Elements of Poetry

“Poetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.” In other words, poetry is a language for aesthetic qualities and the way of using the language should differ from that of prose.

PART 1

Rhyme

Q1: Suppose you are a poet. How would you make your words a poem?

A (students’ answers might be): Choose beautiful words; Choose words that sound beautiful…

《赋得古原草送别》

唐 白居易

离离原上草，一岁一枯荣。

野火烧不尽，春风吹又生。

This Chinese poem written by Bai Juyi is quite simple for readers understand. It is a poem without beautiful word choices, but it expresses the poet’s emotion through the short and simple language. Therefore, beautiful word-choice or language-use is not the most important element of a poem.

a. Quaint old Thomas Fuller gives a pretty simile when he says that “Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound”;

b. Perhaps as satisfactory a presentation of the matter as can be found is in a casual phrase of Stedman's in the Introduction to his “American Anthology.” This true poet and master-critic, in pursuit of another idea, alludes to poetry as “being a rhythmical expression of emotion and ideality.”

Q2: These varied sayings concern the elements of poetry. What do you think the most obvious characteristic of a poem is from the two sayings?

A: In poetry we look for the musical meter, the recurrent refrain of rhythm.

Q3: What is rhyme?

A: Rhyme is the repetition of the stressed vowel sound and all succeeding sounds.

a.

“Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!

One for the master, one for the dame,

And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”

b.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the King’s horses, And all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again!”

Q4: What role does a rhyme play in writing a poem?

A4: It gives poetry a typical symmetry that differentiates poetry from prose; It makes recital of poetry a pleasurable experience for the readers, as the repetitive patterns render musicality and rhythm to it; H. Auden gives his views on the function of rhyme and other tools of prosody, saying that these are like servants that a master uses in the ways he wants.

Q5: What are the types of rhyme you have found in the book? Name them.

A: Masculine rhyme; feminine rhyme; internal rhyme; end rhyme; Alliteration; Assonance; Consonance; Half rhyme; Eye rhyme; Rhyme scheme.

Metrical Rhythm

A more complex aspect than the rhyme of poetry is rhythm communicated by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllabi. To discuss the rhythm of a poem, the following terms are very useful.

Meter: The word is derived from the Greek word “metron,” meaning “measure.” Meter in poetry is a way of measuring a line of poetry based on the rhythm of the words. The meter of much poetry of the Western world and elsewhere is based on particular patterns of syllables of particular types. In English when applied to poetry, "meter” refers to the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Foot: a unit of poetic meter of stressed and unstressed syllables.

“No longer mourn for me when I am dead.”

老师讲解：

The rhythm is, "bah-BAH bah-BAH bah-BAH bah-BAH bah-BAH. We read it like this: "no LON-ger MOURN for ME when I am DEAD."

The type of foot Shakespeare used here is called an iamb. An iamb has the rhythm bah-BAH. An unstressed syllable, then a stressed one. The iamb is the meter of this line.

U / U / U / U / U /

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

U / U / U / U / U /

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

U / U / U / U / U /

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

U / U / U / U / U /

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Q6: What’s the meter of the poem? Explain it.

A6: The syllables are arranged in the pattern of the unstressed and stressed (U/), so the meter is iambic.

Q7: What’s the relation between “meter” and “foot”?

A7: Meter is based on syllables, including how stressed and unstressed syllables are arranged. Foot is applied in a single line, including how many meters are employed in that line. Foot in poetry is a unit of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Q8: What is the metrical rhythm of the poem, “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day”? Explain it.

A8: The metrical rhythm of these lines is iambic pentameter. The iamb is the most common kind of foot in English poetry. The syllables are arranged in the pattern of the unstressed and stressed (U/), so the meter is iambic. And each of the lines contains five iambic units (iamb), so the lines are written in pentameter.

Tone

If the mother asked "What are your plans for today?" the child could have responded "I'm going to the store." If the child said "I'm going to the store" in a simple, matter of fact way, he or she would not have elicited a scolding response from the mother.

Q9: However, if the child responded with anger because he or she could simply not be bothered with answering the mother's question, then how will you change the entire meaning of the situation?

A9: "I'm going to the store!"

See how tone is a major manipulator of meaning? The way in which someone voices a statement is exactly the definition of tone. How someone says something entirely changes the situation. Therefore, authors use tone to create the type of mood that they want for their piece of literature.

Q10: Why is a tone so important to a poem, or what role does a tone play in a poem?

A10: Most poems deal with human emotions, and tone is the emotional coloring of a poem. Therefore, it is very important in understanding a poem. To recognize the tone is to adjust the readers relation with the poem and/or with the poet. Failure to determine the tone accurately leads to misunderstanding of the poem.

 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy6 and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally9 lay

In leaves no step had trodden back.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Q11: From the last stanza of Robert Frost’s famous “The Road Not Taken”, what’s the effect of its tone in general?

A11: In this example, Frost is commonly interpreted as looking back on his experience with joy. That is true, if he were to speak those lines cheerfully. However, imagine that he actually sighs when he says "sigh" and he appears sullen when he says "And that has made all the difference." The entire meaning of the poem is changed, and Frost is, indeed, not thrilled with the choice he made in the past.

When we speak, our tone of voice conveys our mood—frustrated, cheerful, critical, gloomy, or angry. When we write, our images and descriptive phrases get our feelings across—guarded optimism, unqualified enthusiasm, objective indifference, resignation, or dissatisfaction. Other examples of literary tone are: airy, comic, condescending, facetious, funny, heavy, intimate, ironic, light, playful, sad, serious, sinister, solemn, somber, threatening.

Image

Q: Suppose you are a poet who is quite delighted to feel the sense of spring in her blooming flowers, growing grasses and gentle winds. What will be your purpose if you write a poem about spring on feeling all of these?

A: To express my happy feelings about the coming spring and to convey all I see or feel to the readers through my poem.

Therefore, the poet’s business is to evoke such sense impressions in the reader's mind.

Image

Q12: How does a poet convey his or her sense impressions to the readers?

A12: The poet has to describe what he or she wants to express and make the readers to see or feel what the poet describes.

In other to convey sense impressions, the poet’s method is usually to describe these things in words, or so to speak, to paint word p____ (pictures). Such a w____ (word) picture is an image. Image is the representation of sense experience through l____ (language).

Q13: Where do images come from? Think as many examples as you can in our daily life.

A13: Images come from the senses. For example, the image of “fresh air” involves both the olfactory sense (it has a pleasant smell) and the tactile sense (it has a certain degree of coolness; hot air is seldom described as “fresh”). Even more, the image of “fresh air” may evoke certain emotional responses and create mental images or mental pictures by way of association. Fresh air is often associated with morning, forest, mountain, seaside, which are much more suggestive than the air.

Q14: Do images always come from the senses or physical aspects of things?

A14: Sometimes an image can be rather abstract. “Death” is as qualified as “coffin” to serve as an image. In Emily Dickinson's poems (and indeed, in some classic poems) this kind of abstract images play an important part.

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.”

Q15: Describe your sense impressions and think about the function of images.

A15: A dreary midnight, a weary young man, by himself, reading some unusual ancient book of legendary happenings, in drowsiness. These immediately set up a Gothic atmosphere that is culminated by the tapping at the door.

Imagery often serves in three ways: to create the atmosphere, to provide an internal pattern, and to focus the theme of the poem.

Because I could not stop for Death

Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess – in the Ring –

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed us –

The Dews drew quivering and chill –

For only Gossamer, my Gown –

My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground –

The Roof was scarcely visible –

The Cornice – in the Ground –

Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses’ Heads

Were toward Eternity –

Q16: What are the images you’ve got?

A16: There is an image of death, driving a carriage. There are also images of “the School,” “Children,” “the Setting Sun,” “Swelling of the Ground.”

Q17: How do the images of “the School,” “Children,” “the Setting Sun,” and “Swelling of the Ground” associate with the image of death?

A17: The image of death foretells that the poem is going to be a “journey poem,” and since death is the driver, the “journey” is going to be a “time travel.” The image of death also pre-orientates the interpretation of “the School,” “Children,” “the Setting Sun,” “Swelling of the Ground,” and others. The images governed by the image of death constitute the internal pattern of the poem and largely determine the interpretation of the whole poem.

Theme

a.

• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

b.

• Iliad and Odyssey by Homer

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

• Arms and the Man by Bernard Shaw

• A Band of Brothers: Stories from Vietnam by Walter McDonald

Q18: You are probably familiar with some of the literary works above. Share your reading or knowledge of those you know and discuss for their theme.

A18: Themes in a are love and friendship theme. Themes in b are war theme.

Love and friendship are frequently occurring themes in literature. They generate emotional twists and turns in a narrative, which can lead to a variety of endings: happy, sad, or bittersweet; The theme of war has been explored in literature since ancient times. literary woks utilizing this theme may either glorify or criticize the idea of war. Most recent literary works portray war as a curse for humanity, due to the suffering it inflicts.

Like any other literary works, a poem is centered on a theme or even themes. However, the theme of a poem is slightly different from the theme of a novel. A novel tends to be thought-provoking, and a poem tends to be emotion-arousing. In discussing poetical theme, it is helpful and, in fact, necessary to make distinction between the total meaning and prose meaning of a poem. The prose meaning Is equivalent to the theme of a novel which can be summarized and extracted from the whole work. It is usually an idea, a statement of emotion, a presentation of a character, or the combination of all these. The total meaning is nothing less than the total experience the reader gets from reading the poem. Since a poem is written to convey human experience, this total meaning is almost inseparable from the poem, and it includes the prose meaning.

Q19: Read the following two poems and find out the themes of them.

Annabel Lee (By Edgar Allan Poe)

“I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.”

A: This short extract, taken from Poe’s poem, depicts the theme of love.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (By Alfred Tennyson)

“Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!’ he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.”

A19: This extract from a poem by Tennyson has two interwoven themes. War is the main theme of the poem, which naturally leads to death — while the theme of death is interwoven with the theme of war.

Q20: What is the function of theme?

A20: Theme gives readers better understanding of the main character’s conflicts, experiences, discoveries, and emotions as they are derived from them. Through themes, a writer tries to give his readers an insight into how the world works, or how he or she views human life.