Poetic Terms for AP Literature and Composition

Created and Presented by Ms. Vazquez

September 1, 2009Somerset Academy

Types of PoemsLyric : any fairly short poem expressing the

personal mood, feeling, or meditation of a single speaker.

Ode: an elaborately formal poem often in the form a lengthy ceremonious address to a person or abstract entity. It is always serious and elevated in tone.

Epic Poem: long, serious poems that tell the story of a heroic figure.

Dramatic MonologuesA type of poem in which a speaker addresses

an internal listener or the reader. Often the speaker includes details reflecting the listerner’s nonverbal responses.

** Many times much more is revealed about the speaker than about what he or she is talking about.

Examples: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot and My Last Duchess by Robert Browning.

Think / Pair / ShareThink about some examples of Odes, Epic

Poems, and/or Lyrical poems you have read in the past.

Pair up with the person next to you.

Discuss for two minutes.

Share with the class.

Pastoral Poetry Poem that depicts

rural life in a peaceful, idealized way. Celebrates the innocent life of shepherds.

Carpe Diem : Latin expression that means "seize the day." Carpe diem is a theme in poetry that promotes living for today.

Read “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe.

Is this a pastoral poem? Discuss. Does it have a Carpe Diem theme? Discuss

Elegy : an elaborately formal lyrical poem lamenting the death of a friend or public figure, or reflecting seriously on a somber subject.

Homework Due Monday 8/26

Alfred Lord Tennyson was a famous Victorian writer who wrote a famous elegy. Research and summarize the reason as to why he wrote the elegy and for whom he wrote it. Also, identify some of the themes he incorporates in his poem. One page, typed, double spaced, MLA Format.

“Tennyson’s great experimental poem reconceives the traditional elegy, which it blends with other genres, including ordinary lyric, epic, dream vision, landscape meditations, dramatic monologues, and so on.” -George P. Landaw The Victorian Web

SestinaIn a traditional Sestina: The lines are grouped into six sestets and a concluding tercet. How many lines does a Sestina have? The six words that end each of the lines of the first stanza are

repeated in a different order at the end of lines in each of the subsequent five stanzas.

The repeated words are unrhymed. The first line of each sestet after the first ends with the same

word as the one that ended the last line of the sestet before it. In the closing tercet, each of the six words are used, with one

in the middle of each line and one at the end. The pattern of word-repetition is as follows, where the words

that end the lines of the first sestet are represented by the numbers "1 2 3 4 5 6":

SonnetsEnglish Sonnets

(Shakespearean): Three quatrains and a couplet, rhymed ababcdcdefefgg.

Italian Sonnets (Petrarchan): 8 line octave of two quatrains, rhymed abbaabba, followed by a six line sestet usually rhymed cdecde or cdcdcd.

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats Pg. 728

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been toldThat deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his

demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud

and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Class Assignment:Compose your own modernized Italian

Sonnet and include the theme of discovery and epiphany. Consider an author, artist, musician, actor, etc. whom you recently discovered and who inspires you with his/her art, music, writing, etc. Be sure to write abiding by the Italian sonnet rhyme scheme, length, and syllables per line.