Introduction

ENGLISH
POETRY
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 Emily Dickinson
• Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10,
1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet
• Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a
successful family with strong community ties,
she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive
life.
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 Robert Forst
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29,
1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded
for his realistic depictions of rural life and his
command of American colloquial speech
His work frequently employed settings from rural life
in New England in the early twentieth century, using
them to examine complex social and philosophical
themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was
honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four
Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.
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 John Keats
JOHN KEATS was born in London, October 29, 1795,
and he died of consumption, February 23, 1821, in
Rome.
He was educated at Enfield. Choosing medicine as a
profession, he was apprenticed, at the age of fifteen,
to a surgeon at Edmonton. Although he spent most
of his time in literary study, yet he completed his
apprenticeship creditably and repaired to London to
complete his work in the hospital
 What is Poetry?

A short piece of imaginative writing?

A personal nature and laid out in lines?
 What is poetry?
Poetry presents indivisible wholes of human
consciousness, modified and ordered by the
stringent requirements of form. Prose, aiming
at a definite and concrete goal, generally
suppresses everything inessential to its
purpose; poetry,
existing only to exhibit itself as an aesthetic
object,
aims only at completeness and perfection of
form.
Richard Harter Fogle
 What is poetry?
Poetry is, above all,
an approach to the truth of feeling....
A fine poem will seize your imagination
intellectually—
that is, when you reach it,
you will reach it intellectually too—
but the way is through emotion,
through what we call feeling.

Muriel Rukeyser
 What is poetry?
• Prose talks and poetry sings.

Franz Grillparzer
• You campaign in poetry. You govern in
prose.

Mario Cuomo
 What is poetry?
• 'If I feel physically as if the top of my head
were taken off, I know that is poetry.'

Emily Dickenson
• I could no more define poetry
than a terrier can define a rat.'

A. E. Housman
 Poetry?
• It is an art form.
• It is something that can not be judged by its
cover and can not be criticized to the point
where it just "sucks."
• Poetry is about expression.
• Poetry expresses the way we feel about a certain
subject through imagery and other senses.
• It helps us deal with our daily life, be it good or
bad.
 Poetry is old?
Poetry uses language to more and say it more
intensely than the ordinary language of stories
and drama (perrine, h.547)
Poets create specific emotional effects through
language’s meanings, sounds, and rhythme,
using these devices to focus our senses and
our perception of life.
 Poetry is different???
• Its compression of thought
• Its conventions of meter and rhythm
• Its reliance on the line as a formal unit
• Its emphasis on sound
Poetry love words and the sounds of language.
The focus is on expressing emotional content or
express a thematic statement or message
 A kind of multidimensional language
Imagery simile
Symbol methaphor
Rhythm
Sound repetition
Rhyme
Pattern
Connotation
 Poetry:
is the beautiful manipulation of language for the
pleasure of our ears and senses.
It is a mystery to those of us who appreciate it.
It can be fun, serious, exhilarating and
penetrating.
TYPES OF POETRY
 LYRIC
• 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
 HAIKU

A Japanese poem
written in three lines An old silent pond . . .
A frog jumps into the pond.
Five Syllables Splash! Silence again.
Seven Syllables
Five Syllables
 CONCRETE POEMS
Poetry
• In concrete poems, the Is like
words are arranged to Flames,
Which are
create a picture that Swift and elusive
relates to the content Dodging realization
Sparks, like words on the
of the poem. Paper, leap and dance in the
Flickering firelight. The fiery
Tongues, formless and shifting
Shapes, tease the imiagination.
Yet for those who see,
Through their mind’s
Eye, they burn
Up the page.
 CINQUAIN

A five line poem

containing 22 syllables How frail
Above the bulk
Two Syllables Of crashing water hangs
Four Syllables
Autumnal, evanescent, wan
Six Syllables
Eight Syllables The moon.
Two Syllables
 Diamonte poems
• Poem that begins with one word and ends
with its opposite.
• When completed, it will look like a diamond
(diamonte = diamond)
 Diamonte pattern
• Line 1 = Word/opposite of line 7
• Line 2 = Description of line one (generally 2 words)
• Line 3 = Action that line one does (generally 3 words)
• Line 4 = Two words (usually nouns) about line 1 and two
words (usually nouns about line 7
• Line 5 = Action that line 7 does (generally 3 words)
• Line 6 = Description of line 7 (usually 2 words)
• Line 7 = Word/opposite of line 1
 Diamonte examples
Love
Bright, Passionate
Charming, Drifting, Growing
Cherish, Infatuation, Antipathy, Uncaring
Animosity, Falling, Dead
Dark, Disgust
Hate
• Try to make sure that words and descriptions about line
7/line 1 are parallel
 Diamonte examples
Man
Brilliant, perfect
Working, learning, earning
Beer, car, mirror, make-up
Speaking, speaking, speaking
Furious, exhausted
Woman
 Man
Stupid, rude
Sleeping, eating, belching
Trousers, underpants, knickers, skirts
Working, sporting
Clever, beautiful
Woman
 How to Write a Clerihew
• Clerihews are four lines long
• The first two lines rhyme together (a)
• The last two lines rhyme together (b)
• Must be funny
• The first line usually names a person and the
second line usually ends with something that
rhymes with that person
 Clerihew examples
My funny shop teacher Mr. Carr
Dropped on his head a heavy crow bar.
He began to curse and yell
Telling the hammer to go straight to hell.
 Clerihew examples
My band teacher Mr. Lockhart is kind of nutty
I wish I didn't have him as a buddy.
He's goofy and tells some stupid jokes;
I wonder where he'll go if he croaks.
 SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET
A fourteen line poem with a Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
specific rhyme scheme. 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.
The poem is written in three Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
quatrains and ends with a And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
couplet. By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

The rhyme scheme is Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st
abab cdcd efef gg So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 NARRATIVE POEMS
• A poem that tells a Examples of Narrative
story. Poems
• Generally longer than
the lyric styles of poetry “The Raven”
b/c the poet needs to “The Highwayman”
establish characters and
a plot. “Casey at the Bat”
“The Walrus and the
Carpenter”
 FREE VERSE POETRY
• Unlike metered poetry, • Free verse poetry is
free verse poetry does very conversational -
NOT have any repeating sounds like someone
patterns of stressed and talking with you.
unstressed syllables.
• Does NOT have rhyme. • A more modern type of
poetry.
 BLANK VERSE POETRY
from Julius Ceasar

Cowards die many times before their

• Written in lines of deaths;
iambic pentameter, but The valiant never taste of death but
once.
does NOT use end
Of all the wonders that I yet have
rhyme. heard,
It seems to me most strange that
men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Poetry Analysis Using
TPCASTT
 Getting Started…
• This is a process to help you organize your
analysis of poetry.
• You have a note sheet that looks like this…
Analysis Using This Sheet
 T is for TITLE
• Analyze the title first.
• What do you predict this poem will be about?
• Write down your predictions.
• We will reflect on the title again after we have
read the poem.
• The next step is often omitted, but it is the
most important!!!!
READ THE POEM!!!!
P is for PARAPHRASE
Paraphrasing is
putting something in
your own words.
After reading the
poem, rewrite it in
your own words.
This may be three
sentences or a page,
depending on the
particular poem.
C is for CONNOTATION
• Analyze the figures of
speech and sound
effects of the poem.
• These are the poetry
vocabulary we have
already studied.
• These elements add to
the meaning.
 A is for ATTITUDE
• Tone is the attitude of
the speaker toward
the subject of the
poem.
S is for SHIFT
• If there is a change
in…
– Time
– Tone
– Speaker
This should always
be noted as this
will also affect the
meaning.
 T is for TITLE (again)
• At this time, you should reconsider the title.
• Were you right in your predictions?
• What other meanings might the title have in
light of your analysis?
• Next, the biggie….
 T is for THEME
• As you already know, theme is the general
insight into life conveyed by the author
through his/her work.
• It does not make a judgment.
example: “Don’t do drugs” is not a theme.
• It merely states something that is true to life
and the human condition.
How do I find the THEME?
• Look at the other
parts of TPCASTT.
• What insight are all of
these working
together to convey?
• What is the poet
trying to say about
life?
 Mirror –Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no Now I am a lake. A woman bends
preconceptions. over me,
Whatever I see I swallow Searching my reaches for what
immediately she really is.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or Then she turns to those liars, the
dislike. candles or the moon.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ I see her back, and reflect it
The eye of a little god, four- faithfully.
cornered. She rewards me with tears and
Most of the time I meditate on an agitation of hands.
the opposite wall. I am important to her. She comes
It is pink, with speckles. I have and goes.
looked at it so long Each morning it is her face that
I think it is part of my heart. But it replaces the darkness.
flickers. In me she has drowned a young
Faces and darkness separate us girl, and in me an old woman
over and over. Rises toward her day after day,
like a terrible fish.
• Ending - Gavin Ewart

The love we thought would never stop

now cools like a congealing chop.
The kisses that were hot as curry
are bird-pecks taken in a hurry.
The hands that held electric charges
now lie inert as four moored barges.
The feet that ran to meet a date
are running slow and running late.
The eyes that shone and seldom shut
are victims of a power cut.
The parts that then transmitted joy
are now reserved and cold and coy.
Romance, expected once to stay,
has left a note saying Gone Away.
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