Eng 11 poetry terms notes

Poetry Terms

Poetry is rich, evocative and often dense language.  Poetry has powerful sounds and meaning and evokes strong feelings in the reader.

Traditional poetry is arranged in lines and stanzas with regular rhythm and often rhyme.  A narrative poem tells a story.  A ballad is a narrative poem that often has a repeated refrain and is set to music.  Lyric poetry expresses the observations and feelings of a poet.  A sonnet is an example of a lyric poem.

Non-traditional poetry is also set up in lines and stanzas but does not have regular rhythm or rhyme.  Free verse is rhymed or unrhymed poetry without a set rhythmic pattern.  Rhythms in free verse can change at any time like the rhythms of natural speech, and lines can be of different lengths.  Concrete poetry is visual poetry which expresses meaning through shape or pattern.

Rhyme is the use of similar sounds in words or phrases that appear close to one another in a poem.  Perfect rhymes are exact rhymes.  Close rhymes are words that sound somewhat but not exactly the same.  Eye rhymes are words that look the same but do not sound the same.  End rhymes are rhymes on the final syllable of the last word on a line.  The rhyme scheme is the plan by which the rhymes are organized within a poem.  A rhyming couplet is two rhyming lines that appear at the end of a poem, as in a sonnet.

perfect rhyme - rhyme exactly - monkey, funky
close rhyme - not an exact rhyme - monkey, donkey
eye rhyme - look like they should rhyme but do not - though, through

though - eye rhyme

tough

pronunciation changes over time, regional accent

close rhyme

foot

food

close rhymes

boot

food

foot

close rhyme, eye rhyme

food

good

perfect rhyme

good

would

perfect rhyme

rude

food

close

rude

root

Poetry can help you with pronunciation. So can singing.

end rhyme - rhyming words come at the ends of the lines, very common, usual way, best place to look for rhymes

rhyme scheme - plan
rhymes (end rhymes) are organized


The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

Come live with me and be my love, A
And we will all the pleasures prove, Does it rhyme? (perfect, close, eye) A
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Does it rhyme? (perfect, close, eye) B
Woods, or steepy mountain yields. Does it rhyme? (perfect, close, eye) B

end rhymes - organized into a rhyme scheme
AABB CCDD 

And we will sit upon the Rocks, Does it rhyme? (perfect, close, eye) C
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, Does it rhyme? (perfect, close, eye) C
By shallow Rivers to whose falls D
Melodious birds sing Madrigals. D

And I will make thee beds of Roses E
And a thousand fragrant posies, E
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle F
Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle; F

So far, our rhyme scheme is AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH IIAA JJAA

A gown made of the finest wool G
Which from our pretty Lambs we pull; G
Fair lined slippers for the cold, H
With buckles of the purest gold; H

A belt of straw and Ivy buds, I
With Coral clasps and Amber studs: I
And if these pleasures may thee move, J A
Come live with me, and be my love. J A

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing J
For thy delight each May-morning: J
If these delights thy mind may move, A
Then live with me, and be my love. A

move love - close rhyme or an eye rhyme
This may have been a perfect when the poem was written in 1599. Pronunciation has changed since 1599.
All languages change.
People have accents.

You can find examples on Youtube of how English may have sounded hundreds of years ago.

A stanza is a group of lines forming a unit in a poem.  Many poems have stanzas with a fixed pattern and rhyme.  A stanza with four lines is a called a quatrain.  In other poems, stanzas vary in length and pattern and may or may not include rhyme.

Rhythm is the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables into a pattern.  Often the stress falls on important words.  Poets, and sometimes prose writers as well, use words with similarly accented syllables to create rhythm.  When the rhythm of a poem has a regular pattern, the pattern is called meter.  A foot is a basic unit of meter that gives a poem, or part of a poem, a particular beat.  An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, like a heartbeat.  Some common forms of rhythm, especially in traditional poetry, are iambic pentameter and iambic tetrameter

Rhythm Learn that spelling!

Imagery is language that appeals to any of the five senses or to a combination of these senses.  Poets and other writers use imagery to create vivid, clear images.

A symbol is a person, object, or event that has meaning in itself and that also represents something else.

An allusion is a direct or implied reference to a literary, poetic, musical, or cultural text.

A simile is a figure of speech in which a writer compares two unrelated things, connecting them by ‘like’ or ‘as.’

happy as a lark/clam

slippery as an eel - dishonest

A metaphor is a more direct comparison in which a writer describes something by calling it something else.

Personification is the representation of non-living things as having animate qualities.

Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in words that are close to each other.

Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes.