The Nature of Poetry

★ “Poetry” is any form of poems in general; Other name is verse

● Blank verse: - written in iambic (feet) pentameter (five meters) = a line of writing
that consists of ten syllables in a specific pattern of an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable, / a short syllable followed by a long syllable.
- Unrhymed
- Examples: John Milton’s “Lycidas”, James Thomson’s “Seasons”, William
Wordsworth’s “Prelude”, Alfred Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”, etc.
● Free verse: - no syllabic stressed pattern
- Lack of rhyme
- Irregular line length
- Mostly found in poems after the Romantic period
- Daily language
- Colloquial
- Examples: Emily Dickinson’s “I Taste a Liquor never Brewed”
- Modern free verse: King James translation
● Laurence Perrine → Poetry: - is a kind of language that says more intensely than
does ordinary language
- Uses language to communicate info
- Has language as an instrument of persuasion
- Brings a sense of life & perception of life
- Widens & sharpens our contact w/ existence
- Concerns with experience
● Kennedy → Poetry: - is an idea caught in the act of dawning (Frost)
- Things that are true expressed in words that are beautiful (Dante)
- The art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of
reason (Samuel)
- The best words in the best order (Coleridge)
- The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings (Wordsworth)
- A revelation in words by means of the words (Wallace)
- The clear expression of mixed feelings (Auden)
★ Types of poetry (Alexander)
1. Lyric poetry → a short poem expressing thoughts and feelings of a 1 speaker
- May be a brief expression of mood or state of feeling
- Also includes extended expression of a complex evolution of mind = in
the long elegy and ode
- Other kinds = manifests and justifies particular disposition and values,
expresses a sustained process of observ and medit, tries to solve problems,
etc. = E.g. Mathew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”
- E.g. P. B. Shelley’s “To Night”
 2. Narrative poetry → to tell a story
- The oldest literature = 1st books of Bible, The Iliad, The Odyssey,
Beowulf.
- Can be analyzed as story analysis
- Characteristics = a. A heroic &/ unusual main charac
b. Rapidly reveals plot and violent act
c. restrained dialogue and minimum of desc / comment
d. Resignation (giving up) to fate or authority
e. Employment of folk or colloquial idiom
f. Few variations of rhythm and rhyme
g. Dramatic struct
h. A refrain that freq. takes on new meaning from the verse
that comes before it
3. Dramatic poetry → presents voice of an imaginary charac / speaking directly w/o
additional narration
- Dramatic monologue (written by a charac other than author at some
decisive moment)
- Addressed to other characs who remain silent
4. Reflective poetry → a reflection of a poet
- Reminisce about an object / rls / time in life
5. Confessional poetry → been described as poetry of the personal / “I”
- Focus on extreme moments of indiv. Experiences, the psyche, & trauma
(mental illness, sexuality, suicide, etc)
- Emerged in US during late 1950s & early 1960s = Postmodernism =
worked in opposition to the idealization of domesticity by revealing
unhappiness in their own homes

How Poetry is Done

★ Structural devices: concerning with the physical form of poem
1. Illustration → a vivid picture in which a poet may make an idea clear
- Will portray the real situation in the poem = the poet
- Situation may cover speaker, setting, / atmosphere
2. Repetition → special musical effects of the poem
- Repeating a word to make readers pay attention to it
3. Contrast → putting two opposite pictures side by side
★ Sound devices: the element of sound making a poem rhythmical & having a musical
effect when it is read loudly
1. Alliteration → a repetition of the same sound frequently / the 1st sounds of words
that are fairly close tgt. E.g. Tongue twister
2. Consonance → a repetition of final consonant words
 3. Onomatopoeia → imitating an object's sound. E.g. cuckoo, buzz, tick-tack
4. Assonance → introduces imperfect rhymes
- Repeats the vowel sound
- To change the mood; Long vowel sounds = reduce energy & make it more
serious, higher vowel sounds = increase energy & lighten mood
5. Rhyme → at line endings
- Consists of words / phrases containing an identical / similar vowel-sounds
(accented) & consonant sounds
- Sounds following the vowel-sound have to be the same
- Slant rhyme / near rhyme / off rhyme / imperfect rhyme = final
consonant-sounds are the same but the vowel-sounds are different
a. Consonance → kind of slant rhyme; rhymed words or phrases have
the same beginning & ending consonant-sounds but a different
vowel = chitter and chatter, reader and rider, spoiled and spilled
b. End rhyme → comes at the end of lines; most rhyme tends to be
end rhyme
c. Masculine rhyme → one-syllable words = be - sea, come - dumb,
first - burst; more than one syllable, stressed final syllables =
divorce - remorse, horse - remorse
d. Feminine rhyme → two / more stressed syllables other than last =
turtle - fertile, intellectual - henpecked, tenderly - slenderly
e. Eye rhyme → same spells yet different pronunciations = rough -
dough, idea - flea, venus = menus; not rhyme at all
6. Rhythm → like a beat; made of stresses & pauses
- Has no meaning
- Basic kind of feet; no need special knowledge of meter
● Iambic = 1 unstressed follows 1 stressed = to-day
● Trochaic = 1 stressed follows 1 unstressed = dai-ly
● Anapestic = 2 unstressed follow 1 stressed = in-ter-vene
● Dactylic = 1 stressed follows 2 unstressed = yes-ter-day
● Spondaic = 2 stressed = day-break
-
Monometer One foot

dimeter Two feet

trimeter Three feet

tetrameter Four feet

pentameter Five feet

 hexameter Six feet

heptameter Seven feet

octameter Eight feet

★ Sense devices → cover the content

a. Simile = direct comparison (as / like) = similarity; dissimilar in kind
b. Metaphor = implied comparison = mengibaratkan
c. Personification = objects act like human / can speak
d. Theme = central idea of poem; isn’t a topic
e. Tone = attitude towards subject, audience, / themselves; emotions; e.g. the use of
hooray which illustrates happiness
f. Figure of speech / figurative language = produce meaning = related to non-literal
meaning
g. Symbol = e.g. red rose means passion
★ The person in the poem
1. I / we = subject / poet themselves
2. You = 2nd person = someone / thing talks to
3. He/She/They/It = 3rd person = talks about

Elements of Poetry
★ Form → implies some kind of definiteness or coherence, shape of some kind
1. Physical form = the appearance of a poem on paper; can be seen from structural &
sound devices
2. Mental form = content in the usual sense of the word when applied to literature;
grammatical struct., logical sequence, pattern of associations, use of dominant
image, pattern of image & emotion
★ Language → must able to reveal ‘experience’
★ Diction → 1. Denotative = available in dictionary
2. Connotative = other meaning
★ Figure of speech → - Metonymy = when a word or phrase is replaced with a different one
which it is associated with; e.g. all ears = willing to listen
- Paradox = self-contradictory phrase or concept that illuminates a truth.
- Hyperbole = exaggeration
- Understatement = straight to the point
- Pleonasm = when one uses too many words to express a message; e.g. “I
hear that with my own ears”, “I eat fried squid (calamari)”
- Synecdoche = e.g. refer to car as wheels, good hands = taken care well
- Sarcasm
- irony
★ Imagery → representation; visual imagery, auditory (hearing), tactile (touch), thermal
(heat & cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), or kinesthetic (sensations of movement)
★ Allusion = refer to something in history / prev lit
- Reinforce emotions / ideas of one’s work with another work
★ Theme
★ Rhyme
★ Rhythm
★ Tone