Reading Poetry

Ms. LoganEnglish I

The rules

1. Look for punctuation that tells you where the sentence begins and ends.

2. Don’t make a full stop at the end of a line if there’s no end punctuation.

3. If it’s hard, charge through. It’s the overall composition we’re looking at here.

4. Be alert for literary devices.5. Read the poem aloud.6. Talk about it. Read it again. And again.

Different Types, Yes, there are

• Classic poetry has a very developed sense of meter

• METER- pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

• Free verse is poetry that is free of regular meter

• Haiku

“The poet… should stop and examine what others have missed, whether it be veins on a leaf or the surge of a mob; he should hear what others miss– not just skylarks but the breath of an old man or sleet against the window; he should respond to the feel of a rusted iron railing, a cut, or a gull’s feather; he should identify the variety of city smells and country odors and consider what it is that makes an unoccupied house different from one lived in; and he should taste not only food but pine gum and smog.”

--Stephen Minot

Devices Used in Poetry

• Alliteration• Assonance• Onomatopoeia • Imagery• Personification• Simile/Metaphor• Rhyme (at times)– Approximate Rhyme– Internal Rhyme

• Meter

Psycho female blowin up the phone line You need to tighten that screw, it's been loose for a long time I've been slammed with some bad luck Soon I'm gonna bring you doom with the buck, buck And now you duck duck goose, I'm lettin' loose With the thirty odd freestyle Labeled hostile by my profile Must be all the madness You and all your tactics Jonesin for my cash Got to make them pockets super phat Hey I'm a humble man Kicking out the jams like a tramp I'm gonna stick it like a stamp to this business What's with all the business I get paid to take the microphone and slay the stage

TO DO

• The poetry collection in your literature textbook starts on page 487

• Find a poem that touches you in some way• Write a reflection on why you like it– Think about what it sounds like– Think about what, specifically, you like about it– Pick out one or two lines that mean the most to

you, quote them, and analyze them.

For example:

In e.e. cumming’s “in Just” on page 505, I love that he uses spacing to control how the reader enjoys the poem. I can almost feel the draw of breaths between the line “whistles far andwee.” I also love the way “mud-luscious” rolls off the tongue, and the image it creates of a patchy, muddy world which is ripe for exploring. Overall, this poem just screams how Spring can be mud-drenched, but still lovely when one takes advantage of it.