the air, its tropical smell a
reminder that she was on vacation in a beautiful place.
 The scent of hibiscus helps describe a scene which is relaxing, warm, and welcoming.
 Types of Imagery
d. Gustatory Imagery
 Describes what we taste.

 Gustatory imagery can include:

 Sweetness (candies, cookies, and desserts).
 Sourness, bitterness, and tartness (lemons and limes).
 Saltiness (pretzels, French fries, and pepperonis).
 Spiciness (salsas and curries).
 Savoriness (a steak dinner or thick soup).

 Example of imagery using taste:

 The candy melted in her mouth and swirls of bittersweet chocolate and slightly sweet but salty
caramel blended together on her tongue.
 Thanks to an in-depth description of the candy’s various flavors, the reader can almost
experience the deliciousness directly.
 Types of Imagery
e. Tactile Imagery
 Describes what we feel or touch.

 Tactile imagery includes:

 Temperature (bitter cold, humidity, mildness, and stifling heat).
 Texture (rough, ragged, seamless, and smooth).
 Touch (hand-holding, one’s in the grass, or the feeling of starched fabric on one’s skin).
 Movement (burning muscles from exertion, swimming in cold water, or kicking a soccer
ball).

 Example of imagery using touch:

 After the long run, he collapsed in the grass with tired and burning muscles. The grass
tickled his skin and sweat cooled on his brow.
 In this example, imagery is used to describe the feeling of strained muscles, grass’s tickle,
and sweat cooling on skin.
 Examples of Imagery
Example #1: Romeo and Juliet (By William Shakespeare)

 Imagery of light and darkness is repeated many times in Shakespeare’s

Romeo and Juliet. Consider an example from Act I, Scene V:

“O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear …”

Romeo praises Juliet by saying that she appears more radiant than the
brightly lit torches in the hall. He says that at night her face glows like a
bright jewel shining against the dark skin of an African. Through the
contrasting images of light and dark, Romeo portrays Juliet’s beauty.
 Examples of Imagery
Example #2: To Autumn (By John Keats)

 John Keats’ To Autumn is an ode rich with auditory imagery examples. In

the last five lines of his ode he says:

“Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”

The animal sounds in the above excerpt keep appealing to our sense of

hearing. We hear the lamb bleating and the crickets chirping. We hear the
whistles of the redbreast robin and the twitters of swallows in the skies.
Keats call these sounds the song of autumn.
 Examples of Imagery
Example #3: Once More to the Lake (By E. B. White)

 In prose, imagery aids writers to accomplish a vivid description of events.

Below is an example of an effective use of imagery from E. B.
White’s Once More to the Lake:

“When the others went swimming my son said he was going in, too. He
pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through
the shower and wrung them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going
in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince
slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As
he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.”

The images depicting the dampness of clothes, in the above lines, convey a
sense of the chilly sensation that we get from wet clothes.
 Examples of Imagery
Example #4: Great Expectations (By Charles Dickens)

 In Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens, Pip (the hero of

the novel) uses many images to describe a damp morning in a marsh:

“It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the
outside of my little window… Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare
hedges and spare grass, … On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the
marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing
people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they
never came there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it.”

The repeated use of the words “damp” and “wet” makes us feel how
miserable it was for him that damp and cold morning. The thick “marsh-
mist” aids our imagination to visualize the scene of morning in a
marshland.
 Examples of Imagery
Example #5: Goodbye Mr. Chips (By James Hilton)

 “Brookfield he had liked, almost from the beginning. He remembered that

day of his preliminary interview—sunny June, with the air full of flower
scents and the plick-plock of cricket on the pitch. Brookfield was
playing Barnhurst, and one of the Barnhurst boys, a chubby little fellow,
made a brilliant century. Queer that a thing like that should stay in the
memory so clearly.”

This is an excellent example of the use of imagery in Goodbye Mr.

Chips by James Hilton. First the word sunny refers to the visual
imagery. The flower scent refers to the sense of smell, and then the plick-
plock refers to the sense of hearing.
 Examples of Imagery
Example #6: Daffodils (By William Wordsworth)

“I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

This is a very good example of imagery in Wordsworth’s Daffodils. The

poet uses the sense of sight to create a host of golden daffodils beside the
lake. Their fluttering and dancing also refers to the sight.
 Examples of Imagery
Example #7: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (By Robert Frost)

 “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep … “

Robert Frost uses visual imagery in these lines of his famous poem as, “the woods are
lovely, dark and deep.”

Example #8: My November Guest (By Robert Frost)

 “My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walked the sodden pasture lane.”

In the second line, the poet uses dark days, which is an instance of the use of visual
imagery. In the fourth line, the bare, withered tree uses the imagery of sight. In the
fifth line, the sodden pasture is also an instance of tactile imagery.
 Rhyme

 A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounding

words, occurring at the end of lines in poems
or songs. 
 Types of Rhyme
A. Perfect Rhyme
 A case in which two words rhyme in such a way that their
final stressed vowel, and all subsequent sounds, are identical.
 For instance: sight and light, right and might, and rose and
dose.

B. Eye Rhyme
 Also called “sight rhymes,” or “spelling rhymes.”
 Refers to words having the same spelling but different sounds.
 In such case, the final syllables have the same spellings, but
are pronounced differently, such as cough and bough, and love
and move.
 Types of Rhyme
C. General Rhyme
Refers to a variety of phonetic likenesses between words.

1. SyllabicRhyme– Bottle and fiddle, cleaver and silver, patter and pitter are examples of
syllabic rhyme: words having a similar sounding last syllable, but without a stressed vowel.

2. ImperfectRhyme – Wing and caring, sit and perfect, and reflect and subject are examples of
imperfect rhyme. This is a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable.

3. Assonance or Slant Rhyme exists in words having the same vowel sound. For instance, kill
and bill, wall and hall, and shake and ha.

4. Consonance exists in words having the same consonant sound, such as rabbit
and robber, ship and sheep.

5. Alliteration
or Head Rhyme refers to matching initial consonant sounds, shuch as sea
and seal, and ship and sh.
 Types of Rhyme
According to Position

1. Tail Rhyme
Example: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (By Jane Taylor)
“Twinkle, twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are”
This is the most common type of rhyme. It occurs in the final syllable of a verse or line.

2. Internal Rhyme
Example: Don’t Fence Me In (By Cole Porter and Robert Fletcher)
“Just turn me loose let me straddle my old saddle,
Underneath the western skies,
On my cayuse let me wander over yonder,
‘Til I see the mountains rise.”
This is a type of rhyme in which a word at the end of a verse rhymes with another word in the same line.
 Types of Rhyme
According to Position

3. Holo-rhyme
Example: A Scottish Lowlands Holiday Ends in Enjoyable Inactivity (By Miles Kington)
“In Ayrshire hill areas, a cruise,
eh, lass?
Inertia, hilarious, accrues,
hélas!”
This is a type of rhyme in which all the words of two entire lines rhyme.

4. Cross rhyme
Example: At Lulworth Cove a Century Back  (By Thomas Hardy)
“Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there…”
This refers to matching sounds at the ends of intervening lines.
 Rhyme Scheme
 Rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme that comes at the end of each verse or line in poetry.
 Types of Rhyme Scheme
1. Alternate rhyme: It is also known as ABAB rhyme scheme, it rhymes as “ABAB CDCD
EFEF GHGH.”

2. Ballade: It contains three stanzas with the rhyme scheme of “ABABBCBC” followed by
“BCBC.”

3. Monorhyme: It is a poem in which every line uses the same rhyme scheme.

4. Couplet: It contains two-line stanzas with the “AA” rhyme scheme, which often appears as
“AA BB CC and DD…”

5. Triplet: It often repeats like a couplet, uses rhyme scheme of “AAA.”

 Rhyme Scheme
6. Enclosed rhyme: It uses rhyme scheme of “ABBA”

7. Terza rima rhyme scheme: It uses tercets, three lines stanzas. Its interlocking pattern on
end words follows: ABA BCB CDC DED and so on.

8. Keats Odes rhyme scheme: In his famous odes, Keats has used a specific rhyme scheme,
which is “ABABCDECDE.”

9. Limerick: A poem uses five lines with a rhyme scheme of “AABBA.”

10. Villanelle: A nineteen-line poem consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain. It uses a
rhyme scheme of “A1bA2, abA1, abA2, abA1, abA2, abA1A2.”
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 1: Neither Out Far nor in Deep (By  Robert Frost)

 The people along the sand            (A)

All turn and look one way.             (B)
They turn their back on the land.   (A)
They look at the sea all day.          (B)
As long as it takes to pass            (C)
A ship keeps raising its hull;         (C)
The wetter ground like glass         (D)
Reflects a standing gull.               (D)

 This is an ABAB pattern of rhyme scheme, in which each stanza applies this format. For instance, in the
first stanza, “sand” rhymes with the word “land,” and “way” rhymes with the word “day.”
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 2: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (By Donald Barthelme)

 Twinkle, twinkle, little star,                   (A)

How I wonder what you are.                 (A)
Up above the world so high,                 (B)
Like a diamond in the sky.                    (B)

 The following example uses an AABB rhyme scheme. Here, the first line ends in the word “star,” which
rhymes with the final word of the second line, “are.” Since both words rhyme with each other, they are
signified with letter “A.”
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 3: Divine Comedy (By Dante Alighieri)

 As I drew nearer to the end of all desire,            (A)

I brought my longing’s ardor to a final height,     (B)
Just as I ought. My vision, becoming pure,         (A)
Entered more and more the beam of that high light          (B)
That shines on its own truth. From then, my seeing          (C)
Became too large for speech, which fails at a sight…       (B)

 Dante has used terza rima tercet rhyming patterns (ABA, BCB, CDC …) in this poem, giving an impression
of irresistible movement, as well as dynamism.
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 4: A Monorhyme for the Shower (By Dick Davis)

 Lifting her arms to soap her hair             (A)

Her pretty breasts respond – and there  (A)
The movement of that buoyant pair        (A)
Is like a spell to make me swear…         (A)

 This poem presents a perfect example of monorhyme, in which you’ll notice that every line ends in a
similar rhyme, “AAAA” like these words, “hair, there, pair, and swear.”
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 5: Nature’s Way (By Heidi Campbell)

 Upon a nice mid-spring day,                   A

Let’s take a look at Nature’s way.           A
Breathe the scent of nice fresh air,         B
Feel the breeze within your hair.             B
The grass will poke between your toes,  C
Smell the flowers with your nose.            C
Clouds form shapes within the skies,       D
And light will glisten from your eyes         D

 This extract from a poem by Heidi Campbell has a beautiful rhyme scheme AA, BB, CC and DD.
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 6: A Poison Tree (By William Blake)

 I was angry with my friend:                   A

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.        A
I was angry with my foe:                       B
I told it not, my wrath did grow.             B
And I watered it in fears                        C
Night and morning with my tears;         C
And I sunned it with smiles,                  D
And with soft deceitful wiles.                D

 This extract from William Blake’s poem has an excellent rhyme scheme as AA, BB, CC, and DD.
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 7: The One (By Crystal R. Adame)

 The one who brought me down to earth, A

And held me every day.                           B
The one who gracefully gave me birth,    A
And said, I love you in every way.            B
 The one who taught me everything,        C
Like how to crawl and walk.                     D
The one who taught me how to sing        C
After learning how to talk.                        D

 Here, poet Crystal R. Adame makes dexterous use of rhyme scheme. The scheme runs like this: ABAB and
CDCD.
 Examples of Rhyme Scheme
Example 8: To A Terrific Dad (By David L. Helm)

 To a dad who is terrific,                         A

To a dad who’s real neat.                       B
To a dad who makes the best of things,  C
Even when they’re not so sweet!            B
To a dad who’s growing older,               D
To a dad who’s going gray.                    E
To a dad who just gets smarter,             D
It would seem from day to day!             E

 These lines from the poem To a Terrific Dad have yet another kind of rhyme scheme, which is different
from all of the preceding examples. The rhyme scheme of this poem is ABCBDEDE.
 Language in Poetry
 Figurative – language used to create a special effect in
feeling; characterized by figures of speech or language that
compares, exaggerates, or words that mean something other
than its literal meaning.

 Literal – the exact primary meaning of a word or words.

 Figurative Language
1. Metaphor

Direct comparison of two distinct things.

 Her smiling face is the sun.
 His temper was a hurricane whipping through the school, scaring and amazing his classmates.
 We were penguins standing in our black and white coats in the bitter cold.

2. Simile

Compare two essentially dissimilar objects or concepts using of “like” or “as” or compare between two things that are

different enough from each other such that their comparability appears unlikely.
 Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. (Jonathan Safran Foer)
 Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. (Haruki Murakami)
 Her hair, like golden threads, play’d with her breath. (William Shakespeare)

*Metaphors create direct comparisons without using either of these words, whereas similes feature either like or as in making a comparison.
 Figurative Language
3.Onomatopoeia

A form of auditory imagery in which the word used sounds like the thing it describes.
 The fire crackled and popped.
 She rudely slurped and gulped down her soup.
 The pigs happily oinked when the farmer gave them their slop to eat.

4.Personification

Personification provides animals and objects with human-like characteristics.

 The wind whistled and hissed through the stormy night.
 The tired tree’s branches moaned in the gusts of wind.
 The ocean waves slapped the shore and whispered in a fizz as they withdrew again.
 Figurative Language
5.Hyperbole

involves an exaggeration or overstatement of ideas for the sake of emphasis.

 She is as heavy as an elephant!
 I am dying of shame.
 As I Walked One Evening (By W. H. Auden)

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you

Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street,

I’ll love you till the ocean

Is folded and hung up to dry.”

6.Sarcasm

Sarcasm is used to speak bitterly, to mock, often with satirical or ironic remarks, with a purpose to amuse and hurt

someone, or some section of society, simultaneously. 

 “Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
 “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” (Mark Twain)
 Tone and Mood
 An attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience.
 The tone can be formal, informal, serious, comic, sarcastic, sad, or cheerful, or it
may be any other existing attitude.
 Example: The Road Not Taken (By Robert Frost)
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Frost tells us about his past with a “sigh,” this gives the above lines an unhappy
tone. This tone leads us into thinking that the speaker in the poem had to make a
difficult choice.
 Theme
 Theme is defined as a main idea or an underlying meaning of a literary work, which
may be stated directly or indirectly.
 Major and Minor Themes
A major theme is an idea that a writer repeats in his literary work, making it the
most significant idea in the work. A minor theme, on the other hand, refers to an
idea that appears in a work briefly, giving way to another minor theme.
Examples of theme in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” are matrimony, love,
friendship, and affection. The whole narrative revolves around the major theme of
matrimony. Its minor themes are love, friendship, affectation etc.
 Assignment
 Work in pair
 Find a poem of 15 to 20 lines. More lines are allowed.
 Analyze the poem on
 Type of Poetry
 Stanza
 Imagery
 Rhyme
 Rhythm
 Language
 Tone / Mood
 Theme / Main Idea

 Write your analysis in PPT.

 Present it with your partner on next meeting (14 October 2020).
 For more information
 http://www2.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/intranet/
englishbasics/PoetryTypes01.htm
 https://literarydevices.net/