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“A Poet’s

Advice” by ee cummings

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses

his feeling through words.

This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel –but, that’s thinking or believing

or knowing: not feeling. And poetry is feeling—not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human

being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whatever you think or you believe or you

know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-

yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to

make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being

can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little

harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing

is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We, all of us, do exactly this

nearly all of the time—and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling,

you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do

something easy, like learning how to blow up the world—unless you’re not only willing,

but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn’t.

It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

e.e. cummings was born Edward Estlin Cummings in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 14, 1894. After receiving his BA from Harvard, Cummings volunteered to serve in the Ambulance Corps in France during World War I. He stayed in Paris, after the war, where he wrote most of poetry and painted most of his paintings. He later returned to the U.S. and died in 1962, in

Conway, New Hampshie.

e.e. cummings is said to be one of the most innovative contemporary poets. He plays around with

punctuation, words, and their order, making his writing difficult to comprehend at times. e.e. cummings

published more than 900 poems.

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Poetry

Study

Guide

Poetry Terms

The following words are the terms from the poetry unit that you will be responsible for learning. They are explained in more detail throughout this study packet, which we will work through together in class. At the end of the unit, you will be tested over these terms. You will need to know the definition and be able to apply them to several poems.

Alliteration – the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of words

Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds

Connotation – the emotional influence of a word

Couplet – a rhyme that occurs in two consecutive (back to back) lines of poetry

Denotation – the dictionary definition of a word

Diction – a writer’s choice of words

Figurative language – language that is based on imaginative comparisons and is not literally true

Free verse – poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme

Hyperbole – a figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion or to create a comic effect Idiom – an expression that means something different from the literal meaning of each word

Imagery – language that appeals to our senses

Metaphor – a comparison between two unlike things in which one thing becomes another thing without the use

of a word such as like or as

Meter – a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line of a poem

Onomatopoeia – the use of words that sound like what they mean

Personification – a kind of metaphor in which human qualities are given to something that is not human

Prose – ordinary form of spoken or written language without metrical structure

Rhyme scheme – a regular pattern of end rhyme

Rhythm – a musical quality in language based on repetition

Simile – a comparison between two unlike things that uses a word of comparison such as like, as, or resembles

Sonnet – a poem with fourteen lines that follows a regular rhyme pattern and is usually written in iambic

pentameter

Speaker – the voice talking to the reader in a poem

Stanza – a group of consecutive lines in a poem that form a single unit

Structure – the organization or arrangement of the parts of a poem

Tone – a writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject or toward an audience

Verse – poetry

A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

-Emily Dickinson

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Structure

Unlike stories, or prose, poetry is written in set lines. Poets, not publishers, determine the length of each line in their poems. There is some rationale or system by which the poet breaks or ends lines. Poets write in verse, which literally means “deliberately turning from line to line.” One of the greatest challenges that poets face, other than what to write about and what words to use, is how to decide where to break lines. Here are a few possibilities:

End where you would normally pause in speech. This means that you would end a line where you would normally have a period or a comma. These types of lines are called end-stopped lines.

End a line where you would not normally pause in everyday speech. These lines are called run-on or enjambed lines because they “run from one to the next” without a pause.

Use a combination of end-stopped and enjambed lines. Some poems are written in free verse (poetry without rhythm or rhyme) and use a combination of end-stopped and enjambed lines.

Break lines based on a pattern of rhythm or rhyme. When poets use rhythm in a poem, they use a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The pattern is usually the same for each line. If using rhyme, the line should end with the rhyming word.

Arrange your lines in a way that creates a particular shape. In a concrete poem the words and lines are arranged into a shape that directly relates to the subject of the poem. An example of this is Philip G. Tannenbaum’s “Poem.”

“Poem” by Philip G. Tannenbaum

Ido

ntl

ike

tel

eph

one

boo

ths

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Identify the type of structure used in the following poems. Label them according to the type of structure used: end-stopped, enjambed, combination, rhyme/rhythm, concrete.

1. ____________________________

“Winter Poem” by Nikki Giovanni

once a snowflake fell

on my brow and I love

it so much I kissed

it and it was happy and called its cousins

and brothers and a web of

snow engulfed me then

i reached to love them all

and I squeezed them and they became

a spring rain and I stood perfectly

still and was a flower

2. ____________________________

“A Book: 1” by Emily Dickinson

He ate and drank the precious words,

His spirit grew robust;

He knew no more that he was poor,

Nor that his frame was dust.

He danced along the dingy day,

And this bequest of wings

Was but a book. What liberty

A loosened spirit brings!

5. ____________________________

“Sir, You are Tough” by Joseph Brodsky

Sir, you are tough and I am tough.

But who will write whose epitaph.

3.____________________________

By e.e. cummings

L(a

Le

Af

Fa

Ll

s)

one

li

ness

4. ____________________________

“First Memory” by Louise Glick

Long ago, I was wounded. I lived

to revenge myself

against my father, not

for what he was-

for what I was: from the beginning of time,

in childhood, I thought

that pain meant

I was not loved.

It meant I loved.

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Rhyme

Rhyme occurs in poetry when similar or identical sounds exist at the end of two or more words. Most of the time, the rhyme occurs at the end of the line, but poets use rhyme in other ways as well. Types of Rhyme:

A poet uses end rhyme when the rhymes occur at the end of the line. This is the most common type of rhyme found in poetry. Think back to the poems you loved as a child. Many of the poets (Dr. Suess, Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, and others) used end rhyme in their poetry.

A couplet is a type of end rhyme in which the end rhyme occurs in two consecutive lines of poetry.

Internal rhyme refers to rhymes that occur within a line of poetry.

Sometimes poets can’t quite come up with the word they need to create the end rhyme. When this occurs, poets “fake it” and use a word that “almost” works. Slant rhymes refer to end rhymes that do not rhyme exactly but vary only in one sound. Emily Dickinson is famous for using slant rhymes in her poetry.

Place the letter of the examples below next to the correct type of rhyme used by the poet:

A. I never spoke with God _____ Couplet/End Rhyme

Nor visited in heaven Yet certain am I of the spot _____ Internal Rhyme

As if the checks were given By Emily Dickinson _____ Slant Rhyme

B. I will not eat green eggs and ham I will not eat them, Sam I am.

From the classic, Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Suess

C. Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. From “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe

Most of the time, poets create some kind of pattern with the rhymes that they choose. This pattern

of rhymes in a poem is called the rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme is identified by assigning a

letter of the alphabet for each new line. Here’s the rhyme scheme from the first stanza of William

Wordsworth’s poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”

I wandered lonely as a cloud A

That floats on high o’er vales and hills B

When all at once I saw a crowd A

A host, of golden daffodils, B

Beside the lake, beneath the trees C

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. C

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Rhythm “Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” (Edgar Allen Poe)

Some poems have a beat that readers naturally fall into when they read the poems aloud. That musical quality of poetry is the rhythm, the arrangement of stressed and unstressed beats. When the poem’s rhythm has a patterned repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables we say that the poem has meter. Sometimes, people fall into a sing-song pattern when reading a poem with meter. It is very difficult not to fall into the natural rhythm. Usually, the pattern consists of a certain number of stressed beats per line. When marking the rhythm of a poem, you place a slash mark (/) above the stressed syllable. Read through the Emily Dickinson’s poem, and place a slash mark over the stressed syllables. They are already bolded in the first stanza to help you get started.

“Hope is the Thing With Feathers” by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

A sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest sea,

Yet never in extremity

It asked a crumb of me.

There are times when poets choose to use rhythm without using rhyme. BLANK VERSE refers to unrhymed poetry consisting of ten syllables per line where every other syllable is stressed beginning with the second syllable of the line. This type of verse is used mostly in Shakespeare’s plays.

As Romeo says about his lady love, Juliet:

―But soft! What light at yonder window breaks. It is the east and Juliet is the sun!‖

Until the 1800s almost all poetry in English used a strict rhyme scheme and meter pattern.

Eventually, however, poets began to abandon the old poetic rules to write FREE VERSE, which does not follow a regular pattern of rhyme and meter. This kind of poetry sometimes sounds similar to prose or to everyday spoken language.

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Sonnet

The following poem by Shakespeare is called a sonnet. In a sonnet, there is a kind of meter called

iambic pentameter. An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da DAH).

Pentameter means there are five stressed syllables, or beats, in each line. In the English, or

Shakespearean, sonnet, three four-line units (of rhyme) are followed by a couplet, or two-line unit.

Some modern poets, like Robert Frost, create their own types of sonnet.

SONNET 18

by Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

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

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Rhyme: 1. Label the rhyme scheme in Shakespeare’s sonnet. Rhythm: 2. Label the stressed and unstressed beats. 3. How do you know this sonnet is written in iambic pentameter?

__________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

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Sound Devices

Poets often choose words based on the sounds that those words make within a poem. Repetition of sounds is one more way that a poet can get the attention of his or her readers. Poets choose words that will play with the ears of their listeners. The sound devices they use can act like tricks to focus the reader’s attention on important words, phrases, and ideas. Types of Sound Devices:

When poets repeat consonant sounds that occur at the beginnings of words, they are using alliteration: mad money, dog days, drip dry, wash and wear, ready and raring to go.

“Lost” Desolate and lone All night long on the lake Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbor’s breast And the harbor’s eyes.

—Carl Sandburg

Poets also repeat vowel sounds within a line of poetry. This is called assonance. Remember that the focus is on sound. Different vowels might produce the same sounds even though the letters are not the same. This happens in the following example from Langston Hughes’s poem, “Theme for English B.”

“I like a pipe for a Christmas present Or records—Bessie, Bop, or Bach”

PRACTICE: Try writing a few of your own examples: Alliteration: Assonance:

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Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout

Would not take the garbage out!

She’d scour the pots and scrape the pans,

Candy the yams and spice the hams,

And though her daddy would scream and shout,

She simply would not take the garbage out.

_______________________________________________________________

And so it piled up to the ceilings:

Coffee grounds, potato peelings,

Brown bananas, rotten peas,

Chunks of sour cottage cheese.

It filled the can, it covered the floor,

It cracked the window and blocked the door

______________________________________________________________

With bacon rinds and chicken bones,

Drippy ends of ice cream cones,

Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,

Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,

Pizza crusts and withered greens,

Soggy beans and tangerines,

Crusts of black burned buttered toast,

Gristly bits of beefy roasts…

_______________________________________________________________

The garbage rolled on down the hall,

It raised the roof, it broke the wall…

Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,

Globs of gooey bubble gum,

Cellophane from green baloney,

Rubbery blubbery macaroni,

Group # 1

Group # 2

Group # 3

Group # 4

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_______________________________________________________________

Peanut butter, caked and dry,

Curdled milk and crusts of pie,

Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,

Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,

Cold french fries and rancid meat,

Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.

_______________________________________________________________

At last the garbage reached so high

That finally it touched the sky.

And all the neighbors moved away,

And none of her friends would come to play.

And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,

“OK, I’ll take the garbage out!”

But then, of course, it was too late…

_______________________________________________________________

The garbage reached across the state,

From New York to the Golden Gate.

And there, in the garbage she did hate,

Poor Sarah met an awful fate,

That I cannot right now relate

Because the hour is much too late.

But children, remember Sarah Stout

And always take the garbage out!

Group # 7

Group # 6

Group #5

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Poets also use onomatopoeia as a way of playing with the listener’s ears. This means that the poet uses words whose pronunciations sound like the sound they represent. We use onomatopoeia when we say a gun “bangs” or a cannon “booms,” the bacon in the frying pan “sizzles,” and the waves “crash” against the shore. In its simplest form, onomatopoeia is no more than a single word that echoes a natural sound (hiss, slap, rumble, snarl, drip) or a mechanical sound (click, zing, whack, clickety-clack). In his poem, “Jabberwocky,” Lewis Carroll uses made-up words to convey different sounds.

And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.

PRACTICE: Write a sentence describing the sounds made by the following things. Try to use onomatopoeia and alliteration to echo the sounds that you hear.

A rainy windy night:

A dog eating dry pet food:

A city street: Now try transferring your sentence(s) into poetic form. Write your poem below, considering its structure (where you will break lines and how you will position them).

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Imagery

Imagery is one of the elements that give poetry its

forcefulness. An image is a single word or phrase that

appeals to one or more of our senses. An image can help us

see color or motion. An image can be so fresh, so powerful

that it can speak to our deepest feelings. An image can be

so phrased that it makes us feel joy or grief, wonder or

horror, love or disgust. Imagery is part of a poet’s style.

It is the product of the poet’s own way of seeing the world.

Images can be concrete or abstract:

Concrete images in poetry help readers to

picture clearly what the writing means. Concrete

imagery appeals to the senses (sight, sound,

smell, taste, touch) and uses specific, precise,

vivid details.

Abstract images refer to ideas/concepts such

as death, justice, beauty or emotions such as

rage, love, fear. Abstractions are vague, general

terms.

Symbolism: An abstract image could be represented by a symbol, or a concrete image.

Symbolism is one of the most powerful devices poets use. It enables them to compress

a very complex idea into one image or even one word. Colors can be used as symbols. You will have a chance to use colors as symbols in your own poetry. List some associations given to the following colors:

RED:

BLUE:

GREEN:

BLACK:

YELLOW:

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Figurative Language

In our everyday speech, we often use figurative language (language that represents one thing in

terms of another). We may describe an action or a feeling by comparing it to something else: ―I

felt like a worm‖; ―We ate like kings‖; ―That test was murder.‖ Expressions that describe one

thing in terms of another are called figures of speech.

Figures of speech help to make language richer in

meaning and more imaginative. In Macbeth, William

Shakespeare describes a storm in which the sky grows so

dreary that it seems as though ―dark night strangles‖

the sun. Emily Dickinson, describing a violent storm, uses

this figure of speech to evoke the sound of a shrill wind:

―There came a wind like a bugle.‖ Through figurative

language, poets can express fresh, exciting, or unusual

relationships between things, and so give us new insights

into what we see and feel.

Simile – A figure of speech that compares two things, using a words such as like, as, or than

to suggest the similarity. Simple similes occur in everyday speech:

He runs like the wind.

Her sunburn made her face red as a beet.

Superman is faster than a speeding bullet.

Metaphor – Like a simile, a metaphor points out a resemblance between two things. A simile

makes the comparison through the use of connecting words such as like or as or than. A

direct metaphor identifies the two things as one, usually with ―is‖: Jim is a bear. An implied

metaphor implies or suggests the comparison: The city sleeps peacefully.

Personification – A figure of speech that gives human qualities to something non-human. At

the New Year, cartoonists depict the old year as a toothless old man and the new year as a

sturdy baby. Death is often portrayed as a grim and bony figure in a hooded robe. The

natural world is personified as Mother Nature. Through personification, a writer can

describe a quality or idea in a concrete, yet imaginative way.

Hyperbole – Writers often use hyperbole, also called overstatement, to intensify a

description or to emphasize the essential nature of something. If you say that a limousine is

as long as an ocean liner, you’re using a hyperbole.

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Figurative Language Fabulous Four Directions: Identify the type of figurative language used in each of the following sentences. Simile: S Metaphor: M Personification: P Hyperbole: H 1. _______ Daniel soon discovered that the road of life was filled with potholes.

2. _______ A full moon was smiling into the window of our camper.

3. _______ As idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean. (Coleridge)

4. _______ April is the cruelest month. (T.S. Eliot)

5. _______ The fallen leaves are like soggy cornflakes, too wet for raking.

6. _______ Kevin knew that a mountain of homework was waiting for him.

7. _______ I’m so happy I could burst.

8. _______ From our airplane window the fields of grain were a quilt of gold.

9. _______ The warm breath of spring began to melt the frost of winter.

10. _______ You’ve said that a million times.

11. _______ His life was an open book.

12. _______ She swims like a fish.

13. _______ I’ll die if I can’t go to that college.

14. _______ The flames licked the logs gently and then devoured them.

15. _______ The moon shines like a fifty-cent piece.

16. _______ Luck smiled on the defending champion.

17. _______ The president is the lead actor on the world stage.

18. _______ Eva’s eyes are as glassy as marbles.

19. _______ Bad weather will rear its ugly head.

20. _______ The city is a sleeping woman.