Poetry

Heritage Hall Freshmen English

INTRODUCTION TO

Chapter 1

Figurative Language

Figurative language includes metaphors, similes, and personification. Poets use these tools to illuminate an idea by juxtaposing it with another different idea, and in the process creating delight or shock in the reader. By using this kind of heightened, compact language, poets can make the abstract concrete and visible or suggest a figurative rather than literal truth about what they are writing.A metaphor connects two different things together, often but not always using the word is. It is a stronger and more powerful way of making us see something in a new light, unlike a simile which uses the word like or as to suggest the similarity between two things, but with a more comfortable distance. Take for example Plath’s poem “Words” in which she says words are axes, as opposed to MacLeish’s “Ars Poetica” in which he uses a simile to say a poem is “mute as a globed fruit”.

In personification, human characteristics are given to non-human things. In “Words”, Plath says the water is striving to reestablish itself. Striving is an activity we associate with humans, but by using it to describe water, the reader sees an inanimate object in the role of a character in the poem.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy CollinsI ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

Poetry that demonstrates

TERMS TO KNOW:

1. Metaphor: figurative language that makes one thing like another, often using “is”

2. simile: figurative language that compares two thing using “like” or “as”

3. personification: giving human characteristics to non-human things

Figurative Language

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Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds. *A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind--

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

* A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean

But be.

Words by Sylvia PlathAxes

After whose stroke the wood rings,

And the echoes!

Echoes traveling

Off from the center like horses.

The sap

Wells like tears, like the

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Water striving

To re-establish its mirror

Over the rock

That drops and turns,

A white skull,

Eaten by weedy greens.

Years later I

Encounter them on the road----

Words dry and riderless,

The indefatigable hoof-taps.

While

From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars

Govern a life.

# 254 by Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb—of Me.

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Review 1.1 Figurative Language

Check Answer

The difference between a metaphor and a simile is...

A. only one compares 2 things

B. only one is a type of figurative language

C. only one uses “like” or “as”

D. there is no difference

Chapter 2

Sound Effects & RhymeOften we forget that poetry was meant to be heard. Poets engage the sense of hearing by using alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, as well as different kinds of rhyme including slant rhyme and internal rhyme. Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds near each other. Think of every tongue twister you ever learned as a child (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers) and you have an example of alliteration. Assonance is more subtle because it repeats vowel sounds. In the example “Only the owl hoots once at the lonely moon”, the repetition of long o sounds creates a sad mood. Onomatopoeia is a word that tries to recreate the sound it means. Buzz, Crash, Ping, Moo and Whirr are all examples.

In addition to traditional end rhymes, sometimes poets want to make their rhymes more subtle, sothey use slant rhymes. Slant rhymes are rhymesthat are not exact, pure rhymes but instead they either echo some similar consonants as in stuns/stones, or appear on the page as if they should rhyme because they have the same ending, but when you say them out loud, you discover they don’t rhyme (enough/through). Doing this once in a poem that uses otherwise pure rhymes can draw attention to a particular moment in the poem that the poet wants to heighten.Another way to make the rhymes less subtle is to employ enjambment, in which the sentence continues beyond the end of a line or stanza. When reading poetry out loud, make sure to pay attention to punctuation marks and not just end when the line ends.Although most rhymes are found at the end of each line, internal rhymes are rhymes that pair up a word in the middle of a line with the end word of the same line to achieve a rhyme. In Poe’s “The Raven”, for example, the line “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary”, the words dreary and weary rhyme but occur on the same line of the poem.

The Secretary Chant by Marge Piercy

My hips are a desk,  From my ears hang  chains of paper clips.  Rubber bands form my hair.  My breasts are quills of  mimeograph ink.  My feet bear casters,  Buzz. Click.  My head is a badly organized file.  My head is a switchboard  where crossed lines crackle.  Press my fingers  and in my eyes appear  credit and debit.  Zing. Tinkle.  My navel is a reject button.  From my mouth issue canceled reams.  Swollen, heavy, rectangular  I am about to be delivered  of a baby  Xerox machine.  File me under W  because I wonce  was  a woman.

Poetry that demonstrates

TERMS TO KNOW:

1. Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds in words close together.

2. Alliteration: repetition of two or more consonant sounds in successive words in a line of prose or poetry.

3. Onomatopoeia: when a word recreates the sound of what it describes

4. slant rhyme: rhymes that are close but not perfect rhymes

5. internal rhyme: rhyming words within a line of poetry

6. Enjambment: when a sentence continues beyond the end of a line or stanza.

Example of marking rhyme pattern:

Sound Effects & Rhyme

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Gretel in Darkness By Louise GluckThis is the world we wanted.

All who would have seen us dead

are dead. I hear the witch’s cry

break in the moonlight through a sheet

of sugar: God rewards.

Her tongue shrivels into gas. . . .

Now, far from women’s arms

and memory of women, in our father’s hut

we sleep, are never hungry.

Why do I not forget?

My father bars the door, bars harm

from this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,

summer afternoons you look at me as though

you meant to leave,

as though it never happened.

But I killed for you. I see armed firs,

the spires of that gleaming kiln—

Nights I turn to you to hold me

but you are not there.

Am I alone? Spies

hiss in the stillness, Hansel,

we are there still and it is real, real,

that black forest and the fire in earnest.

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Excerpt fr. The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -Only this, and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrowFrom my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore - For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -Nameless here for evermore.And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtainThrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door - Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; - This it is, and nothing more,' Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!' This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!' Merely this and nothing more.

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Audio 2.1 Poe’s The Raven

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me proved,I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare

Audio 2.2 Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

Review 2.1 Sound Effects and Rhyme

Check Answer

The difference between assonance and allitera-tion is...

A. Assonance deals with vowels, allit-eration deals with consonants.

B. Assonance repeats sounds, allitera-tion does not.

C. One rhymes and the other does not.

D. There is no difference.

Chapter 3

MeterMeter in poetry is similar to meter in music--a way of counting out and measuring the beats (or in the case of language, the syllables) that make up a piece of work. We count the number and pattern of accented and unaccented syllables to determine the meter. The name of the meter is made up of the type of foot plus the number of feet in a line, for example five iambs in a line would be iambic pentameter, the meter in which Shakespeare wrote his sonnets. Iambic pentameter is the most commonly used meter because it mimics the sound of the heartbeat and naturally fits the English language. If the iambic pentameter doesn’t rhyme, it is known as blank verse.Not all poems have meter, however. Poems that have neither rhyme nor meter are known as free verse. Without the presence of meter, free verse poets rely on other techniques such as rhyme and sound effects to create a sense of structure and cadence. The following lines from Milton shows how a metered poem is scanned using a U symbol for unaccented syllables and a / for accented syllables.

The Ball Poem by John BerrymanWhat is the boy now, who has lost his ball,

What, what is he to do? I saw it go

Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then

Merrily over--there it is in the water!

No use to say 'O there are other balls':

An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy

As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down

All his young days into the harbour where

His ball went. I would not intrude on him,

A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now

He senses first responsibility

In a world of possessions. People will take balls,

Poetry that demonstrates

TERMS TO KNOW

1. meter: the recurrence of regular beats in a poetic line, found by determining the number and type of feet.

2. feet/foot: a combination of two or three stressed and/or unstressed syllables. Types of feet include iambs, dactyls, spondees, trochees, and anapests.

3. Iambs: a type of metrical foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed.

4. pentameter: meter that has five feet per line

5. blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter

6. free verse: poetry that lacks regular meter and rhyme scheme.

Meter

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Balls will be lost always, little boy,

And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.

He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,

The epistemology of loss, how to stand up

Knowing what every man must one day know

And most know many days, how to stand up

And gradually light returns to the street

A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight,

Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark

Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere,

I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move

With all that move me, under the water

Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun,

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

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To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows?

But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

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Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by John Lennon and Paul McCartneyPicture yourself in a boat on a river,

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,

Towering over your head.

Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,

And she's gone.

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain

Where rocking horse people eat marshmellow pies,

Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,

That grow so incredibly high.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,

Waiting to take you away.

Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,

And you're gone.

Picture yourself on a train in a station,

With plasticine porters with looking glass ties,

Suddenly someone is there at the turnstyle,

The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.

Sonnet 18 by ShakespeareShall I compare thee to a summer's day? 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: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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Review 3.1 Meter

Check Answer

The difference between blank verse and free verse is...

A. nothing. They both mean the same thing.

B. Blank verse is in meter and free verse is not.

C. Blank verse doesn’t rhyme but free verse does.

D. Blank verse is poetry by Shake-speare but free verse can be by any-one.

Chapter 4

FormsJust as there are several styles of music that each require different kind of rules in their creation (country and rap sound very different because they are obeying two different traditions), poets can also choose different forms to present their poetry, each of which comes from a long line of tradition. A Villanelle is a 19-long poem that comes from Italy and uses repetition of lines to create an interlocking, weaving effect. It is well suited to poems that wants to explore a reoccurring theme or the feeling of being haunted by an idea over and over again.A Sestina is a French troubadour form that repeats the same six words as end words over and over again in a pattern throughout the six stanzas. Because the poet must reuse the same words, the challenge becomes how to make the words take on new meanings when used in each line. Sonnets come in two varieties: Shakespearean/English or Petrarchan/Italian, named after the poet/country that made them famous. They both contain 14 lines, but they follow different rhyme patterns and the volta, or turn, in each occurs at a different location.

A Petrarchan sonnet has an octave (eight line stanza or “paragraph” in a poem) followed by a sestet (a six line stanza). The volta occurs in between these two stanzas. Often the octave explores a question or problem that is answered or resolved in the sestet. A Shakespearean sonnet has 3 quatrains (four line stanzas each) followed by an end couplet (two lines). The volta occurs at the couplet. Traditional sonnets often, but not always, explored the topic of love. Today’s modern poets have taken all these older forms and adapted them to a certain degree to make them fit their own purposes, so don’t be surprised if some of the more modern formal poems break some of the strict rules of these forms.

Poetry that demonstrates

TERMS TO KNOW

1. stanza: a group of lines in a poem, similar to a paragraph in prose.

2. couplet: a stanza of two lines of verse

3. quatrain: a stanza of four lines of verse

4. sestet: a stanza of six lines of verse

5. octave: a stanza of eight lines of verse

6. Petrachan sonnet: a poem made up of 14 lines that has an octave rhyming ababcdcd and a sestet that rhymes cdecde or efgefg. The volta occurs between the two stanzas.

7. Shakespearean sonnet: a poem made up of 14 lines that has 3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end. The overall rhyme pattern is ababcdcdefefgg.

8. Villanelle: 19 line poem with three line stanzas that use an aba rhyme pattern. Two lines are repeated throughout the poem.

9. sestina: a poem with six sestets that use the same six end words in each stanza.

Forms

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Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet Formula

1 a2 b3 a4 b5 c6 d7 c8 d VOLTA9 c10 d11 e 12 c13 d14 e(rhyme patterns vary)

Saint Judas by James Wright

When I went out to kill myself, I caught

A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.

Running to spare his suffering, I forgot

My name, my number, how my day began,

How soldiers milled around the garden stone

And sang amusing songs; how all that day

Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone

Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,

Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope

Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:

Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,

The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,

I held the man for nothing in my arms.

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Sonnet 138 by William ShakespeareWhen my love swears that she is made of truth,I do believe her though I know she lies,That she might think me some untutored youth,Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best,Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed: But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old?O! love's best habit is in seeming trust,And age in love, loves not to have years told:Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Shakespearean (English) Sonnet Formula1 a2 b3 a4 b

5 c6 d7 c8 d

9 e10 f11 e

12 f VOLTA13 g14 g

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Sestina Formula1 line ends w/ WORD A

2 WORD B

3 WORD C

4 WORD D

5 WORD E

6 WORD F

7 WORD F

8 WORD A

9 WORD E

10 WORD B

11 WORD D

12 WORD C

13 WORD C

14 WORD F

15 WORD D

16 WORD A

17 WORD B

18 WORD E

19 WORD E

20 WORD C

21 WORD B

22 WORD A

23 WORD F

24 WORD D

25 WORD D

26 WORD E

27 WORD A

28 WORD C

29 WORD F

30 WORD B

31 WORD B

32 WORD D

33 WORD F

34 WORD E

35 WORD C

36 WORD A

37/38/39 ALL SIX WORDS

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Bilingual Sestina By Julia Alvarez

Some things I have to say aren't getting saidin this snowy, blonde, blue-eyed, gum chewing English,dawn's early light sifting through the persianas closedthe night before by dark-skinned girls whose words evoke cama, aposento, suenos in nombresfrom that first word I can't translate from Spanish.

Gladys, Rosario, Altagracia--the sounds of Spanishwash over me like warm island waters as I sayyour soothing names: a child again learning the nombresof things you point to in the world before Englishturned sol, tierra, cielo, luna to vocabulary words--sun, earth, sky, moon--language closed

like the touch-sensitive morivivir. whose leaves closed when we kids poked them, astonished. Even Spanishfailed us when we realized how frail a word is when faced with the thing it names. How sayingits name won't always summon up in Spanish or Englishthe full blown genii from the bottled nombre.

Gladys, I summon you back with your given nombreto open up again the house of slatted windows closedsince childhood, where palabras left behind for Englishstand dusty and awkward in neglected Spanish.Rosario, muse of el patio, sing in me and through me saythat world again, begin first with those first words

you put in my mouth as you pointed to the world--not Adam, not God, but a country girl numberingthe stars, the blades of grass, warming the sun by saying el sol as the dawn's light fell through the closedpersianas from the gardens where you sang in Spanish,Esta son las mananitas, and listening, in bed, no English

yet in my head to confuse me with translations, no Englishdoubling the world with synonyms, no dizzying array of words,--the world was simple and intact in Spanishawash with colores, luz, suenos, as if the nombreswere the outer skin of things, as if words were so closeto the world one left a mist of breath on things by saying

their names, an intimacy I now yearn for in English--words so close to what I meant that I almost hear my Spanishblood beating, beating inside what I say en ingles.

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Villanelle Formula1 a

2 b

3 a

4 a

5 b

1 a

7 a

8 b

3 a

10 a

11 b

1 a

13 a

14 b3 a

16 a

17 b

1 a

3 a

One Art by Elizabeth BishopThe art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

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Review 4.1 Forms

Check Answer

The difference between a Shakespearean sonnet and a Petrarchan sonnet is...

A. the location of the volta

B. the rhyme pattern

C. the number of lines

D. both A & B

Chapter 5

ImageryImagery is a mental picture that evokes the five senses and often uses figurative language such as metaphor and simile. But be careful not to assume that everything you can visualize in a poem is an image. If the poem uses the word lemon and you can imagine what a lemon looks like, this doesn’t mean that the poet has used imagery. However, if the poet were to say, “the yellow in the lemon made me wince,” this comes closer to being an image because it has evoked the sense of taste (wincing due to the sourness of the lemon).

It takes more than description to make an image. Although the word “America”, for example, might make you think of lots of images (eagle, flag, the shape of the country on a map), such an abstract word isn’t really using imagery. A poet needs to use more concrete language to evoke the senses, such as in Claude McKay’s poem “America”. How many different senses does he evoke in this poem?

America by Claude McKayAlthough she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

In Just- by e.e. cummings in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious the little lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddyandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it's spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer old baloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

Poetry that demonstrates

TERMS TO KNOW:

1. imagery: a mental picture that evokes the five senses and often uses figurative lanuage

Imagery

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it's spring and the goat-footed

baloonMan whistles far and wee

Preludes by T S Eliot IThe winter evening settles downWith smell of steaks in passageways.Six o'clock.The burnt-out ends of smoky days.And now a gusty shower wrapsThe grimy scrapsOf withered leaves about your feetAnd newspapers from vacant lots;The showers beatOn broken blinds and chimney-pots,And at the corner of the streetA lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.And then the lighting of the lamps.

IIThe morning comes to consciousnessOf faint stale smells of beer>From the sawdust-trampled streetWith all its muddy feet that pressTo early coffee-stands.With the other masqueradesThat time resumes,One thinks of all the handsThat are raising dingy shadesIn a thousand furnished rooms.

IIIYou tossed a blanket from the bed,You lay upon your back, and waited; You dozed, and watched the night revealingThe thousand sordid imagesOf which your soul was constituted;They flickered against the ceiling.And when all the world came backAnd the light crept up between the shutters,

And you heard the sparrows in the gutters, You had such a vision of the street As the street hardly understands; Sitting along the bed's edge, where You curled the papers from your hair, Or clasped the yellow soles of feet In the palms of both soiled hands.

IVHis soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feetAt four and five and six o'clockAnd short square fingers stuffing pipes,And evening newspapers, and eyesAssured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street Impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curledAround these images, and cling:The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing.Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

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Movie 5.1 “Some Days” by Billy Collins

Some Days by Billy Collins

Some days I put the people in their places at the table,bend their legs at the knees,if they come with that feature,and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,the man in the brown suit,the woman in the blue dress,perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the onewho is lifted up by the ribs, then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouseto sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,but how would you like itif you never knew from one day to the next if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,your shoulders in the clouds, or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

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Movie 5.2 “Budapest” by Billy Collins

Budapest by Billy Collins

My pen moves along the pagelike the snout of a strange animalshaped like a human arm and dressed in the sleeve of a loose green sweaterI watch it sniffing the paper ceaselesslyintent as any forager that has nothing on its mindbut the grubs and insects that will allow it to live another dayIt wants only to be here tomorrowdressed, perhaps, in the sleeve of a plaid shirtnose pressed against the pagewriting a few more dutyful lineswhile I gaze out the window and imagine Budapestor some other citywhere I have never been

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Review 5.1 Imagery

Check Answer

Which of the following is an example of imagery that evokes the sense of touch?

A. “slapping a blackjack against an open palm”

B. “the yellow in the lemon made me wince”

C. “I have two hands and ten fingers”

D. “she feeds me the bread of bitter-ness”

(row 1, l to r)1. e.e. cummings2. Archibald Macleish3. Phillip Larkin (top)4. John Berryman (bottom)5. Marge Piercy(row 2)6. William Shakespeare7. Julia Alvarez8. Elizabeth Bishop9. Edgar Allen Poe(row 3)10.James Wright11.Sylvia Plath12.Louise Gluck(row 4)13.Robert Frost14.Emily Dickinson15.T.S. Eliot

The Poets

Poetic Terms Definitions

alliteration The repetition of two or more consonant sounds in successive words in a line of prose or poetry

assonance Repetition of vowel sounds in words close together

Blank verse Unrhymed iambic pentameter

couplet A group of two lines

enjambment When a sentence continues beyond the end of a line or a stanza.

Free verse Poetry that lacks regular meter and rhyme scheme

Foot a combination of two or three stressed and/or unstressed syllables.

iamb A type of metrical foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed

Imagery A mental picture that evokes the five senses and often uses figurative language

Internal rhyme Rhyming words within a line of poetry

metaphor Figurative language that makes one thing like another, often using “is”

meter the recurrence of regular beats in a poetic line, found by determining the # and type of feet

onomatopoeia When a word recreates the sound of what it describes

Octave A group of 8 lines

pentameter Meter that has five feet per line

Petrarchan sonnet Italian in origin; has an octave that rhymes ababcdcd and a sestet that rhymes cdecde

quatrain a group of four lines of verse

Sestet A group of 6 lines

sestina A poem with six sestets that use the same six end words in each stanza

Simile Figurative language that compares two things using “like” or “as”

Shakespearean sonnet English in origin; 14 lines long with a rhyming couplet at the end. The rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg.

Slant rhyme Rhymes that are imperfect such as stuns/stones

stanza A group of lines in a poem, similar to a paragraph in prose

villanelle 19 line poem with 3 line stanza that use an aba rhyme pattern. Two lines are repeated throughout the poem creating a woven, cyclical effect

volta “the turn” in a sonnet which marks a transition. Occurs between the octave and sestet in a Petrarchan sonnet, or before the couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet

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