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Introductory poetic terms
Sound
devices
Alliteration
< br>，
Assonance
,
Consonance
,
Onomatopoeia
,
Rhyme
,
Rhyme
scheme
Meter
Ballad Meter
,
Iambic pentameter
Form
Stanza
,
Couplet
,
Quatrain
,
Free
Verse
,
Sonnet
,
Ballad
Meaning
devices
Imagery
,
Metaphor
,
Simile
,
Personification
,
Pun
,
Allusion
,
Paradox
,
Symbol
,
Apostrophe
Two
Linguistic Devices
Inversion
,
Parallelism
Sound
devices
All
sound
devices
are
interesting
because
they
brings
together
words
that
sound
alike
but
do
not
necessarily
have
anything
else
in
common.
In
and
Ice
the
two
words
in
the
title
are
opposite
in
meaning but have the same vowel sound
(assonance). The poem, which at times suggests
that the two are
the same in a much as
both can
assonance. This is why poetry
is so difficult to translate.
Alliteration
:
repetition of the initial sounds (usually
consonants) of stressed syllables in nearby words
or
lines, usually at word beginnings.
From Lord Tennyson's
Break, Break,
Break
And the
stately ships go on
To their haven under the
hill.
From Lord Byron's
She Walks in
Beauty
She walks
in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
Assonance
:
the
relatively
close
succession
of
the
same
or
similar
vowel
sounds,
but
with
different
consonants: a kind of vowel rhyme.
From William
Carol Williams'
The Red
Wheelbarrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Consonance
: the relatively
close succession of the same end consonants with
different vowel sounds: a
kind of
consonant rhyme.
Notice
all the
Hyla
Brook
Its bed is
left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves
stuck together by the heat -
A brook to none but who remember long.
This as it will be seen is other far
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Than with
brooks taken otherwhere in song.
We
love the things we love for what they are.
Onomatopoeia
: any word whose
sound echoes its meaning.
In
The Oven
Bird
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud
, a mid-summer and a
mid-wood bird.
Frost
emphasizes the loudness of
the only
line in
the poem that starts with an
accented (stressed)
syllable
. (See
iambic
pentameter
)
Rhyme
occurs when the last
vowel and consonant sounds of two words are
identical. In Robert Frost's
and
Ice
fire
rhymes
with
desire
;
ice
with
twice
and
suffice
;
hate
with
great
.
Generally
speaking,
Rhyme
refers
to
rhymes
at
the
end
of
the
line.
Other
rhymes
are
called
rhymes.
Sometimes
rhymes are only approximate. These are
called near or slant rhymes.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what
I've tasted of desire
I hold with those
who favor fire.
But if it had to perish
twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would
suffice.
Emily Dickinson often employs
near rhyme as in the second stanza of
When Night is almost
Done
.
I never spoke with God,
Nor
visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of
the spot
As if the chart were given.
Rhyme
scheme
:
The
pattern
established
by
the
arrangement
of
rhymes
in
a
stanza
or
poem,
generally
described by using
letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence
of rhyming lines:
Some say the world
will end in fire,
a
Some say
in ice.
b
From what I've
tasted of desire
a
I hold with those who favor fire.
a
But if it had
to perish twice,
b
I think I know enough of hate
c
To know that
for destruction ice
b
Is
also great
c
And would
suffice
b
Meter
Meter is the
after
a
specified
number
of
accented
syllables.
Since
the
1400's
meter
has
tended
to
be
measured
by
accented and unaccented
syllables. The unit of meter is called the foot.
The length of lines is described by
the
number of repeated
hexameter (6),
heptameter (7) and octameter (8). The most common
foot in English is the iamb, which
2
consists of two syllables,
the second one of which is accented. Another
common foot is the trochee (also
two
syllables, but with the first accented); some
metrical feet (dactyl and anapest) have three
syllables.
We
will focus
mainly on the iamb.
Here are some iambic (tetrameter) lines
from the beginning of William Wordsworth's
I wandered lonely
as a
cloud
I
wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats
on high o'er vales and hills,
When all
at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of
golden daffodils,
Beside the lake,
beneath the trees.
Notice
that the next line breaks the rhythmic pattern and
this stands out:
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
It is as if a picture is
suddenly given motion, as if the breeze blew
across the poem.
Ballad
meter
is
the
source
of
much
debate.
The
debate
focuses
on
whether
you
should
just
count
the
number of accented
syllables (stresses) in lines alternating between
four stresses and three, or see these
lines as containing four and three feet
(usually iambic or trochaic) respectively. Ballad
meter is also called
hymn meter and you
should be able to sing a ballad to the tune of
We see the classic pattern
in
iambic
, there
are
trochees
(words like Drinkin') that begin and end some of
the lines.
The king sits
in Dunfermline toun,
Drinkin' the bluid
red wine
'0 whaur will I get a skeely
skipper,
To sail this ship o' mine?'
Then up and spak an eldern knicht,
Sat at the king's richt knee,
'Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,
That ever sail'd the sea.'
In the
La Belle Dames Sans
Merci
includes three
stresses.
Ah, what can ail
thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and
palely loitering;
The sedge
is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds
sing.
Emily Dickinson uses
the basic cadence of ballad meter in most of her
poems:
There's a certain
Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--
Heavenly Hurt, it gives
us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are---
3
Iambic
pentameter
(see
also
blank
verse
)
is
probably
the
most
common
non-
ballad
line
in
English
poetry.
These lines from Robert
Frost's
The Oven
Bird
if you pronounce
He says that leaves are old
and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to
spring as one to ten.
5
He
says the early petal-fall is past
When
pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the
fall.
He says the highway dust is over
all.
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The bird
would cease and be as other birds
But
that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but
words
Is what to make of a diminished
thing.
Form
Stanza
:
the
poetic
version
of
a
paragraph,
a
division
of
a
poem
made
by
arranging
the
lines
into units
separated by a space; traditionally
poetic stanza are similar in length to one another
and similar in rhyme
scheme.
Couplet
: Two successive
lines of poetry, usually of equal length and
similar meter, with end-words that
rhyme.
In Robert Frost's
Hyla
Brook
Its bed is
left a faded paper sheet
Of dead leaves
stuck together by the heató
In
Andrew
Marvell's
Epitaph
there
are
three
couplets
in
the
first
stanza
(a
six
line
stanza
is
called
a
sestet.)
ENOUGH; and leave the rest to Fame!
'Ties to commend her, but to name.
Courtship which, living, she declined,
When dead, to offer were unkind:
Nor can the truest wit, or friend,
Without detracting, her commend.
In Archibald MacLeish's
Ars Poetica
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
Quatrain
: A
poem, unit or stanza of four lines of verse,
usually with a rhyme scheme of abab or its
variant,
abcb. It is the most common
form of stanza in English.
4
Gather ye rosebuds while
ye may,
Old
Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that
smiles today
Tomorrow will
be dying.
(Robert
Herrick)
Break, break,
break,
On thy cold gray
stones, O Sea!
And I would that my
tongue could utter
The thoughts that
arise in me.
(Lord Tennyson)
a
b
a
b
a
b
a
b
Free verse:
a
form of poetry that does not contain repeated
rhythms or regular rhyme, but does use other
sound devices like assonance,
alliteration, imagery.
Notice how these
don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if
you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the
mountain
it's
not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone
In Auden's
the use of various kinds of repetition,
both phonetically and rhythmically. (Throughout
the poem there is
considerable end
rhyme even though there is variation in the length
of the lines; Auden was a poet of great
discipline so it is probably misguided
to label any of his verse as
The Old Masters; how well, they
understood
Its human
position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening
a window or just walking dully along;
Walt Whitman was probably
the first significant poet who wrote primarily
free verse. Here is a section of
Over the breast
of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes, and through old woods,
(where lately the violets peep'd from the ground,
spotting the
gray debris )
Amid the grass in the fields each side
of the lanesó
passing the endless grass;
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every
grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields
uprising;
Passing the apple-tree blows
of white and pink in the orchards;
Carrying a corpse to where it shall
rest in the grave,
Night and day
journeys a coffin.
Though these lines are an excellent
example of free verse, notice that Whitman
provides structure by using
extensive
repetition
and
frequently
employing
figurative
language
.
As
is
typical
with
Whitman,
the
sentence also features
inversion
.
Blank verse
:
unrhymed iambic pentameter, common in
Shakespeare's plays and many longer poems, such
5
as John
Milton's
Paradise Lost
, the
beginning of which provides a famous example:
Of Man's First
Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that
Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all
our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one
greater Man
Restore us, and regain the
blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse. . .
Ballad
: a
traditional and still popular form that is a
vehicle for narrative (story) poems which were and
still are often sung. Originally passed
on orally, they have been a literary form since
the 19
th
century when
some of the Romantic poets used the
form for
quatrains
of
alternating
eight
and
six
syllable
lines
rhymed
abcb
(for
more,
see
ballad
meter
).
In
the
Renaissance
these
were
sometimes
printed
as
couplets
called
because
they
had
fourteen
syllables. Traditional ballads were
stories of love or adventure or both that almost
always ended tragically.
One of the
most famous traditional ballads,
The king sits in Dunfermline toun,
Drinkin' the bluid red wine
'0 whaur will I get a skeely skipper,
To sail this ship o' mine?'
Then up and spak an eldern
knicht,
Sat at the king's richt knee,
Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,
That ever sail'd the sea.'
Our king has written a
braid letter,
And seal'd it wi' his
han',
And sent it to Sir Patrick
Spence,
Was walkin' on the stran'.
'To Noroway,
to Noroway,
To Noroway owre the faim;
The king's dochter o' Noroway,
It's thou maun bring her hame.'
The first line
that Sir Patrick read,
Sae lond, loud
laughed he;
The neist line that Sir
Patrick read,
The tear blinded his e'e.
included the
refrain to the last stanza; the others are formed
in the same way).
It is
too red for your old grey mare
My son,
now tell to me
It is the blood of my
old coon dog
Who chased the fox for me.
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