All Things Poetic
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Hehe... since DP mentioned something about lacking a guide or informational / educational articles about appreciating or writing poetry etc... thought would be good to start a thread and if any comes across a useful article or tips can share it with the rest here!!
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What is a poem? What's the difference between a sonnet, ode or ballad??
It is typically much easier to describe poetry than attempting to define it. As a rough indication, Poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language. William Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquillity." Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature, saying most in the fewest number of words.
Here are some characteristics or patterns of Traditional Poems (source: Reuben, Paul P. "PAL: Appendix F: Elements of Poetry." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL:http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/append/axf.html )
Ballad, or literary ballad, is a long singing poem that tells a story (usually of love or adventure), written in quatrains - four lines alternatively of four and three feet - the third line may have internal rhyme.
Ballade is French in origin and made up of 28 lines, usually three stanzas of 8 lines and a concluding stanza, called envoy, of 4 lines. The last line of each stanza is the same and the scheme is ababbcbc and the envoy's is bcbc.
Blank Verse is made up of unrhymed iambic pentameter lines.
Elegy is a lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead.
Epigram is a brief, pointed, and witty poem of no prescribed form.
Free Verse has no identifiable meter, although the lines may have a rhyme-scheme.
Haiku is an unrhymed poem of seventeen syllables derived from Japanese verse; it is made up of three lines, lines 1 and 3 have five syllables, line 2 has seven.
Heroic Couplet is two lines of rhyming iambic pentameters.
Limerick is a five-line poem in which lines 1, 2, and 5 are anapestic trimeters and lines 3 and 4 are anapestic dimeters, rhymed as aabba. Possible source of origin is Limerick, Ireland.
Lyric is a poem of emotional intensity and expresses powerful feelings.
Narrative form is used to tell a story; it is usually made of ballad stanzas - four lines alternatively of four and three feet.
Ode, English in origin, is a poem of indefinite length, divided in 10-line stanzas, rhymed, with different schemes for each stanza - ababcdecde, written in iambic meter.
Parody is a humorous imitation of a serious poem.
Quatrain is a four-line stanza with various meters and rhyme schemes.
Sestina consists of thirty-nine lines divided into six six-line stanzas and a three-line concluding stanza called an envoy.
Sonnet is a fourteen line poem. The Italian or Petrarchan has two stanzas: the first of eight lines is called octave and has the rhyme-scheme abba abba; the second of six lines is called the sestet and has the rhyme cdecde or cdcdcd. The Spenserian sonnet, developed by Edmund Spenser, has three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic pentameter with rhymes ababbcbccdcdee. The English sonnet, developed by Shakespeare, has three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic pentameter with rhymes ababcdcdefefgg.
Tercet is a three-line stanza; when all three lines rhyme they are called a triplet.
Terza Rima consists of interlocking three-line rhyme scheme (aba, bcb).
Villanelle is a fixed form consisting of nineteen lines divided into six stanzas: five tercets and a a concluding quatrain. -
interesting......
can someone explain all that in singlish?!!
my angmoh no good lah.... -
donch bruff
it's clear that you know
what all those words really mean
just keep on writing
i like haikus
Originally posted by tare:interesting......
can someone explain all that in singlish?!! my angmoh no good lah.... -
X2. I must go library and read up lah. All these already return back to my Lit. teacher.Originally posted by tare:interesting......
can someone explain all that in singlish?!! my angmoh no good lah.... -
Reading poems.... what are the elements in a poem?
When you read a poem, pay attention to some basic ideas:
Voice (Who is speaking? How are they speaking?)
Stanzas (how lines are grouped)
Sound (includes rhyme, but also many other patterns)
Rhythm (what kind of "beat" or meter does the poem have?)
Figures of speech (many poems are full of metaphors and other figurative language)
Form (there are standard types of poem) -
Voice in a poem
A lyric poem is one that expresses the feelings and emotions of the poet. It often uses first person pronouns (I, me, my, we, our, us, mine, ours, etc.) Sometimes there are no personal pronouns but it is clearly a personal observation by the writer.
A narrative poem tells a story. The poet recounts something that happens, but is not part of the story. It may be humorous, epic, or even nonsense. It starts the narrative immediately, using the words and rhythm to set a mood and show what kind of story it will be. Ballads use the narrative voice.
Apostrophe talks to something that can't answer (a bee, the moon, a tree) and is good for wondering, asking, or offering advice. Mask puts on the identity of someone or something else, and speaks for it. Conversation is a dialogue between two voices and often asks us to guess who the voices are. -
Breaking up a poem in Stanzas
A stanza is a group within a poem which may have two or many lines.
2 lines - couplet
3 lines - tercet
4 lines - quatrain
5 lines - quintet
6 lines - sestet
7 lines - septet
8 lines - octave
Couplets, tercets, and quatrains are the building blocks of poetry and longer stanzas are made up of variations on them.
Some poems are made only of couplets--two lines that rhyme, one after the other, usually equal in length. When one couplet makes a whole poem, it is called a closed couplet. Some poems are mde of tercets. If they use only one end-rhyme sound, they are called triplets. The quatrain is the most widely used form. Rhyming patterns can vary. A pattern of two rhyming lines surrounded by two other rhyming lines is called envelope verse. Quintets can be made of patterns of couplets and tercets. A sestet may be made of three couplets, a couplet and a quatrain, two tercets, or other patterns. -
The hills are alive..... with the Sound of poetry....
One of the most important things poems do is play with sound. That doesn't just mean rhyme. It means many other things. The first poems were memorized and recited, not written down, so how it sounds is very important in poetry.
Rhyme - Rhyme means sounds agree. "Rhyme" usually means end rhymes (words at the end of a line). They give balance and please the ear. There are perfect rhymes (synonyms: complete, full, true, or exact) and off rhymes (synonyms: half, near, imperfect, partial, or slant), which have vowels or consonants in common.
If you end a line with a stress, it's called "masculine" rhyme, and if you end it with an unstressed syllable, it's "feminine" rhyme. An example of "feminine" rhyme is this couplet from the Black-Eyed Peas' "Where Is The Love?" :
I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I'm gettin' older, y'all, people gets colder
The stress in this rhyme is on the first syllable of "shoulder" and "colder." Later in the same song, here is an example of "masculine" rhyme:
Can you practice what you preach
And would you turn the other cheek
Repetition - Repetition a word or phrase used more than once. Repetition can create music, a pattern that appeals to the ears. It can serve as an aid to remembering a poem, can emphasize a concept or an action. It should be something worth repeating. It provides sound and thought patterns, even when there is no end rhyme. One form of repetition is the refrain, a whole line repeated.
Refrain - Lines repeated in the same way. Lines that change a word or two are called incremental refrains.
Alliteration - Alliteration is the repetition of the same sound in words. Alliteration that begins a word is initial alliteration, and alliteration within a word is called hidden or internal alliteration. Listen for alliteration rather than depending on your eyes.
Onomatopoeia - Onomatopoeia means words or phrases that sound like the things they are describing. (hiss, zoom, bow-wow, etc.)
Consonance - When consonants agree in words. (fast, lost)
Assonance - When vowels agree in words. (peach, tree) -
In the Rhythm of a line...
Meter (or metrics) - When you speak, you don't say everything in a steady tone like a hum--you'd sound funny. Instead, you stress parts of words. You say different parts of words with different volume, and your voice rises and falls as if you were singing a song. Mostly, we don't notice we're doing it. Poetry in English is often made up of poetic units or feet. The most common feet are the iamb, the trochee, the anapest, and the dactyl. Each foot has one stress or beat.
Iamb - the most common foot in English poetry, a rising foot like the anapest, made of two syllables with a stress (accent) on the second syllable: to/day, this / clock. Sometimes the foot is one word, sometimes two.
Anapest - a rising foot like the iamb, with two unaccented or unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. It is a playful meter: dis/a/gree, through / the / house.
Trochee - a falling foot like the dactyl, with the accent on the first syllable followed by an unaccented beat: Sun/ny, of / the.
Dactyl - a falling foot like the trochee, with the first syllable accented or stressed and the next two syllables unstressed. El/e/phant, This / is / the.
Depending on what kind of poem you're writing, each line can have anywhere from one to many stressed beats, otherwise known as feet. Most common are:
Trimeter (three beats)
Tetrameter (four beats)
Pentameter (five beats)
You also sometimes see dimeter (two beats) and hexameter (six beats) but lines longer than that can't be said in one breath, so poets tend to avoid them.
Finally, that Figures... of speech
Otherwise known as figurative language. The most well-known are simile, metaphor, and personification. They are used to help with the task of "telling, not showing."
Simile - a comparison of one thing to another, using the words "like," "as," or "as though."
Metaphor - comparing one thing to another by saying that one thing is another thing. Metaphors are stronger than similes, but they are more difficult to see.
Personification - speaking as if something were human when it's not. -
Many of us balk at the sound of the word "poetry" even before we start reading the first line. Is it really that hard to understand? Should poetry be reserved only for the literature experts?
NO WAY! Poetry is for everyone to enjoy... and that is a simpler task than analyzing. Leave the analyzing to the pros but for daily reading, poetry are good sources for inspiration and enjoyment.
Here is an article I came across that offer some tips for enjoying poetry....(i sort of edited bits and pieces of the article to make it more reader-friendly )
TIPS FOR THE ENJOYMENT OF POETRY
1. Read it aloud
Poetry is like music. In fact, look at the lyrics of contemporary songs... many of them are structured like poetry. Since the sounds greatly increase the effect of the words, poems must be read aloud for fullest enjoyment. Silent reading just won't do poetry justice--it's like trying to enjoy a concert by reading the score. Reading aloud enables the poem to reproduce the music of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and harmony to enhance the emotional colors of the words.
Silently scan through the poem and try to get a feel of its tone, content, atmosphere. Read it loud with your interpretation of how the poem seems to feel, convey or describe. You can be as dramatic as you like when reading poetry alone... it helps to draw that picture in your mind and enable you to enjoy what it's trying to say.
2. Be receptive
Read poetry with an open mind. Try to match your mood to the tone of the content. Be receptive to the word music of the poet--let him speak through you, as if the words were your own. This positive approach will allow the poem an opportunity to awaken a satisfying emotional response. Allow your feelings to be aroused the way good poetry can stir them, just like how you would let your feelings be cheered by a favourite song.
Just remember that each of us is unique -- we differ in musical tastes or sense of humor. Just because someone else likes a poem doesn't mean you have to like it.
3. Read Carefully
Read with understanding, rather than speed. Speak the words crisply, with good diction, especially the beginning consonants. Don't read with monotony or lack of inflection. As you read the lines, feel their excitement, their joy, their sadness; sense their look, smell and taste.
Only by reading carefully will you experience an emotional response to the word sounds and images by which the poet transfers his sense impressions to you.
4. Read it with proper stops
Take note of punctuation. Just like when you are reading a normal sentence, slow down or stop where the punctuation indicates. Hesitate ever so slightly at run-on line endings and pause between stanzas.
Don't impose a mechanical "tee-dum tee-dum" rhythm in your reading--let the words of the poem provide the rhythm and the meter will fend nicely for itself.
Enjoy the poetic music as you read, as well as the visual aspect of a poem's layout on the page, which often represents a careful preparation by the poet to complement the texture of his work.
5. Read it over again
Very often we are unable to fully appreciate a poetic work on the first reading. Maybe we were distracted or preoccupied with other thoughts. Perhaps there are elusive undertones or subtleties not initially perceived which could make a world of difference in our response to subsequent readings.
What may not have impressed us at all on first exposure may become a beloved favorite if repeated. So if a poem failed to "grab" you the first time, give it another chance. Read it over again.
6. Forget the technical aspects
Don't be overly concerned with the technical aspects of poetic construction. It's not vital to the pleasures of reading poetry. The definitions are just guidelines, more applicable for the English professors and the like in their analysis and critique work. For you and me, the only thing that matters is whether or not you like the poem.
On the other hand, if you feel such additional knowledge will enhance your pleasure, by all means, pursue it.
7. Consider it as a whole
There is truth in the saying that a poem is only as good as its weakest line. A well-written piece of poetry--meaning one which is successful in imparting effective word images and sounds to the reader--results from the unity of its segments with the whole, whether it be a simple sonnet or a sweeping epic.
We all like to remember and quote favorite lines which have a memorable meaning or beauty of expression. Each word and every line contributes to the complete work, hence your enjoyment of it. Evaluate and enjoy it as a whole.[/b] -
[quote]Originally posted by KittynMeow:
[b]Many of us balk at the sound of the word "poetry" even before we start reading the first line. Is it really that hard to understand? Should poetry be reserved only for the literature experts?
NO WAY! Poetry is for everyone to enjoy... and that is a simpler task than analyzing. Leave the analyzing to the pros but for daily reading, poetry are good sources for inspiration and enjoyment.
X2. We are not having a Lit exam here. Main thing is to arouse ur interest in poetry.
But if ur are interested to explore further, good for you too.