Good Day!

November 16, 2012

Agenda:

•Turn in Chapter 15 Poetry Homework

•Introduce Inquiring Minds and The Renaissance

•Notes on Sounds in Poetry

•Peer Analysis of SRP Outlines

Homework:

1.Poetry Sounds Test is next Monday, 11/19

2.Renaissance Presentations Due Tuesday, 11/20

Poets Play

with Sounds

Today’s Lesson• Rhythm

• Meter

• Scansion– stressed & unstressed syllables

– enjambment and end-stopped lines

• Feet

• Free verse

• Structure

Rhythm is

• The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language (not just poetry)

• Why is rhythm a big deal?

• There was this girl named Mary and she had this white lamb that kept following her

• life is full of rhythms—rocking chairs, swings, marching, heartbeats

• a poem that has rhythm is memorable

• a poem with rhythm is like a song

• rhythm is made up of stressed (strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables

• and pauses

Meter is:• the regular pattern of stressed (strong) and

unstressed (weak) syllables found in some poetry

• the most obvious kind of rhythm

• Take me up, tenderly

• Double, double, toil and trouble

Scansion is• marking the stressed and unstressed syllables

(meter) in a poem

• using for unstressed syllables and an accent mark / for stressed syllables

• rhythmic lines have a pattern that can be broken up into feet just like music has measures

• The best tool for scanning a poem is a dictionary

Mary had a little lamb

• Scansion:

/ / / /

Ma ry had a lit tle lamb

Scansion with feet marked:

/ / / /

Mary had a little lamb

Feet and Iambs• Feet have different names according to their

patterns.

• An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is called an iamb

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

• The line of poetry above has five feet

• iambic pentameter—Shakespeare’s favorite!

Rhythm and Scansion Shall I compare thee to a sum mer’s day?

• Why does rhythm matter?

• It reinforces the meaning of the poem.

• Two or more stressed syllables next to each other add power and force to the poem

• Two or more unstressed syllables next to each other seem uncertain or quiet

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Full Fathom Five Thy Father LiesWilliam Shakespeare

Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea changeInto something rich and strange.Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.Hark! now I hear them---Ding-dong, bell.

End-Stopped vs. Enjambment• If a line of poetry ends with punctuation, we pause

= end-stopped line

• If a line of poetry doesn’t end with punctuation, we don’t pause = enjambment

• End-stopped lines sound like definite statements and they emphasize the rhythm

• Enjambed lines sound hurried or like things are sweeping along

---from “At the Altar”Robert Lowell

I sit at a gold table with my girl

Whose eyelids burn with brandy. What a whirl

Of Easter eggs is colored by the lights,

As the Norwegian dancer’s crystalled tights

Flash with her naked leg’s high-booted skate,

Like Northern Lights upon my watching plate.

Feminine vs. Masculine Rhyme• Feminine Rhyme: a rhyme with two or more

syllables with a stress on a syllable other than the last.

• For Example: tur-tle and fur-tile

pow-er and dow-er

walk-ing and talk-ing

• Your Turn!

Feminine vs. Masculine Rhyme• Masculine Rhyme: either a rhyme of one syllable

words (as in fox and sox) or, in polysyllabic words, a rhyme on the stressed final syllables:

• For Example:con-trive and sur-vive

de-fine and a-lign

to-day and a-rray

• Your Turn!

Free Verse• What if a poet chooses not to use rhythm?

• S/he writes in free verse

• sounds like natural conversation

• follows “curves of thought” or “shapes of speech”

• some readers like it, some don’t

• Robert Frost says writing a poem in free verse is “like playing tennis with the net down.”

This is Just to SayWilliam Carlos Williams

I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso sweet and so cold

• So rhythm aligns with meaning . . . .?

Structure:

• the form of the poem

• how the poem looks on the page

• lengths of lines

• lengths of words and syllables

• how and where the poem is/isn’t divided into stanzas

• where the poem rhymes or doesn’t rhyme

• repetition of words or phrases

Some famous poetic structures are

• sonnets

• haikus

• ballads

Structure also aligns with meaning

Not to change the subject, but what is a hook and eye?

you fit into melike a hook into an eye

a fish hookan open eye

• --Margaret Atwood