The following process may help you comprehend poems more easily.
1. Realize you will need to read the poem more than once.
2. Do not try to interpret the poem during the initial reading. Enjoy
the experience, listening to the language.
3. Be attentive to the title.
4. Try to read the poem aloud. Regardless, read the poem slowly,
carefully.
5. Freely write about the poem--focusing, first, on the poem as a
whole and, second, on particular lines.
6. Answer the following questions.
- Do you like or dislike the poem and why?
- Is the poem interesting or uninteresting, and which lines evoke your response?
- Is the poem comprehensible or incomprehensible, and which lines do you think are the latter?
7. Read the poem again, being attentive to the rhythm and
punctuation. Do not stop at the end of a line if it does not have
punctuation.
8. Look for subjects and verbs, and try to paraphrase the poem.
9. Determine the theme (universal concept) of the poem.
10. Determine the speaker, for rarely is it the poet.
Remember to use the term speaker, not poet, when discussing a
poem. The voice you hear in a poem is not necessarily the
poet's. However, when discussing general poetic techniques or a
poem's structure use poet.
11. Determine the setting (general locale, historical time, and social
circumstances).
12. Examine each word, phrase, clause, line and stanza of the poem
to determine how they work or do not work together.
13. Focus on the elements of the poem that interest you, but ensure
you address the following: (1) poetic techniques, (2) structure,
(3) meaning.
14. Do not try to determine the correct reading. You want to
produce an interpretation that you feel is accurate because you
support it with details from the poem.
In other words, you will need to quote words, phrases, clauses,
lines, stanzas and to explicate them. Let us suppose I want to
quote the following.
I went
to hell
and back
to Mel.
How would I format my quotation? First, I would need to
introduce it: The speaker states in the first and second stanzas
that "I went / to hell // and back" (1-3). What do the slashes
signify? / is a linear break; // is a stanzaic break. The numerals
following the quotation correspond to the lines of the poem--in
this case, the first through third lines. Second, I would need to
explain fully the quotation: The speaker is completely unhappy
with his life. He considers his job hellish, and his wife, Mel, is
the Devil incarnate.
This post focuses on imagery, its role in poetry and ways to create it.
One goal of a poet is to make abstract, universal concepts--love, hate, birth, death--concrete. In other words, you want to individualize abstract concepts; you need to personalize your experiences. Everyone is familiar with such concepts, but they are not familiar with your observation of or participation in the events relative to the concepts. To make an emotion or event sensible, you must create images. The following poem ("The Red Wheelbarrow" 1923) by William Carlos Williams underscores the importance of imagery in poetry.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.*
What depends on a wet wheelbarrow near some chickens? Literally the poem relies on it; figuratively poetry relies on imagery. Williams describes an ordinary object and makes a statement about the nature of poetry. It is significant that the listener/reader realizes an otherwise useful object as art, which is a response to Immanuel Kant's aesthetic. The diction and syntax are similar to natural speech, and the short lines offer less information than traditional verse. However, less is more in this case, for the poem gains momentum through enjambment, and such enjambment intensifies the importance of each noun at the ends of the second, third and fourth stanzas. The poem depends on the fragmentary images that the speaker connects in an elliptical way.
Another way to make an emotion or event sensible is to compare it to things that are inherently similar to each other. Describe the things, using different avenues of sensation. You do not want to compare the emotion or event to disparate things--things made of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements, things markedly distinct in quality or character. Rather, you want to extend the initial comparison to similar things. For example, if I were to describe my love for my girlfriend via comparison to a blouse (attraction based on appearance), I would extend the initial comparison to a sail (longing) then to sheets (sexual attraction). Fabric is the common thread, the fundamental vehicle of comparison. Of course, I may irritate my girlfriend like a wool sweater chafes skin and find myself alone and naked beneath a streetlight.
_______________________________________________________
*Charles Tomlinson
, ed., Selected Poems, by William Carlos Williams (New York: New Directions, 1985) 56.
Some people consider poetry as prose in a concentrative form, so diction (word choice) is of paramount importance. Poets choose words to create or extend figures of speech, for their sounds, to create or extend images, to create or maintain rhythm, and for formal reasons.
Figurative language is a conspicuous departure from what users of a language apprehend as the standard meaning of words or the standard order of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect. Although they are primarily poetic, figures are integral to the functioning of language and indispensable to all modes of discourse. Figurative language has been divided into two classes: tropes (the use of phrases in ways that effect changes in what we understand to be their standard meaning) and schemes (the departure from standard usage is in the order or syntactical pattern of the words). The following are classified as tropes: aporia, conceit, epic simile, hyperbole, irony, kenning, litotes, metaphor, metonomy, paradox, periphrasis, personification, pun, simile, synecdoche, and understatement. A common scheme is a rhetorical question. (For more information on figurative language, please peruse the post "Common Poetic Techniques and Terms.")
Most poetry depends on sound to convey emotions and images. Poets often choose words for their sonic textures. A poet knows or discovers what sounds his words will make and what effect those sounds will have on a reader. Alliteration is the repetition of the sound of an initial consonant or consonantal cluster in stressed syllables close enough to each other to affect the ear. Consonance is the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants but with a change in the interventional vowels. Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar vowels--especially in stressed syllables--in sequential words. Rhyme is the repetition of the last stressed vowel and of the speech sounds following that vowel in at least two words. End rhymes occur at the end of the lines; internal rhymes occur when at least one word in a line rhymes with another word in that line or in a succedent line. An eye rhyme is two or more words that to the eye seem to rhyme, in that their spelling is nearly identical--both begin differently but end alike--but to the ear (that is, in pronunciation) do not rhyme. Also known as partial or imperfect rhyme, slant rhyme occurs when the vowels of words at the end of lines are approximate or different and occasionally the consonants are similar rather than identical. (For more information on the aforementioned techniques, please peruse the post "Common Poetic Techniques and Terms.")
Both the denotations and the connotations of imagery are akin to the word imitate and, hence, refer to a likeness, reproduction, reflection, copy, resemblance or similitude. Although most poetry contains imagery (word pictures), the majority of poets do not use one image to communicate an idea; rather, they combine images in their poems. Imagery signifies all the objects and qualities of sense perception in a literary work--whether by description, allusion, or figurative language. Imagery includes visual (sight), auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic (movement) qualities. Imagery makes a literary work concrete, as opposed to abstract. [For more information on imagery, please peruse the posts "Details" and "Poetry (a Revisitation): Imagery."]
Rhythm is a recognizable though variable pattern in the beat of the stresses or accents in a stream of speech-sounds. The prevalent metrical pattern of a poem--for example, iambic pentameter--establishes itself as a norm that controls the reader's expectations, even though the number of lines that deviate from the norm may exceed the number that fit the norm exactly. Furthermore, rhythm is distinct from intonation--the overall rise and fall in the pitch and loudness of the voice--that a poet uses to reveal the meaning of a poem and to produce a rhetorical effect. [For more information on rhythm, please peruse the post "Poetry (a Revisitation): Rhythm."]
Form designates patterns of meter, lines and rhyme, and it designates the order and organization of a work. The Chicago School of criticism makes a distinction between form and structure. The form of a poem is the particular working of emotional power that the composition is designed to evoke, which functions as its shaping principle. That formal principle controls and synthesizes the structure of a work--that is, the order, emphasis and rendering of all its component subject matter and parts--into an effective whole of a determinate kind. Even if you choose not to use conventional structures, you will find that experimenting with and learning about form will ultimately increase your sensitivity to language--whether you write poetry, short stories, or plays. [For more information on form, please peruse the post "Poetry (a Revisitation): Form."]
Making careful choices about diction and having an understanding of connotations (associative meanings) are crucial. You must understand what language can and cannot do for you. Effectively use words, words that connect you and your audience to your poem. As a poet you must deliberate over your selection of words. Always have a dictionary and a thesaurus nearby, for you will want to use words that are not in your vocabulary. Attention to diction will help you take control of your writing--whether you are creating verse, narration or dialogue. (Refer to the post "Creating a Poem.")
This worksheet might help you organize your ideas for a poem.
1. List several universal concepts (birth, relationships, love, hate
death, et cetera) that interest you.
2. Generally describe your thoughts and feelings on one of those
concepts.
3. Specifically describe that concept, using only objective details
(size, shape and color) and sensory details (sight, sound, smell,
taste and touch).
4. Compare the concept to something concrete (a specific thing
perceptible by the senses). You may want to compare the
concept to several tangible things.
5. What sounds (soft and/or harsh) do you associate with the
concept? List some of the letters of the alphabet that correlate
to the concept.
6. Create two sets of associative words that rhyme. An example
follows. My roommate perpetuates a state of hate.
7. To which senses do you want to appeal? Create images that
correlate to those senses. An example follows. There were
shards of green glass like grass at the base of the oak.
8. What rhythm (slow or fast) do you associate with the concept?
9. Do short lines or long lines best express the concept?
10. Determine a form that coincides with the emotion(s) you are
attempting to relate to and to evoke from your audience.
11. Create a title that reveals the essence of your poem.
This list comprises definitions and examples of numerous poetic techniques and explanations of many poetic terms.
1. Accent. Generally accent is the emphasis that some syllables in
speech bear over others, regardless of how achieved--via pitch,
stress or length. In the specific sense, accent is a synonym for
stress. Linguistically stress denotes intensity of articulatory
force, resulting from greater musculatory exertion in forming a
sound. Word-stress is in most dictionaries. After a main entry is
a pronunciation key. A high set mark (') indicates an accent.
Ex.: pro-tag'-o-nist
Ex.:
2. Accentual verse. Accentual verse is verse organized by the
number of stresses, not by the number of syllables. True
accentual verse operates on two principles. The stress governs
the rhythm, and the stresses must all be true speech-stresses.
Ex.: u u / u u / u u / u /
In the season of spring, when the sun is soft
u / u / u u / u /
I shop for clothes to seclude my skin.
Ex.:
3. Adynation. An overstatement or exaggeration, adynation is a
rhetorical figure for magnifying an event by comparison with
something impossible.
Ex.: I will walk a million miles to see you smile.
Ex.:
4. Alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of the sound of an
initial consonant or consonantal cluster in stressed syllables
close enough to each other to affect the ear. The term
sometimes refers to the repetition of an initial consonant in
unstressed syllables.
Ex.: In the season of spring, when the sun is soft, I shop for
clothes to seclude my skin.
Ex.:
5. Allusion. An allusion is a reference, without explicit
identification, to an historical person, place or event or to
another literary work. The poet assumes that (1) prior
achievements or events are sources of value, (2) readers share
knowledge with the poet, (3) the incorporation of familiar
elements is recognizable, and (4) the incorporated and
incorporating elements are united. There are six kinds of
allusion: topical, personal, formal, metaphorical, imitative and
structural. In the following lines from T. S. Eliot's The Waste
Land (1925), the speaker is describing a woman at her modern
dressing table. "The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, /
Glowed on the marble." Eliot is alluding to Cleopatra's barge in
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra: "The barge she sat in, like
a burnish'd throne, / Burn'd on the water" (II. ii. 196).
6. Ambiguity. Something is ambiguous if it is open to more than
one interpretation in the context in which it occurs. Ambiguity
is evident in the everyday use of a language. But the subtlety,
density and depth of meaning figures of speech create have led
some to conclude that ambiguity is an essential constituent of
poetry.
7. Analogy. Analogy is similarity, as of properties or functions,
between unlike things that are otherwise not comparable.
Ex.: The operation of a computer is similar to the working of a
human's brain.
Ex.:
8. Anapest. An anapest is a metrical foot of two unstressed
syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
Ex.: u u / u u / u u
In the snow there were footprints that
/ u u / u u / u u /
dotted the fields as if cupping the dark.
Ex.:
9. Anaphora. Anaphora is the repetition of the same word or
words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences
or lines.
Ex.: The moon laughed; the moon cried.
or
The moon laughed;
the moon cried.
Ex.:
10. Antithesis. The placement of contraries side by side--in
contiguous or parallel phrases or clauses--is antithesis.
Ex.: T. S. Eliot's "We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed
men" ("The Hollow Men"
).
Ex.:
11. Aphaeresis. The omission of a syllable, usually a vowel, from
the beginning of a word is aphaeresis.
Ex.: till for until
Ex.:
12. Apocope. The omission of a syllable from the end of a word
is apocope.
Ex.: sing (Modern English) from singen (Middle English)
Ex.:
13. Apostrophe. A figure of speech that consists of addressing a
dead person, a thing, or an abstract idea as if it were alive is an
apostrophe.
Ex.: Budweiser, my smart friend, why do you make me dumb?
Ex.:
14. Assonance. Assonance is the repetition of identical or similar
vowels--especially in stressed syllables--in sequential words.
Ex.: The quiet brides, Silence and Time, sliced through their
nights with delight.
Ex.:
15. Asyndeton. The omission of conjunctions between phrases or
clauses is asyndeton.
Ex.: She cried, fought.
Ex.:
16. Blank verse. Blank verse first appeared in Italian poetry of the
Renaissance then was transplanted to England as the unrhymed
decasyllable or iambic pentameter. In England blank verse was
invented by Henry Howard, Earl of Surey (1517--47), who,
sometime between 1539 and 1546, translated two books of the
Aeneid
(II and IV) into the "straunge meter." As blank verse
developed in England, generic considerations became
important. Clearly verse without rhyme is especially suitable to
long works--permitting an idea to be expressed at whatever
length is appropriate and not imposing on the language a
repetitive structure of couplet or stanza, which tend to produce
conformity in syntactic structures. The omission of rhyme
promoted continuity, sustained articulation, encouraged
enjambment, and maintained relatively natural word order.
Relatively natural word order makes blank verse a fitting
vehicle for drama--Shakespeare's blank verse, for example.
Inversion, suspension, and relative stylistic devices make it
suitable to epic--Milton's blank verse, for example. To
summarize, blank verse has unrhymed lines in iambic
pentameter. The lack of end rhymes makes enjambment more
possible and more effective.
17. Cacophony. The use of harsh-sounding words, cacophony is
the quality or fact of being dissonant. It is the opposite of
euphony.
Ex.: The squall screams, careens through the trees.
Ex.:
18. Caesura. In every sentence of some length there will be a
syntactic juncture or pause between phrases or clauses, usually
signaled by punctuation but sometimes not. A caesura is the
metrical phenomenon that corresponds to such a break in the
syntax of a line.
Ex.: Like pages in a book, caesuras cause us to pause.
Ex.:
19. Canon. In secular literary criticism, canon has three senses:
(a) rules of criticism, (b) a list of works by a single author, and
(c) a list of texts regarded as culturally central or classic.
20. Carpe diem. A phrase from Horace's Odes (1.11) that enjoins
full utilization of the present time, carpe diem is the hedonistic
form of the motif "eat, drink, and be merry...." Typically, the
carpe diem injunction is pronounced amid warnings about the
transience of life, the uncertainty of the future, and the
inevitability and finality of death ("... for tomorrow we die").
21. Catachresis. A deliberate misapplication of a word to create
concentrative meaning, catachresis depends on the
reader/listener's acceptance of the semantic transference.
Otherwise he/she will regard it as a mixed metaphor, which is
a fault. The following example is from D. G. Friends'
"Villanelle."
Ex.: it gathers inside us like rings of heartwood massed
inside a tree, the years accomplished in turns
Ex.:
22. Catalog. A catalog is a list of persons, places, things or ideas
that have a common denominator, such as heroism or beauty.
If a catalog shapes the structure and meaning of a poem, then
the poem is an example of catalog verse. In antiquity catalog
verse often had didactic and mnemonic functions, which are
manifest in the genealogical lists in the Old Testament and in
Old Germanic verse, but it also had an aesthetic function,
indicating the vastness of a war or the valor of a warrior,
which is manifest in the catalog of heroes in Iliad. Medieval
and Renaissance poets used the technique to itemize topics
such as the beauty of women.
23. Cliche. A cliche is a trite expression or idea that deviates from
its ordinary meaning or association. The use of such
expressions--"a whole new ballgame"--or ideas--a rose as a
symbol of love--is unacceptable when creating a poem, unless it
is for an ironic effect.
Ex.:
24. Consonance. In addition to its general meaning of harmony
(agreement), consonance has been used interchangeably in
prosody with a wide variety of terms to designate certain phonic
echoes. In a definition popular for some time, consonance was
said to require the repetition in stressed syllables in two or more
consonantal sounds without the intervening vowel echo (the
first example). Through the centuries, however, and especially
in the 20th century, poets have been echoing final consonants in
stressed syllables that do not alliterate or rhyme (the second
example).
Exs.: You must (1) live and leave, (2) live and move.
Exs.:
25. Couplet. Two contiguous lines of verse that function as a
metrical unit and are so marked, usually, either by rhyme or
syntax is a couplet. A couplet is open when the two lines are
enjambed--that is, when the syntactic and metrical frames do
not close together at the end of the couplet, the sentence being
carried forward into subsequent couplets to any length desired
and ending at any point in the line.
Ex.: From the warmth of a summer slumber our lady wakes
late to intermittent melodies and remakes
her bed. She gathers the curtains, closes each
window, and watches the squirrels spiral the beech.
Ex.:
26. Dactyl. A dactyl is a metrical foot consisting of one accented
syllable followed by two unaccented syllables.
Ex.: / u u / u u / u u
Footprints that tracked through the snow in the
/ u u / u u / u u / u u / u u
field were like smudges of darkening light in the evening.
Ex.:
27. Dead metaphor. An expression that was originally
metaphorical but no longer functions as a figure of speech and
is now understood literally is a dead metaphor.
Ex.: arm of the law
Ex.:
28. Decasyllable. A line of ten syllables is a decasyllable.
Normally the term refers to the English iambic pentameter.
Ex.: u / u / u / u / u /
The sun is burning bright, the moon is not.
Ex.:
29. Dialogue. Dialogue refers to an exchange of words between
speakers in a literary text and to a literary usage that presents
the speech of more than one character without specific
theatrical intentions.
30. Didactic poetry. Didactic poetry clearly teaches or instructs.
31. Dimeter. The English dimeter consists of two feet. Accentual
verse--specifically, a line of two stresses but a variable number
of syllables--is not dimeter.
32. Dissonance. The quality of being harsh or inharmonious in
rhythm or sound is dissonance. It is akin to cacophony. Insofar
as the terms may be distinguished, cacophony means that which
is harsh-sounding in itself, and dissonance means that which is
discordant or inharmonious with what surrounds it. By
extension the term may also refer to other elements in a poem
that are discordant in their immediate context: tonality, theme,
imagery or syntax. The following example is from Matthew
Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867).
Ex.: Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
Ex.:
33. Elision. Elision is the general term for several techniques of
contraction--aphaeresis, apocope, synaeresis, synaloepha,
syncope--whereby two syllables become one. Such techniques
are not peculiar to poetry.
34. Ellipsis. Ellipsis is the most common term for the class of
figures of syntactic omission (deletion) of a conjunction
between words or clauses, of a verb, and of a clause,
particularly a main clause after a subordinate clause (the
following example).
Ex.: If you will do it, all will be well; if not, all will smell.
Ex.:
35. Emotion. A poem involves at least two people: poet and
listener (or reader). A consideration of the emotion of a poet
must be a descriptive and not a normative inquiry. A poem
in itself can never offer conclusive evidence that the poet did
or did not feel a certain emotion. Such an external, biographical
fact can only be established separately. A well-written poem
moves the reader. Nowadays, however, under the influence of
structuralism, the reading of a poem as an emotional experience
has moved from the center of attention, replaced by reading as
an interpretive activity.
36. Enargeia. Enargeia is a quality that appeals to an audience's
senses, principally sight. By penetrating the visual imagination
of a reader and involving him/her in the subject of the poem,
a poet can persuade more effectively. To achieve enargeia,
a poet must use his/her visual imagination to conjure a scene
mentally, represent the vision in the text, evoking an analogous
image, and produce the concomitant feelings in the mind of the
reader. One important descriptive technique is the selection
and disposition of significant and specific details.
37. End rhyme. The repetition of the last stressed vowel and of the
speech sounds following that vowel in two or more words at the
end of verse-lines is end rhyme.
Ex.: From the warmth of a summer slumber our lady wakes
late to intermittent melodies and remakes
her bed. She gathers the curtains, closes each
window, and watches the squirrels spiral the beech.
Ex.:
38. End-Stopped line. An end-stopped line is one in which meter,
syntax and sense come to a conclusion at the line's end.
Ex.: Rats: they fight the dogs and kill the cats.
Ex.:
39. Enjambment. Enjambment is the overflow into the succedent
poetic line of a syntactic phrase with its intonational contour,
begun in the preceding line, without a major juncture or pause.
It is the antonym of end-stopped.
Ex.: To see you tense as if each leg were a gun
loaded with leaps....
Ex.:
40. Epanalepsis. The repetition of a word or words at the beginning
and end of a line is epanalepsis. The following example is from
W. D. Snodgrass' "April Inventory" (1959).
Ex.: I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.
Ex.:
41. Epithet. Epithet denotes an adjective or an adjectival phrase
that characterizes a person or thing. An example is Homer's
"the wine-dark sea" which Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's
Ulysses (1922) parodies with his reference to "the snot-green
sea." We use conventional epithets to identify historical or
legendary figures, such as Catherine the Great and Patient
Griselda. The purposes of epithet concern allusion,
connotation, repetition and meter.
42. Ethos. Ethos is one means of persuasion. It is an audience's
assessment of a poet's moral behavior--including his/her
honesty, benevolence, intelligence, et cetera.
43. Euphemism. The substitution of a mild, indirect or vague
term for one that is harsh, blunt or offensive is an euphemism.
The following example is from Andrew Marvell's
"To His Coy Mistress" (1681).
Ex.: Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Ex.:
44. Euphony. The quality of having pleasant, easily
pronounceable, or smooth-flowing sounds free from harshness
is euphony. It is also the pleasurable effect of such sounds.
Euphony is the antonym of cacophony.
Ex.: I have lost love more often than I have won a lover's hand.
Ex.:
45. Eye rhyme. An eye rhyme is two or more words that to the eye
seem to rhyme, in that their spelling is nearly identical--both
begin differently but end alike--but to the ear (that is, in
pronunciation) do not rhyme.
Ex.: rough and cough
Ex.:
46. Figurative language. Figurative language is a conspicuous
departure from what users of a language apprehend as the
standard meaning of words or the standard order of words
in order to achieve some special meaning or effect. Although
they are primarily poetic, figures are integral to the functioning
of language and indispensable to all modes of discourse.
Figurative language has been divided into two classes:
tropes (the use of phrases in ways that effect changes in what
we understand to be their standard meaning) and schemes
(the departure from standard usage is in the order or syntactical
pattern of the words). The following have been classified
as tropes: aporia, conceit, epic simile, hyperbole, irony,
kenning, litotes, metaphor, metonymy, paradox, periphrasis,
personification, pun, simile, synecdoche, and understatement.
Two common schemes are hyperbaton and rhetorical question.
47. Foot. A foot is the combination of a strong stress and the
associative weak stress or stresses that form a metric unit in a
line. The relatively stronger-stressed syllable is called stressed;
the relatively weaker-stressed syllable(s) is called unstressed.
The four standard feet in English are iamb (the adjective is
iambic)--an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable,
anapest (the adjective is anapestic)--two unstressed syllables
followed by a stressed syllable, trochee (the adjective is
trochaic)--a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed
syllable, and dactyl (the adjective is dactylic)--a stressed
syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. Most trochaic
lines lack the final unstressed syllable and such lines are
catalectic. Two other feet are spondee (the adjective is
spondaic)--two successive syllables with equally strong
stresses--and pyrrhic (the adjective is also pyrrhic)--two
successive syllables with equally weak stresses. The later term
is used infrequently. Some traditional metrists deny the
existence of a true pyrrhic, on the grounds that the prevailing
metrical pattern always imposes a slightly stronger stress on one
of the syllables.
A metric line is named according to the number of feet it has:
monometer (one foot), dimeter (two feet), trimeter (three feet),
tetrameter (four feet), pentameter (five feet), hexameter (six
feet), heptameter (seven feet), octameter (eight feet).
To describe the dominant meter of a line, identify (a) the
predominant foot and (b) the number of feet it contains. To
scan a passage of verse is to read each line, marking each
stressed syllable with a / and each unstressed syllable with a u.
The following is an example of scansion, signified by the
aforementioned conventional symbols.
u / u / u / u u / / u
A drunken line of kegs and a mop hiding
u / u u / u / u u / u /
its head in a yellow bucket were all I saw
u / u / / u / /u /
before the door muffled this very song.
The dominant foot is:
The prevailing meter is:
The primary variation on the dominant foot is:
48. Form. Form is one of the most frequent terms in prosody, and
it is also one of the most diverse terms in its meanings. It
designates a genre or literary type (for example, the lyric form),
designates patterns of meter, lines and rhyme (for example,
the verse form), and designates the order and organization
of a work (for example, sonnet). Some literary critics regard
the form of a work as a combination of component parts
matched to each other according to their mutual fittingness.
Organic form is like a growing plant that evolves, by internal
energy, into the organic unity that constitutes its achieved form,
in which the parts are integral to and interdependent with the
whole. Many New Critics use the word structure interchangeably
with form and regard it as primarily an equilibrium, interaction,
or ironic and paradoxical tension of diverse words and images
that contribute to an organized totality of meanings. Various
exponents of archetypal theory regard the form of a literary work
as one of a limited number of plot-shapes that it shares with
myths, rituals, dreams, and other elemental and recurrent patterns
of human experience. Structuralists conceive a literary structure
on the model of the systematic way that a language is structured.
The Chicago School of criticism makes a distinction between
form and structure. The form of a literary work is the particular
working of emotional power that the composition is designed
to evoke, which functions as its shaping principle. That formal
principle controls and synthesizes the structure of a work--that
is, the order, emphasis and rendering of all its component
subject matter and parts--into an effective whole of a
determinate kind.
49. Free verse. Free verse is distinguished from metrical verse by
the lack of a structural grid based on the number of linguistic
units and/or the position of linguistic features. Some of free
verse's primary features are nonmetrical structure, grammatical
breaks, and absence of regular end rhyme.
50. Haiku. The Japanese poetic form haiku was originally the
opening section of a renga, which took shape in the 13th
and 14th centuries as a sequential form of verse of up to 50
5-7-5- and 7-7-syllable alternate parts composed in turn by two
or more poets. Although developments make a definition
of haiku impractical, the three-line format and the 5-7-5
syllabic pattern seems to be the norm in many countries
outside Japan.
Ex.: / u / u /
Footprints track across
/ u / / u / u
winter fields: cups of darkness
/ u / u /
leading through the snow.
Ex.:
51. Hemistich. A hemistich is a half-line of verse separated
rhythmically from the other half by a caesura. In Greek
and subsequent drama, characters exchange half-lines
of dialogue to imitate the rhythms of arguments. In other
types of poetry, a hemistich may mirror physical or emotional
disturbance. The following example is from William Butler
Yeats' "Adam's Curse" (1902).
Ex.: "Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world."
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied: "To be born woman is to know--
Although they do not talk of it at school--
That we must labour to be beautiful."
52. Heptameter. Heptameter is a line of seven feet.
Ex.: / / / u / u / u u / u / /
Kit sits, taps her tail, and waits for her tin of fish: tuna.
Ex.:
53. Heptasyllable. A line of seven syllables is heptasyllabic.
Ex.: / / / u / u /
Kit sits, taps her tail, and waits.
Ex.:
54. Heroic couplet. A pair of iambic pentameter lines with
an end rhyme is a heroic couplet.
55. Hexameter. Hexameter is a line of six feet.
Ex.: / / / u / u / u u / u /
Kit sits, taps her tail, and waits for her tin of fish.
Ex.:
56. Hiatus. Hiatus is the grammatical and metrical term for the
pause created by the pronunciation of contiguous vowels,
either within a word or at the end of one word and the
beginning of an adjacent word. The effect of the junction
is a slight pause in delivery.
Ex.: reality
Ex.:
57. Hyperbaton. When a poet deviates from logical or normal
syntax, it is an example of hyperbaton. The syntactic dislocation
may range from the misplacement of a single word, to the
reversal of a pair of words, to more extreme instances
of disarray, which often depict extreme emotion.
Normal word-order is a problematic concept. In inflectional
languages, such as Greek and Latin, word-class is marked by
ending, so syntax is relatively free. In positional languages,
such as English, inflections are almost entirely absent and
word-order determines case. But often there are several
acceptable ways to order sentential elements. All poetry
and prose is stylistically individualistic to some degree, so
it is difficult to establish standards against which to measure
deviance, although extreme instances are obvious.
Furthermore, usage varies from age to age, each allowing
different degrees of freedom in word-order.
The primary syntactic sequence in English is subject-verb-object,
and the most common form of displacement is subject-object-verb.
The reasons for hyperbaton extend beyond the needs of meter
and rhyme and include emphasis. John Milton uses hyperbatic
word-order in Paradise Lost (1667) to delay the narrative
progression of the verse.
Ex.: ten paces huge / He back recoiled (6.193-194)
Ex.:
58. Hyperbole. A figure of speech, hyperbole is bold
overstatement or extravagant exaggeration of fact or
possibility. It is used for serious, ironic or comical effect. It is
similar to adynation.
Ex.: I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.
Ex.:
59. Iamb. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed
syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
Ex.: u / u / u / u / u /
Their footprints track across the winter field.
Ex.:
60. Image. A poetic image may be a metaphor, simile, figure
of speech, the vehicle (second term) of a metaphor,
a concrete verbal reference, a recurrent motif, a psychological
event in a reader's mind, a symbol or symbolic pattern, or the
global impression of a poem as a unified structure.
61. Imagery. Both the denotations and connotations of imagery
are akin to the word imitate and, hence, refer to a likeness,
reproduction, reflection, copy, resemblance or similitude.
Imagery signifies all the objects and qualities of sense
perception in a literary work--whether by description, allusion,
or figurative language. Imagery includes visual (sight), auditory
(sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory
(smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic (movement) qualities.
Imagery makes a work concrete, as opposed to abstract.
62. Internal rhyme. Internal rhyme occurs when a word at the end
of a line rhymes with a word or words in the same line, when a
word at the end of a line rhymes with a word or words in a
succedent line but not at the end of that line, when words within
a line rhyme with each other but not with the word at the end of
the line, or when a word within one line rhymes with a word
within a succedent line.
Ex.: The cold, bold man tried
to sham the woman.
Ex.:
63. Irony. Irony is a figure of speech by which one indicates--via
intonation, emphasis and/or gesture--the opposite of what one
says. With respect to verbal irony, a statement in which the
meaning that a speaker expresses differs sharply from the
meaning he/she intends. The ironic statement usually involves
explicit expression of one attitude or evaluation and indications
in the overall situation that the speaker intends a different, often
opposite, attitude or evaluation. For example, I look out of a
window at a storm and remark to a friend, "It's a beautiful day."
Ex.:
Romantic irony designates a mode of writing in which the
poet creates the illusion of representing reality, only to shatter
it by revealing that the poet, as artist, is the creator and arbitrary
manipulator of the speaker and his/her actions. Byron uses
romantic irony for comical effect in his narrative poem
Don Juan (1819--24)
64. Isocolon. Isocolon denotes phrases, clauses, lines or sentences
that are identical in number of syllables, in scansion. Aristotle
mentions isocolon in the Rhetoric as the figure which produces
symmetry in speech and creates rhythmic prose or even measures
in verse. The following example is from W. D. Snodgrass'
"April Inventory" (1959).
Ex.: u / u / u / u /
Can win, can love, but choose to die.
Ex.:
65. Line. The concept of line is fundamental to the concept of
poetry, for the line is the differentia of verse from prose. Verse
is cast in lines and sentences, and prose is cast in sentences and
paragraphs. The sense in verse is segmental to increase the
density of information and the perception of structure, but the
sense in prose is continuous. Certainly there are hybrid forms
of poetry such as prosaic poems and rhythmic prose, but it is
impossible that there is verse not set in lines. Listeners and
readers of poetry perceive the line as a rhythmical and
structural unit.
66. Litotes. Litotes is a figure of speech in which (1) there is an
affirmation by the negative of the contrary or (2) there is a
deliberate understatement for purposes of intensification.
Similar to meiosis, hyperbole, irony and paradox, litotes
requires that the reader/listener refer to the statement's context
to perceive the disparity between the words' literal and intentional
senses.
The distinction between litotes and meiosis is that, with respect
to the former, declaring a thing is less than it is emphasizes it
and, with respect to the latter, declaring a thing is less
de-emphasizes it.
Exs.: (1) This is no small problem, and (2) the valedictorian
was an above-average student.
Exs.:
67. Meiosis. Meiosis is the deliberate representation of something
as less in magnitude or importance than it actually is. It is the
opposite of hyperbole.
Ex.: Mark Twain's comment that "The reports of my death are
greatly exaggerated."
Ex.:
68. Metaphor. A metaphor is a trope, or figurative expression, in
which a word or phrase shifts from its normal usage to a context
where it evokes new meanings. In other words, it is a word or
expression that in literal usage denotes one thing but in another
context signifies another thing, without the poet asserting the
comparison. A mixed metaphor contains two or more diverse
metaphors. A dead metaphor is common to the extent that its
users are not aware of the discrepancy between the vehicle (the
metaphorical term itself) and the tenor (the subject).
Ex.: My love is a bottle of scotch (a metaphor).
We must take arms against this sea of trouble (a mixed
metaphor).
The leg of the table broke (a dead metaphor).
Ex. of a metaphor:
Ex. of a mixed metaphor:
Ex. of a dead metaphor:
69. Meter. Meter is the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent
feature in the sequence of speech-sounds of a language. There
are four primary types of meter. In classical Greek and Latin,
the meter was quantitative--focused on the relative duration of
the utterance of a syllable and the recurrent pattern of short and
long syllables. In the older Germanic languages, including Old
English, the meter was accentual--focused on the number of
stressed syllables within a line, without regard to the number of
intervening unstressed syllables. In many Romance languages,
the meter is syllabic--focuses on the number of syllables within
a line of verse, without regard to the stresses. The predominant
meter of English poetry since the fourteenth century is
accentual-syllabic--focuses on a recurrent pattern of stresses
on a recurrent number of syllables. Please refer to Foot.
70. Metonymy. Metonymy is the substitution of one word for
another on the basis of some material, causal or conceptual
relation. The following examples are the more common types
of metonymy.
1. Container for the thing contained: "I'll have a glass."
Ex.:
2. Agent for an act, product or object possessed: "I'm reading
Wordsworth."
Ex.:
3. Time or place for their characteristics or products: "I'll have
Burgundy."
Ex.:
4. Associative object for its possessor or user: "We must depose
the crown."
Ex.:
5. Parts of the body for states of consciousness associated with
them: head for thought.
Ex.:
6. Material for object made of it: ivories for piano keys.
Ex.:
71. Monometer. A line that consists of one foot is monometric.
72. Narrative poetry. A narrative poem is a verbal presentation
of a sequence of events or facts whose disposition in time
implies causal connection and point.
73. Octave. A stanza of eight lines is an octave.
74. Octosyllable. A line of eight syllables is octosyllabic.
Ex.: / / u / u / u /
Kit sits and taps her tail and waits.
Ex.:
75. Onomatopoeia. That is the traditional term for words that
seem to imitate the qualities (sounds, sizes, motions, colors) of
the things to which they refer.
Ex.: murmur
Ex.:
76. Oxymoron. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that yokes
together two seemingly contradictory elements.
Ex.: friendly fire
Ex.:
77. Paradox. A paradox is a statement that unites seemingly
contradictory words but, with closer examination, has an
unexpected meaning and truth. It is similar to oxymoron.
Ex.: Life is death, and death is life.
Ex.:
78. Parallelism. The repetition of identical or similar syntactic
patterns in adjacent phrases, clauses or sentences is parallelism.
Ex.: The woman laughed; the woman cried.
Ex.:
79. Pathetic fallacy. The tendency of poets and painters to imbue
the natural world with human feeling is pathetic fallacy.
Ex.: The oak was sad when the squirrel did not return.
Ex.:
80. Pathos. Evoking an audience's emotions in order to use them
as a means of persuasion is pathos.
81. Pentameter. That term denotes a meter of five measures or
feet.
Ex.: u / u / u / u / u /
She came; she saw; she left bereft of sense.
Ex.:
82. Persona. Persona refers to the first-person speaker who tells
the story in a narrative poem or novel. It also refers to the voice
we hear in a lyric poem.
83. Personification. Personification occurs when a poet endows
nonhuman objects, abstractions, or creatures with life and
human characteristics.
Ex.: The flowers you planted speak to me daily.
Ex.:
84. Pitch. Pitch (high versus low) is one of the three intonational
features of sound, the others being intensity (accent or stress)
and length (duration).
85. Polysyndeton. The repetition of conjunctions, normally and,
polysyndeton is the antonym of asyndeton, which is the
omission of conjunctions.
Ex.: She woke and dressed and ate and left.
Ex.:
86. Prose poem. With its oxymoronic title and its form based
on contradiction, the prose poem is suitable for an
extraordinary range of perception and expression. Basically
it is dense, rhythmic prose.
87. Pun. A play on words that are either identical in sound
(homonyms) or very similar in sound but are sharply diverse in
their meanings is a pun.
Ex.: the last word in the title of Oscar Wilde's comedy, The
Importance of Being Earnest (1899).
Ex.:
88. Pyrrhic. A metrical foot of two short syllables, some deny
the pyrrhic is a legitimate foot.
89. Quatrain. A stanza of four lines, a quatrain normally has
end rhymes.
90. Quintain. Any poem or stanza that has five lines is a quintain.
91. Refrain. A part of a line, a whole line, or several lines
that repeat verbatim at regular intervals throughout a poem,
usually at regular intervals and often at the end of a stanza,
is a refrain.
A refrain may be as short as a word or as long as a stanza.
Though usually recurring as a regular part of a metrical pattern,
it may appear irregularly throughout a poem, in regular form or
not, or in free verse. The refrain may appear each time with
a slight variation of wording appropriate to its immediate
context or in a way that its meaning develops from one recurrence
to the next. The refrain may be a tag or a nonsensical phrase
seemingly irrelevant to the remainder of the poem, or it may
emphasize or reinforce emotion or meaning by echoing or
elaborating a crucial image or theme. Regardless, the repetition
of sound is pleasurable, and refrains segment and correlate
rhythmic units, unifying poems.
92. Repetition. Repetition of sound, syllable, word, phrase,
line, strophe, metrical pattern, or syntactic structure is the
core of any definition of poetry.
93. Rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a clause in the
grammatical form of a question that a writer asks, not to request
information or to invite a reply, but to achieve a greater
expressive force than a direct assertion. "Isn't a shame?"
functions as a forceful alternative to the assertion, "It's a
shame."
Ex.:
94. Rhyme scheme. That term denotes the pattern of rhymes at the
end of lines (for examples: aa, bb, cc, et cetera; ab, ab, cd, et
cetera; or abc, abc, def, et cetera). The following example is
the sestet of John Keats' "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" (1817).
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Being round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
Which mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time--with a billowy main--
A sun--a shadow of a magnitude.
The rhyme scheme is:
95. Rhythm. A cadence, a contour, a figure of periodicity:
rhythm is any sequence of events or objects perceptible as
a distinct pattern capable of repetition and variation.
96. Satire. Satire is both a mode of discourse that asserts
a polemical or critical outlook and a specific literary genre
that embodies such a mode in either prose or verse. From
earliest times satire has tended toward didacticism. Despite
the aesthetic and often comic pleasure of satire, their authors
incline toward self-promotion as judges of morals and
manners, of thought and behavior. Numerous satirists ridicule
or berate the shortcomings of their own times, hoping that their
values will outlast the occasions or crises of the moment.
97. Scansion. Scansion is the interpretation of the meter of a
poem. It is also the graphic transcription thereof, usually by
symbols (/ and u).
98. Septet. A septet is a seven-line stanza whose meter and rhyme
scheme varies.
99. Sestet. The minor division or last six lines of a sonnet is
a sestet. An octave precedes it. Sometimes the octave states
a proposition or situation and the sestet a conclusion. The
rhyme scheme of a sestet varies. In an Italian sonnet it is
cdecde or cdcdcd. In an English sonnet it is efefgg.
100. Sexain. Any stanzaic pattern of six lines is a sexain.
101. Simile. An explicit comparison using like or as is a simile.
The function of the comparison is to reveal an unexpected
likeness between two seemingly disparate things--in the
following case, the reduction of tribal African women
to objects.
Ex.: "black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs" (Elizabeth Bishop)
Ex.:
102. Slant rhyme. Also known as partial or imperfect rhyme, slant
rhyme occurs when the vowels of words at the end of lines are
approximate or different and occasionally the consonants are
similar rather than identical. The following six-line stanza
(sexain) is from Wilfred Owen's "Miners"
(1931).
The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreamy lids,
While songs are crooned.
But they will not dream of us poor lads,
Lost in the ground.
Ex.:
103. Sonnet. The sonnet is a 14-line poem--normally in
hendecasyllables (Italian), iambic pentameter (English), or
alexandrines (French)--whose rhyme scheme has in practice
varied widely despite the traditional assumption that the
sonnet is a fixed form. The three most widely recognized
versions of the sonnet, with their traditional rhyme schemes,
are the Italian or Petrarchan (octave: abbaabba; sestet:
cdecde or cdcdcd), the Spenserian (abab // bcbc // cdcd
// ee), and the English or Shakespearean (abab // cdcd //
efef // gg). The Spenserian and Shakespearean patterns offer
some relief to the greater difficulty of rhyming in English and
invite a division of thought into three quatrains and a closing
couplet.
104. Speaker. Use the term speaker, not poet, when discussing a
poem. The voice we hear in a poem is not necessarily the
poet's.
105. Spondee. A spondee is a foot (metrical unit) of two stressed
syllables.
Ex.: / /
Kit sits.
Ex.:
106. Stanza. A stanza is a group of lines in a poem. They are
often set off by a space in the text. Usually the stanzas of a
poem have a recurrent pattern of rhyme and are uniform in the
number and lengths of the component lines. Some unrhymed
poems, however, contain stanzas, and some rhymed poems
contain stanzas that vary in the number of component lines.
The following are the more common stanzas: couplet, envoy,
tercet, terza rima, quatrain, heroic quatrain, rime royal, ottava
rima, Spenserian stanza, villanelle, and sestina.
107. Syllabic verse. The regulation of lines of verse via the
number of syllables is syllabic verse.
Ex.: u u / u u / u u /
In the season of spring, when the sun
u / u / u / u u /
is soft, I shop for clothes to seclude
Ex.:
108. Syllable. A syllable has been conceived as (a) one separate
respiratory movement, (b) one opening and closing of the
vocal tract aperture, (c)one peak of sonority in the
soundstream, and (d) fiction.
109. Symbol. In the broadest sense of the term, a symbol is
anything that signifies something. With respect to that sense,
all words are symbols. With respect to poetry, however, a
symbol is a word or phrase that signifies an object or event
which in turn signifies something beyond itself. Some symbols
are public; some are private.
Ex.: the Red, White and Blue
Ex.:
110. Synaeresis. Synaeresis is the coalescing of two vowels
within a word.
Ex.: the oi in boil
Ex.:
111. Synaloepha. Synaloepha is the coalescing of two vowels
across a word boundary--that is, ending one word and
beginning the next.
Ex.: th' elite for the elite
Ex.:
112. Syncope. Syncope is the shortening of a word by omission
of a sound, letter or syllable from the middle of the word.
Ex.: bos'n for boatswain
Ex.:
113. Synecdoche. With respect to synecdoche, (1) a part of
something signifies the whole or, more rarely, (2) the whole
signifies a part.
Exs.: (1) hired hands for hired men and (2) reading
Shakespeare for reading Hamlet.
Exs.:
114. Synesthesia. With respect to synesthesia, one sense modality is
felt, perceived or described in terms of another.
Ex.: describing a voice as velvety, warm, heavy or sweet.
Ex.:
115. Syntax. All human language derives its expressive power
in part from syntax, the placement of words in arbitrary
but conventional sequences. More than most other users
of language, poets exploit such potential when they write.
116. Tercet. A unit of verse consisting of three lines, usually with
end rhyme, is a tercet.
117. Tetrameter. Tetrameter is a metric line of four feet.
Ex.: / / u / u / / u
Kit sits and taps her tail, waiting.
Ex.:
118. Theme. In common usage theme refers simply to the subject
or topic treated in a discourse or a part of it. Thus, to speak
of the theme of a poem may be only to answer the question,
"About what is this poem?"
119. Trimeter. A trimeter is a metric line of three feet.
Ex.: / / u / u /
Kit sits and taps her tail.
Ex.:
120. Trochaic. Trochaic is the term for both metrical units
and whole meters that have the rhythm /u.
Ex.: / u / u / u
Kit was sitting, waiting.
Ex.:
121. Understatement. Please refer to Meiosis.
122. Villanelle. Traditionally a villanelle is a 19-line poem
with the following rhyme scheme: A1bA2 // abA1 // abA2 //
abA1 // abA2 // abA1A2.
