Exploring Poetry

Basic Question: What is poetry?

• A type of literature that expresses ideas, feelings, or tells a story in a specific form (usually using lines and stanzas). Here are some types of stanzas:

Couplet a two line stanza

Triplet (Tercet) a three line stanza

Quatrain a four line stanza

Quintet a five line stanza

Sestet (Sextet) a six line stanza

Septet a seven line stanza

Octave an eight line stanza

Sound devices used in poetry

• Rhythm-- The beat created by the sounds of the words in a poem; this can be achieved by using alliteration (light/lemon), assonance (vowel rhyme date/fade) consonance (milk/walk the ending consonants rhyme but the vowels at the beginning don’t)

• Meter – pattern of stressed/unstressed syllables; the order can also be unstressed/stressed; there are specific terms for the type of feet the poet is using.• Iambic-- unstressed/stressed Dactyllic – stressed, unstressed, unstressed

• Trochaic – stressed/unstressed Anapestic- unstressed, unstressed, stressed

• Spondaic – stressed, stressed

Sound devices (con’t.)

• Metrical Line terms:

monometer one foot on a line dimeter two feet on a line trimeter three feet on a line tetrameter four feet on a line pentameter five feet on a line hexameter six feet on a line heptameter seven feet on a line octometer eight feet on a line

• To find your metrical line in a poem you have to use some math….count up the syllables in the line then divide that number by 2. This will give you your meter…

• Let’s try an example together….

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Types of Poetry

• Narrative – as in fiction, a narrative poem tells a story with characters, plot, and a setting

• There are two specific types of narratives; an epic (The Illiad) and a ballad which is like a song

• Dramatic – tells a story using a character’s own thoughts or spoken statements; think a dramatic monologue such as Hamlet’s

• Lyric– express feelings of a single speaker and is the most common type of poem

Types of Poetry (con’t.)

• Poems are also categorized by their structure, or form; here are a few types

• Haiku – three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables; the Tanka has five unrhymed lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables. Both use imagery to convey a single vivid emotion.

• Free verse- has no set rhythm or rhyme and sounds like normal speech

• Sonnet – 14 line lyric poem with formal patterns of rhyme, rhythm, and structure; there are two types Shakespearean and Petrarchean

Homework Assignment

• 1st two pages from your packet

• Due Monday