Essay

The Basic Elements of Poetry

Why Poetry?

Poets use everyday language in different ways to encourage readers to see familiar things in a new light, to draw on their senses, and to fantasize.

Poets also use certain devices to create medleys of sounds, to suggest visual interpretations, and to communicate messages.

When reading poetry, keep these five poetic elements in mind: (1) rhythm (2) rhyme (3) repetition (4) imagery and (5) stanza...

Rhythm

• The word rhythm is derived from the Greek rhythmos, meaning "to flow." In poetry, this flowing quality refers to the movement of words in the poem.

• According to Through the Eyes of a Child: An Introduction to Children's Literature, "Poets use rhythm for four specific purposes: (1) To increase the enjoyment in hearing language. (2) To highlight and emphasize specific words. (3) To create dramatic effects. (4) To suggest mood.

An example of rhythm - "The Pickety Fence"

Poet David McCord uses rhythm to suggest the sounds that a stick might make if a child dragged it along a fence.

The pickety fence The pickety fence Give it a lick, it's The pickety fence Give it a lick it's A lickety fence

Rhyme

Sound is an important part of the pleasure of poetry. One of the ways in which poets can emphasize sound is with rhyme. Rhyming words may occur at the end of lines and within lines. Poets of nonsense verse even create their own words to achieve humorous rhyming effects.

An Example of Rhyme - "Poem to Mud" Zilpha Keatley Snyder uses rhyme to twist the tongue and to play with the ear:

Poem to mud-- Poem to ooze-- Patted in pies, or coating the shoes. Poem to slooze-- Poem to crud-- Fed by a leak, or spread by a flood.

REpetition

Poets frequently use repetition to enrich or emphasize words, phrases, lines, or even whole verses in poems. In "Pickety Fence," David McCord uses repetition of whole lines. Lewis Carroll, in his poem from Alice in Wonderland, "Beautiful Soup," uses repetition to accent his feelings about soup.

An example of repetition - "beautiful soup"

BEAUTIFUL Soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen! Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Beau--ootiful Soo-oop! Beau--ootiful Soo-oop! Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Imagery

Imagery is a primary element in poetry. It encourages children to see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and touch the worlds created by poets. Poets use figurative language to clarify, add vividness, and encourage readers to experience things in new ways. Examples of figurative language are metaphor, simile, personification, and hyperbole.

Metaphors = implied comparisons between things that have something in common but are essentially different. Metaphors highlight certain qualities in things to make readers see them in new ways. Hyperbole is just exaggeration. In the introduction to Flashlight and Other Poems, Judith Thurman (1976) uses metaphor:

~ A poem is a flashlight, too: the flashlight of surprise/Pointed at a skinned knee or at an oil slick, at pretending to/sleep or at kisses, at balloons, or snow, or at the soft scary nuzzle of a mare, a poem lets us feel and know each/in a fresh, sudden, and strong light.

Whereas metaphors are implied comparisons, similes are direct comparisons between things that have something in common but are essentially different. The comparisons made by similes are considered direct because the word like or as is included in the comparison. I

An example of imagry - "The path on the sea"

Inna Miller uses simile to capture

the mystery and allure of moonlight on the

ocean.

Notice the use of the word like in the first line.

The moon this night is like a silver sickle Mowing a field of stars. It has spread a golden runner Over the rippling waves. With its winking shimmer This magic carpet lures me To fly to the moon on it.

Stanza

A stanza is a set of lines in a poem grouped together and set apart from other stanzas in the poem either by a double space or by different indentation. Poems may contain any number of stanzas, depending on the author’s wishes and the structure in which the poet is writing. In general, it is easy to think of stanzas in poems as being equivalent to paragraphs in prose. That is to say that both stanzas and paragraphs contain related information, while new thoughts and concepts become the next stanza or paragraph.

An example of stanza - "a red, red rose"

By Robert Burns (1794) O my Luve is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my Luve is like the melody

That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Citing poetry in text

Citing poetry in text is slightly different than citing other sources. Primarily, you cite the stanza and line as well as the poet. Also, when inserting less than four lines (or more if they're shorter) into your essay, you separate the lines with slashes ( / ). Note the stanza and line in the in-text citation. For example.

A simile is used to compare love to a rose in the following lines, "O my luve's like a red, red rose / That's newly sprung in June" (Burns, stanza 1, lines 1-2).

Note the page number isn't part of the citation, but it is in the Works Cited. For the first citation, use the words stanza and line in your citation, but subsequent citations can just use (Burns 1, 1-2). Use a dash between line numbers to denote line range.

Some additional notes about Poetry...

• Not all poetry rhymes, but many have a type of rhythm. There's what's called "free verse," which can have neither rhyme or rh ythm, but an abundance of imagery and metaphor. We'll be seeing a great example of free verse in an upcoming poem, "A Supermarket in California," by Allen Ginsberg.

• Poetry is best enjoyed when read aloud. Within this poetry module there are three videos for the poems we'll be using for Ess ay Three, two of which are read by the poets themselves. Please listen to them, but use the texts of the poems for citing in Essay Three.

• Approach poetry with an open mind. Poets use words to illustrate deeper meanings, so we need to go beyond the words' usual de finitions to discover the poet's interpretation.

• As a final thought, if you enjoy music, then you've been "listening" to poetry all along. Lyrics are often nothing more than poetry set to music.