:

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is a speaking

picture.

-   Simonides

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the N th

power.-   Paul Engle

The language beneath the language:

This is poetry.-   Andrea Pacione

Poetry is being, not doing.-   E.E. Cummings

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought 

and the thought has found words.  

-   Robert Frost

A REGULAR PATTERN OF RHYMING WORDS IN A POEM

It was many and many a year ago,

In the kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived, whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love, and be loved by me.

SAMPLE RHYME SCHEME

The Germ by Ogden Nash

• A mighty creature is the germ, a• Though smaller than the pachyderm. a• His customary dwelling place b• Is deep within the human race. b• His childish pride he often pleases c• By giving people strange diseases. c• Do you, my poppet, feel infirm? a• You probably contain a germ. a

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village, though;He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.

Rhyming words WITHIN lines

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarg

I cremated Sam McGee.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while

I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious

volume of forgotten lore,

While I nodded, nearly napping,

suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping,

rapping at my chamber door.

" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered,

"tapping at my chamber door;

Only this, and nothing more."

Sounds that are similar, but not exact.

For example: home – come;

rain - again

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy

But I hung on like death

Such waltzing is not easy.

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune--without the words,

And never stops at all,

Repetition of vowel sounds in two or more words

And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride,

In the sepulcher there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

On either side of the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye.

Two or more words in a line that begin with the same

consonant sound.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor

And the highwayman came riding –

Riding – riding –

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

Words that imitate sounds.

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of despair!

How they clang and clash and roar!

What a horror they outpour

In the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear, it fully knows,

By the twanging

And the clanging,

In the jangling

And the wrangling

Of the bells –

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells

A figure of speech that compares two unlike things saying that one thing “is” the other.

Morning is a new sheet of paper for you to write on.

Whatever you want to say all day until night folds it up and files it

away . ...

Hey, you forgot us!Hurry back.

You will find one of usbehind the baseball diamond,the other oneby the swing.

Without your hands,we are five-room houseswaiting for our inhabitantsto come home.

We are soft shellsthat missthe snails that would give themtheir own slowspeed.

We are red wingsthat have forgottenhow to fly.

When you find us,put us on,

For like puppies who warm each otherall night you will warm usand we will warmyour hands

Which must belostvalentineswithout their redenvelopes.

The Red Glovesby Siv Cedering

The comparison of two unlike things using the words “like” or “as.”

Quartered,

A seed rocks

In each tiny cradle.

Like blood,

In the air an apple

Rusts.

My love is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June:

O, my love is like the melody

That’s sweetly play’d in tune

A figure of speech which gives human qualities to something that is not human.

The fog comeson little cat feet.

It sits lookingover harbor and cityon silent haunchesand then moves on.

When Sonny Boy`s mama died

He played nonstop all day, so hard

Our backboard splintered.

Glistening with sweat, we jibed

& rolled the ball off our

Fingertips. Trouble

Was there slapping a blackjack

Against an open palm.

A deliberate exaggeration or overstatement.

I have the measles and the mumps

A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,

I’m going blind in my right eye.

Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury`s Insignia on our sneakers, We outmaneuvered the footwork Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot Swish of strings like silk Ten feet out. In the roundhouse Labyrinth our bodies Created, we could almost Last forever, poised in midair Like storybook sea monsters.

Language that appeals to the senses.

Yes, the apple tastes of light,

Cold light.

That’s it, the apple!

What a lively fruit

So much like morning!

At the center, a dark star

Wrapped in white.

When you bite, listen

For the crunch of boots on snow

Snow that has ripened. Over it

Stretches the red, starry sky.

Allusion

brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art. Casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure

or event.

Christopher didn't like to spend money. He was no Scrooge, but he seldom purchased anything

except the bare necessities

As the cave's roof collapsed, he was swallowed up in

the dust like Jonah, and only

his frantic scrabbling behind

a wall of rock indicated that

there was anyone still alive".

As Naomi lay in her bed, delirious with fever, her mother

was a real Florence Nightingale, giving

her water to sip through a straw and pressing cool cloths

to her burning forehead.

POETRY FORM

FORM - the appearance of the words on the pageLINE - a group of words together on one line of the poem

STANZA - a group of lines arranged together

A word is deadWhen it is said,

Some say.

I say it justBegins to live

That day.

Kinds of Stanzas

Couplet = a two line stanza

Triplet (Tercet) = a three line stanza

Quatrain = a four line stanza

Octave = an eight line stanza

Meter

A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Meter occurs when the stressed and unstressed syllables of the words in a poem are arranged in a repeating pattern.

When poets write in meter, they count out the number of stressed (strong) syllables and unstressed (weak) syllables for each line. They repeat the pattern throughout the poem.

An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of

an unaccented syllable Ufollowed by an accented

syllable /.

U /a gain

U / U / im mor tal ize

Iambic pentameter

U / U / U / U / U /• One day I wrote her name u pon the strand, U / U / U / U / U /• But came the waves and wash ed it a way: U / U / U / U / U /• A gain I wrote it with a sec ond hand, U / U / U / U / U /• But came the tide, and made my pains his prey

» Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, Sonnet 75

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Free Verse Poetry

• Unlike metered poetry, free verse poetry does NOT have any repeating patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

• Does NOT have rhyme.

• Free verse poetry is very conversational - sounds like someone talking with you.

• A more modern type of poetry.

LYRIC POEM

• A short poem

• Usually written in first person point of view

• Expresses an emotion or an idea or describes a scene

• Do not tell a story and are often musical

• (Many of the poems we read will be lyrics.)

Haiku

A Japanese poem

written in three lines

Five Syllables

Seven Syllables

Five Syllables

An old silent pond . . .

A frog jumps into the pond.

Splash! Silence again.

Shakespearean Sonnet

A fourteen line poem with a specific rhyme

scheme.

The poem is written in three quatrains and ends with a couplet.

The rhyme scheme isabab cdcd efef gg

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate.Rough winds do shake the darling buds of

May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a

date.Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his

shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.