Elements of Poetry

POETRY ASSUMPTIONSReaders of poetry often bring with them many related assumptions: That a poem is to be read for its

"message," That this message is "hidden" in the

poem, The message is to be found by treating

the words as symbols which naturally do not mean what they say but stand for something else,

You have to decipher every single word to appreciate and enjoy the poem.

Elements of Poetry

1Form

Traditional poetry used to follow very strict forms. People who still follow these forms nowadays are following the traditional manner and style. But nowadays we know that there is a strong tendency to break from the traditional and to become even very unorthodox, unconventional or even unusual. This kind of poetry is called FREE VERSE. The poet uses free form to make the poem fit the contents and to express the mood or feeling of his work.

 A poem may or may not have a specific number of lines, rhyme scheme and/or metrical pattern, but it can still be labeled according to its form or style.

1. Lyric Poetry: It is any poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses strong thoughts and feelings. Most poems, especially modern ones, are lyric poems. 

2. Narrative Poem: It is a poem that tells a story; its structure resembles the plot line of a story [i.e. the introduction of conflict and characters, rising action, climax and the denouement].

3. Descriptive Poem: It is a poem that describes the world that surrounds the speaker. It uses elaborate imagery and adjectives. While emotional, it is more "outward-focused" than lyric poetry, which is more personal and introspective. 

In a sense, almost all poems, whether they have consistent patterns of sound and/or structure, or are free verse, are in one of the three categories stated. Or, of course, they may be a combination of 2 or 3 of the above styles!

Here are some types of poems that are subtypes of the three styles above:

Ode: It is usually a lyric poem of moderate length, with a serious subject, an elevated style, and an elaborate stanza pattern.

Elegy: It is a lyric poem that mourns the dead. It has no set metric or stanzaic pattern, but it usually begins by reminiscing about the dead person, then laments the reason for the death, and then resolves the grief by concluding that death leads to immortality. It often uses "apostrophe" as a literary technique. It can have a fairly formal style, and sound similar to an ode.

Sonnet: It is a lyric poem consisting of 14 lines and, in the English version, is usually written in iambic pentameter.

There are two basic kinds of sonnets:

the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet and the Shakespearean (or Elizabethan/English) sonnet. The Italian/Petrarchan sonnet is named after Petrarch, an Italian Renaissance poet. The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines).

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines). The Petrarchan sonnet tends to divide the thought into two parts (argument and conclusion); the Shakespearean, into four (the final couplet is the summary).

Ballad: It is a narrative poem that has a musical rhythm and can be sung. A ballad is usually organized into quatrains or cinquains, has a simple rhythm structure, and tells the tales of ordinary people.

Epic: It is a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero.    

Other types of poems include:

Haiku: It has an unrhymed verse form having three lines (a tercet) and usually 5,7,5 syllables, respectively. It's usually considered a lyric poem.

Limerick: It has a very structured poem, usually humorous & composed of five lines (a cinquain), in an aabba rhyming pattern; beat must be anapestic (weak, weak, strong) with 3 feet in lines 1, 2, & 5 and 2 feet in lines 3 & 4. It's usually a narrative poem based upon a short and often ribald anecdote. 

2Line and Stanza

Poetry generally is divided into lines of verse. A grouping of lines, equivalent to a paragraph in prose, is called a stanza. On the printed page, line breaks normally are used to separate stanzas from one another.

A stanza is to a poem what a paragraph is to a piece of prosaic writing – a fixed number of lines of verse forming a single unit of a poem. A poem is usually composed of multiple stanzas that are separated from each other with an empty line in between.

Based on the number of lines present in a stanza, they are assigned different names. They are:

• A couplet is a stanza that has only 2 lines.• A tercet is composed of 3 lines.• A quatrain consists of 4 lines.• A cinquain has 5 lines.• A sestet comprises 6 lines.• A sonnet is as entire poem with exactly 4

lines

Example:• A Couplet

True wit is nature to advantage dress’d;What oft was thought, but ne’er so well

express’d.

-From Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism”

Example:• A Tercet

Furu ike yaKawazu tobikomu

Mizu no oto

-Haiku by Matsuo Basho

Example:• A Cinquain

Listen…With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,The leaves, frost crisp’d break from the trees

And fall.

-From Craspey’s “November Night”

Example:• A Sestat

It was many and many a year ago,In kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;

And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me.

-From Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”

When I consider how my light is spentEre half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide,Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and presentMy true account, lest he returning chide;"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"

I fondly ask; but Patience to preventThat murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts; who bestBear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speedAnd post o'er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait."

- From John Milton's "On His Blindness"

Example:• A Sonnet

3Sound

Patterns

Three other elements of poetry are rhyme scheme, meter (ie. regular rhythm) and word sounds (like alliteration). These are sometimes collectively called sound play because they take advantage of the performative, spoken nature of poetry.

Rhyming in poetry is one convention that makes this form of literature recognizably different from prose and drama.

RHYME Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds. In poetry, the most common kind of rhyme is the end rhyme, which occurs at the end of two or more lines. It is usually identified with lower case letters, and a new letter is used to identify each new end sound. Take a look at the rhyme scheme for the following poem : 

Example:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's menCouldn't put Humpty together again.

Example:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;

Types of RhymeOne common way of creating a sense of musicality between lines of verse is to make them rhyme.

End rhyme: A rhyme that comes at the end of a line of verse. Most rhyming poetry uses end rhymes.

Internal rhyme occurs in the middle of a line, as in these lines from Coleridge, "In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud" or "Whiles all the night through fog-smoke white" ("The Ancient Mariner"). Remember that most modern poems do not have rhyme.

Masculine rhyme: A rhyme consisting of a single stressed syllable, as in the rhyme between “car” and “far.”

Feminine rhyme: A rhyme consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, as in the rhyme between “mother” and “brother.”

Perfect rhyme: An exact match of sounds in a rhyme.

Slant rhyme: An imperfect rhyme, also called oblique rhyme or off rhyme, in which the sounds are similar but not exactly the same, as between “port” and “heart.” Modern poets often use slant rhyme as a subtler alternative to perfect rhyme.

The primary thing to keep in mind here is that 'rhyme' and 'rhythm' are not the same at all. Rhythm is basically the pattern in which a poet chooses to sequence the stressed and unstressed syllables in every line of a poem, for the creation of oral patterns.

The three factors that help determine the rhythm in a poem are:

1.The total number of syllables present in each line.

2. The total count of accented (stressed) syllables in each line.

3. The tally of recurring patterns of two or three syllables - stressed and unstressed - clubbed in every line.

Each recurring pattern is individually called a foot. And a number of feet, on identification, can tell us the systematic rhythm or the meter that a poem follows.

In poetry, a stressed syllable is tagged with a "/" and an unstressed one is marked with a "U".

Meter: the systematic regularity in rhythm; this systematic rhythm (or sound pattern) is usually identified by examining the type of "foot" and the number of feet.

1. Poetic Foot: The traditional line of metered poetry contains a number of rhythmical units, which are called feet. The feet in a line are distinguished as a recurring pattern of two or three syllables("apple" has 2 syllables, "banana" has 3 syllables, etc.). The pattern, or foot, is designated according to the number of syllables contained, and the relationship in each foot between the strong and weak syllables.

And there are five different types of constant beat patterns that the feet can occur in:

Iamb (Iambic) - One weak syllable followed by one accented syllable.

Trochee (Trochaic) - One accented syllable followed by one weak syllable.

Anapæst (Anapæstic) - Two weak syllables followed by one accented syllable.

Dactyl (Dactylic) - One accented syllable followed by two weak syllables.

Spondee (Spondaic) - Two consecutive accented syllables. This can usually be found at the end of a line.

2. The Number of Feet: The second part of meter is the number of feet contained in a line.

There are various types of foot and they are named accordingly.

One foot: Monometer

Two feet: Dimeter

Three feet: Trimeter

Four feet: Tetrameter

Five feet: Pentameter

Six feet: Hexameter

Example: An Iambic Pentameter

The upper-cased, coloured portions are indicative of the stressed or prominently lifted syllables.

An Iambic Pentameter

Nor FRIENDS | nor FOES, | to ME | welCOME | you ARE:Things PAST | redRESS | are NOW | with ME | past CARE.

- From William Shakespeare's "Richard II" (Act II, Scene 3)

Example: A Trochaic Tetrameter

SHOULD you | ASK me, | WHENCE these | STORies?WHENCE these | LEGends | AND tra | Ditions,WITH the | ODours | OF the | FORest,WITH the | DEW and | DAMP of | MEAdows,

- From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha"

Example: An Anapæstic Hexameter

The imMOR | tal deSIRE | of imMOR | tals we SAW | in their FAC | es and SIGHED.

- From W. B. Yeats's "The Wanderings of Oisin"

Example: A Dactylic or Heroic Hexameter

THIS is the | FORest prim- | Eval. The | MURmuring | PINES and the | HEM locks

- From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline"

Example: A Spondee

Arma vir | Umque can | O, TroI | aE quI | prImus ab | OrIs  dactyl   | dactyl  |  spondee | spondee | dactyl  |  spondee

- From Vergil's "Aeneid"

3. Irregularity: Many metered poems in English avoid perfectly regular rhythm because it is monotonous. Irregularities in rhythm add interest and emphasis to the lines. In this line:

 The first foot substitutes a trochee for an iamb. Thus, the basic iambic pentameter is varied with the opening trochee.

4. Blank Verse: Any poetry that does have a set metrical pattern (usually iambic pentameter), but does not have rhyme, is blank verse. Shakespeare frequently used unrhymed iambic pentameter in his plays; his works are an early example of blank verse.

5. Free Verse: Most modern poetry no longer follows strict rules of meter or rhyme, especially throughout an entire poem. Free verse, frankly, has no rules about meter or rhyme whatsoever! effect. Free verse can also apply to a lack of a formal verse structure.

4Word

Sounds

Alliteration: the repetition of initial sounds on the same line or stanza - ex.Big bad Bob bounced bravely.

Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds (anywhere in the middle or end of a line or stanza) - Tilting at windmills

Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds (anywhere in the middle or end of a line or stanza) - And all the air a solemn stillness holds. (T. Gray)

Onomatopoeia: words that sound like that which they describe Ex. Boom! Crash! Pow! Quack! Moo! Caress...

Repetition: the repetition of entire lines or phrases to emphasize key thematic ideas.

Parallel Structure: a form of repetition where the order of verbs and nouns is repeated; it may involve exact words, but it more importantly repeats sentence structure Ex. "I came, I saw, I conquered".

References:

• http://www.buzzle.com/articles/basic-elements-of-poetry.html

• https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=205340712894005&id=205339616227448

• http://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsofpoetry.htm

• http://www.meister-z.com/meister_z/POETRY.htm

• http://sparkcharts.sparknotes.com/lit/literaryterms/section3.php