Advanced Placement Literature and Composition

Poetry~

Essential Skills and Readings Handbook

Name ____________________________________

What is poetry?

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry.”~ Emily Dickinson

“Poetry is a composition of words set to music”~ Ezra Pound

“”A poem is a statement in language about a human experience.”~ Yvor Winters

“Poetry is a conversation with the world; poetry is a conversation with the words on the page in which you allow those words to speak back at you; and poetry is a conversation with yourself.”

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

“Poetry is the kind of thing a poet writes.”~ Robert Frost

Coming up with a satisfactory and complete definition of poetry is a challenge. It is language. It is communication. “It is a rhythmical composition of words expressing an attitude, designed to surprise and delight, and to arouse an emotional response.”

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Literature is an offering; it is creative, considered, and personalized. It requires you to bring your own experiences of life to the reading also. Your role in analyzing poetry must be an active one. If you do not understand the poem (and in most instances, this will be true of any first reading) then you must learn to ask questions and to interrogate the poem. All serious literature is demanding – part of the aim is to stretch the imagination and to make you think.

Remember what Perrine tells us:

“Any correct interpretation must satisfactorily explain the details of the poem without being contradicted by any detail; the best interpretations will reply on the fewest assumptions not grounded in the poem itself.

A rose is a rose is a rose, and is more than a rose. But a rose is not an ink blot. Nor is a poem.”

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Reading a PoemEvery good poem begins as the poet’s

But ends as the reader’s.-MILLER WILLIAMS

How do you read a poem? The literal minded might say, “Just let your eye light on it”; but there is more to poetry than meets the eye. What Shakespeare called “the mind’s eye” also plays a part. Many a reader who has no trouble understanding and enjoying prose finds poetry difficult. This is to be expected. At first glance, a poem usually will make some sense and give some pleasure, but it may not yield everything at once. Sometimes it only hints at meaning still to come if we will keep after it. Poetry is not to be galloped over like the daily news: a poem differs from most prose in that it is to be read slowly, carefully, and attentively. Not all poems are difficult, of course, and some can be understood and enjoyed on first encounter. But good poems yield more if read twice; and the best poems—after ten, twenty, or a hundred readings—still go on yielding.

Approaching a thing written in lines and surrounded with white space, we need not expect it to be a poem just because it is verse. (Any composition in lines of more or less regular rhythm, usually ending in rhyme, is verse.) Here, for instance, is a specimen of verse that few will call poetry:

Thirty days hath September,April, June, and November; All the rest have thirty-oneExcepting February alone,To which we twenty-eight assignTill leap year makes it twenty-nine.

To a higher degree than that classic memory-tickler, poetry appeals to the mind and arouses the feelings. Poetry may state facts, but, more important, it makes imaginative statements that we may value even if its facts are incorrect. Coleridge’s error in placing a star within the horns of the crescent moon in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” does not stop the passage from being good poetry, though it is faulty astronomy. According to one poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, poetry is “to be heard for its own sake and interest even over and above its interest of meaning.” There are other elements in a poem besides plain prose sense: sounds, images, rhythms, figures of speech. These may strike us and please us even before we ask, “But what does it all mean?”

This is a truth not readily grasped by anyone who regards a poem as a kind of puzzle written in secret code with a message slyly concealed. The effect of a poem (one’s whole mental and emotional response to it) consists of much more than simply a message. By its musical qualities, by its suggestions, it can work on the reader’s unconscious. T.S. Eliot put it well when he said in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism that the prose sense of a poem is chiefly useful in keeping the reader’s mind “diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him.” Eliot went on to liken the meaning of a poem to the bit of meat a burglar brings along to throw to the family dog. What is the work of a poem? To touch us, to stir us, to make us glad, and possibly even to tell us something.

How to set about reading a poem? Here are a few suggestions.To begin with, read the poem once straight through, with no particular expectations;

read open-mindedly. Let yourself experience whatever you find, without worrying just yet about the large general and important ideas the poem contains (if indeed it contains any).

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Don’t dwell on a troublesome word or difficult passage—just push on. Some o the difficulties may seem smaller when you read the poem for a second time; at least, they will have become parts of a whole for you.

On the second reading, read for the exact sense of all the words; if there are words you don’t understand, look them up in a dictionary. Dwell on any difficult parts as long as you need to.

If you read the poem silently, sound its words in your mind. (This is a technique that will get you nowhere in a speed-reading course, but it may help the poem to do its work on you.) Better still, read the poem aloud, or hear someone else read it. You may discover meanings you didn’t perceive in it before. Even if you are no actor, to decide how to speak a poem can be an excellent method of getting to understand it. Some poems, like bells, seem heavy till heard. Listen while reading the following lines from Alexander Pope’s Dunciad. Attacking the minor poet James Ralph, who had sung the praises of a mistress named Cynthia, Pope makes the goddess of Dullness exclaim:

“Silence ye wolves! While Ralph to Cynthia howls,And makes night hideous—answer him, ye owls!”

When ye owls slide together and become yowls, poor Ralph’s serenade is turned into the nightly outcry of a cat.

Try to paraphrase the poem as a whole, or perhaps just the more difficult lines. In paraphrasing, we put into our own words what we understand the poem to say, restating ideas that seem essential, coming out and stating what the poem may only suggest. This may sound like a heartless thing to do to a poem, but good poems can stand it. In fact, to compare a poem to its paraphrase is a good way to see the distance between poetry and prose. In making a paraphrase, we generally work through a poem or a passage line by line. The statement that results may take as many words as the original, if not more. A paraphrase, then, is ampler than a summary, a brief condensation of the gist, main idea, or story. (Summary of a horror film in TV Guide: “Demented biologist, coveting power over New York, swells sewer rats to hippopotamus-size.”)

Whenever you paraphrase, you stick your neck out. You affirm what the poem gives you to understand. And making a paraphrase can help you see the central thought of the poem, its theme. Theme isn’t the same as subject, the main topic, whatever the poem is “about.” In Romeo and Juliet, the subject might be love, but the theme might be “don’t confuse love with infatuation.” A paraphrase, of course, never tells all that a poem contains, nor will every reader agree that a particular paraphrase is accurate. We all make our own interpretations, and sometimes the total meaning of a poem evades even the poet who wrote it. Asked to explain a passage in one of his poems, Robert Browning replied that when he had written the poem, only God and he knew what it meant; but “Now, only God knows.” Still, to analyze a poem as if we could be certain of its meaning is, in general, more fruitful than to proceed as if no certainty could ever be had.

The Lake Isle of InnisfreeBy William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

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And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Kennedy, X.J. and Dana Gioia. AP Edition: Literature, and Introduction. Pearson: New York, 2009.

Reading and Analyzing Poems ~ Some Guidelines

Reading a Poem

1. Read the poem aloud. Listen to it. Read it slowly. You don’t play your music on fast forward, and poetry should not be read in fast forward mode either. Sound and rhythm is often crucial parts of poetry and may not be noticed if you just read in your head.

2. Read straight through the poem the first time and get a feel for it.3. Reread the poem paying attention to punctuation, sentences, phrases.4. What is the title? It is not just a label ; titles are entry points into the poem, creating tone, tension

or even interacting with the poem itself.5. Look up any unfamiliar words.6. What is the literal elements of the poem do we know? Who is the poet/narrator/persona

portrayed? Who does the audience seem to be – for whom is the poem written? What is the form and structure of the poem?

7. What is the setting of the poem ? What is the occasion for the poem?8. What it the literal message of the poem? Subject matter and theme?9. What images are present? Which senses do they appeal to and which sense dominates?10. Observe the diction of the poem. What connotations are evoked from the word choice?11. How does the syntax aid in communicating the message of the poem effectively? Is it strained and

forced or balanced and varied?12. What poetic devices does the poem use? Similes, metaphors, personification, metonymy, ironies,

parallels, paradoxes, overstatement, understatement, etc.13. Identify any allusions or symbols.14. What sound patterns are used? Rhythm, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, etc. What is the meter?

Scan the poem and mark its scansion.15. Finally, consider which of the individual parts contribute to the total experience of the poem:

_____ title _____ sound _____ tone_____ imagery _____ diction _____ syntax_____ symbols _____allusions _____ form

What is the central purpose of the poem?

16. What did you learn from the poem? It could be about-The poet - The poem- Life - Ourselves

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Major Types of Poems

1. Lyric PoetryOriginally, as its Greek name suggests, a lyric was a poem sung to the music of a lyre. This

earlier meaning—a poem made for singing—is still current today, when we use lyrics to mean the words of a popular song. But the kind of printed poem we now call a lyric is usually something else, for over the past five hundred years the nature of lyric poetry has changed greatly. Ever since the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, poets have written less often for singers, more often for readers. In general, this tendency has made lyric poems contain less word-music and (since they can be pondered on a page) more thought—and perhaps more complicated feelings.

Here is a rough definition of a lyric as it is written today: a short poem expressing the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker. Often a poet will write a lyric in the first person (“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree”), but not always. Instead, a lyric might describe an object or recall an experience without the speaker’s ever bringing himself or herself into it.

Perhaps because, rightly or wrongly, some people still think of lyrics as lyre-strummings, they expect a lyric to be an outburst of feeling, somewhat resembling a song, at least containing musical elements such as rime, rhythm, or sound effects. Such expectations are fulfilled in “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” that impassioned lyric full of language rich in sound. Many contemporary poets, however, write short poems in which they voice opinions or complicated feelings—poems that no reader would dream of trying to sing. Most people would call such poems lyrics too; one commentator has argued that a lyric may contain an argument.

PianoBy D.H. Lawrence (1918)

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers By Adrienne Rich (1951)

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 Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.They do not fear the men beneath the tree;They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her woolFind even the ivory needle hard to pull.The massive weight of Uncle's wedding bandSits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lieStill ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.The tigers in the panel that she madeWill go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

2. Sonnets 14 lines poem usually written in iambic pentameter Focus on one subject Two types = Shakespearean/English or Petrarchan/Italian Petrarchan sonnet has two parts –

o 8 line octave with rhyme scheme abba abbao 6 line sestet with a rhyme scheme cdecde or some variationo The volta, or turn, occurs between the octave and the sesteto Octave usually presents a problem, idea or question and the sestet

solves or answers it

Shakespearean rhyme scheme = ababcdcdefefgg Three quatrains and one couple couplet amplifies, restates or reverses the poem’s theme or

ideas

When we speak of “traditional verse forms,” we usually mean fixed forms. If written in a fixed form, a poem inherits from other poems certain familiar elements of structure: an unvarying number of lines, say, or a stanza pattern. In addition, it may display certain conventions: expected features such as themes, subjects, attitudes, or figures of speech. In the poetry of western Europe and America, the sonnet is the fixed form that has attracted for the longest time and the longest number of noteworthy practitioners. Originally an Italian form, the sonnet owes much of its prestige to Petrarch (1304-1374), who wrote in it of his love for the unattainable Laura. So great was the vogue for sonnets in England at the end of the sixteenth century that a gentleman might have been thought a boor if he couldn’t turn out a decent one. Not content to adopt merely the sonnet’s fourteen-line pattern, English poets also tried on its conventional mask of the tormented lover. Soon after English poets imported the sonnet in the middle of the sixteenth century, they worked out their own rhyme scheme—one easier for them to follow than Petrarch’s, which calls for a greater number of rhyming words than English can readily provide. Within its form, a poetry may pursue one idea throughout the three quatrains and then in the couplet end with a surprise.

SONNET 116, Shakespeare (1609)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds7

Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.   If this be error and upon me proved,   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

3. Narrative Poetry the narrative poems tells a story it can be brief or long (epic) usually objective told by a speaker detached from the action contains regular rhyme scheme

Although a lyric sometimes relates an incident, or like “Piano” draws a scene, it does not usually relate a series of events. That happens in a narrative poem, one whose main purpose is to tell a story. In Western literature, narrative poetry dates back to the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh (composed before 2000 B.C.) and Homer’s epics the Iliad and the Odyssey (composed before 700 B.C.). It may well have originated much earlier. In England and Scotland, storytelling poems have long been popular; in the late Middle Ages, ballad—or storytelling songs—circulated widely. The art of narrative poetry invites the skills of a writer of fiction: the ability to draw characters and settings briefly, to engage attention, to shape a plot. Needless to say, it alls ofr all the skills of a poet as well.

"Out, Out - ", by Robert Frost (1916)

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yardAnd made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.And from there those that lifted eyes could countFive mountain ranges one behing the otherUnder the sunset far into Vermont.And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,As it ran light, or had to bear a load.And nothing happened: day was all but done.Call it a day, I wish they might have saidTo please the boy by giving him the half hourThat a boy counts so much when saved from work.His sister stood beside him in her apronTo tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap - He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

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Half in appeal, but half as if to keepThe life from spilling. Then the boy saw all - Since he was old enough to know, big boyDoing a man's work, though a child at heart - He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off - The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"So. The hand was gone already.The doctor put him in the dark of ether.He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.No one believed. They listened to his heart.Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since theyWere not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

4. Dramatic MonologuesA third kind of poetry is dramatic poetry, which presents the voice of an imaginary character (or characters) speaking directly, without any additional narration by the author. A dramatic poem, according to T.S. Eliot, does not consist of “what the poet would say in his own person, but only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character.” Strictly speaking, the term dramatic poetry describes any verse written for the stage (and until a few centuries ago must playwrights, like Shakespeare and Moliere, wrote their plays mainly in verse). But the term most often refers to the dramatic monologue, a poem written as a speech made by a character (other than the author) at some decisive moment. A dramatic monologue is usually addressed by the speaker to some other character who remains silent. If the listener replies, the poem becomes a dialogue (such as Thomas Hardy’s “Ruined Maid”) in which a story unfolds in the conversation between two speakers.

The Victorian poet Robert Browning, who developed the form of the dramatic monologue, liked to put words in the mouths of characters who were conspicuously nasty, weak, reckless, or crazy. One such example is his poem “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” in which the speaker is an obsessively proud and jealous monk. The dramatic monologue has been a popular form among American poets, including Edwin Arlington Robinson, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Randall Jarrell, and Sylvia Plath. The most famous dramatic monologue ever written is probably Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” in which the poet creates a Renaissance Italian Duke whose words reveal more about himself than the aristocratic speaker intends.

Soliloquy of the Spanish CloisterRobert Browning (1842)

Gr-r-r-there go, my heart's abhorrence!Water your damned flower-pots, do!If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,God's blood, would not mine kill you!What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?Oh, that rose has prior claims--Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?Hell dry you up with its flames!                     IIAt the meal we sit together:Salve tibi! I must hear                      10Wise talk of the kind of weather, 10

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Sort of season, time of year:Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcelyDare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:What's the Latin name for "parsley"?What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?                     IIIWhew! We'll have our platter burnished,Laid with care on our own shelf!With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,And a goblet for ourself,                     20Rinsed like something sacrificialEre 'tis fit to touch our chaps — Marked with L. for our initial!(He-he! There his lily snaps!)                     IVSaint, forsooth! While brown DoloresSquats outside the Convent bankWith Sanchicha, telling stories,Steeping tresses in the tank,Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,— Can't I see his dead eye glow,                     30Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?(That is, if he'd let it show!)                     VWhen he finishes refection,Knife and fork he never laysCross-wise, to my recollection,As I do, in Jesu's praise.I the Trinity illustrate,Drinking watered orange-pulp — In three sips the Arian frustrateWhile he drains his at one gulp.                     40                     VIOh, those melons? If he's ableWe're to have a feast! so nice!One goes to the Abbot's table,All of us eager to get a slice.How go on your flowers? None double?Not one fruit-sort can you spy?Strange! And I, too, at such trouble,Keep them close-nipped on the sly!                     VIIThere's a great text in Galatians,Once you trip on it, entails                              50Twenty-nine distinct damnations,One sure, if another fails.If I trip him just a-dying,Sure of heaven as sure can be,Spin him round and send him flyingOff to hell, a Manichee?                     VIIIOr, my scrofulous French novel,On grey paper with blunt type!Simply glance at it, you grovel

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Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:                          60If I double down its pagesAt the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages,Ope a sieve and slip it in't?                     IXOr, there's Satan! — one might venturePledge one's soul to him, yet leaveSuch a flaw in the indentureAs he'd miss it till, past retrieve,Blasted lay that rose-acaciaWe're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .                     70'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratiaAve, Virgo! Gr-r-r — you swine!

5. Ode Poetry characterized by a serious topic and a formal tone No standard pattern Lengthy lyrical poems Often include lofty emotions written/conveyed in a dignified style Typical topics = truth, art, freedom, justice and the meaning of life Often written for public publication, reading Use of apostrophe is common (especially with the Romantic poets)

6. Villanelle 19 lines Divided into 5 tercets (five groups of three lines) and 1 quattrain Rhyme scheme aba aba aba aba aba abaa Line 1 is repeated to form line 6, 12 and 18 Line 3 is repeated to form line 9, 15 and 19 A very structured poem – why would someone use it? Think about irony! Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is a famous villanelle

7. Sestina 39 lines divided into 6 six-line stanzas and a 3 line concluding stanza called an envoy Words are repeated from the first stanza’s end lines in the other stanzas endlines. Very demanding fixed form Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina” appeared on a previous AP multiple choice section Consider the repetition of words – what words are emphasized and why?

Writing an Essay about poetry

You will write one essay about an unseen poem (or pair of poems) on the exam The more poetry you READ and THINK ABOUT the better prepared you will be. All essay questions are fundamentally asking the same two important questions: what is the poem

about and how is the theme conveyed? The HOW questions is much more important than the WHAT question. This is when you are

expected to demonstrate your understanding of how writers use language for a particular effect.11

It is likely that you will be asked to compare and contrast two poems. You will be presented with two poems with a similar subject or theme. Your job will be to evaluate the ways in which they are similar and the ways in which they are different. You are expected to find more differences or that the differences are more significant than the similarities. The A.P. examiners are trying to show how universal themes may be conveyed in radically different ways.

Graphic organizers

1. To write an essay in response to a single poem:

Introduction – theme/so what threads through your discussion of each deviceElement/Device AElement/Devise BElement /Devise CConclusion ~ So What ??

2. To plan and write an essay in response to a pair of poems (comparison/contrast):

Devices Poem A Poem B

Subject/theme

Form

Diction

Imagery

Rhythm

Sound effects

Mood

Evaluation/personal response

Once you have done your comparison, decide on the important elements to discuss. MOST comparison/contrast essays follow one of two formats.

Format A: IntroElements/devices presented in Poem A are discussedElements/devices presented in Poem B are discussed

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Conclusion

Format B: IntroElement A discussed using both poemsElement B discussed using both poemsElement C discussed using both poemsElement D discussed using both poemsConclusion

Rhythm

English, unlike some other languages, depends largely for its meaning on the varying emphasis, or stress, that we put on parts of words (syllables).

Both words and sentences depend upon stress-variation. For example, in the words “swallow bacon sandwiches” we stress the first syllable of each word” SWAllow Bacon SANDwiches. We would sound daft if we said “swallow bacon sandwiches.

In the simple sentence “I want to go” the meaning changes according to where we put the stress:

I want to go.

I want to go.

I want to go.

This business of stress is quite complicated because we are capable of voicing quite subtle shades of emphasis to achieve subtle shades of meaning. The patterns of stress position and variation are what we mean by “the natural rhythms of ordinary speech,” and by common consent there are limits to the liberties we can take with them.

Different stressed syllables can be marked like this:

/ indicates a strongly stressed syllable

u indicates an unstressed syllable or a lightly stressed syllable

We frequently speak in a more or less regular rhythm without being particularly aware of it.

Here’s an ordinary sentence:

I had a go on Kevin’s bike and smashed it up against a bus.

Its natural stresses go like this:U / u / u / u / u / u / u / u /I had a go on Kevin’s bike and smashed it up against a bus

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As you can see, it follows a regular sequence of light, heavy, light, heavy stresses. It divides into eight similar units:

U / u / u / u / u / u / u / u /I had a go on Kevin’s bike and smashed it up against a bus

We can even arrange it into two equal lines of four units each, like this:

U / u / u / u / I had a go on Kevin’s bike

u / u / u / u / and smashed it up against a bus

This may not sound much like the poetry you expect, but it happens to have almost exactly the same rhyme as two of the most famous lines of poetry in English literature:

U / u / u / u / I wan der’d lone ly as a cloud

U / u / u / u / That floats on high o’er vales and hills

The fact that the tragedy of Kevin’s bike and the opening lines of Wordsworth’s The Daffodils happen to be rhythmically near-identical illustrates a couple of important points.

First, no matter how complex or “artificial” a poem’s form may seem, its basic structural device – the ordering and variation of stresses – is taken from ordinary speech. Second, a poem is an artifice, and so we accept that poets manipulate language in certain ways. But there are limits to the extent that a poet can interfere with natural speech rhythms. We can allow Wordsworth to shorten (elide) “over” into “o’er,” but if he were to overturn the stress-order of the lines, we would be unable to read it that way.

This rhythm “de DOM de DOM” sounds silly when it is stressed in an exaggerated way. In a sensible reading of a poem, rhythm is more subdued. It operates as what W.B. Yeats called “a ghostly voice.” In poems that do have an underlying rhythm of some sort, the deviations from that rhythm, and the variations in it, are as at least as important as the rhythm itself. But, obviously, you are not going to spot these deviations and variations unless you have already “got” the rhythm. Therefore one of the things that the ear inside your head should be able to do is crank up the rhythm, so to speak, by simplifying and over-emphasizing it.

Metrics and Metrical Verse

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Meter, or metre, means measure. Metrical verse, therefore, is verse which can be measured. What this means is that in a metrical poem, the lines consist of a number of rhythmical units which can be counted. “Kevin’s Bike “ and Wordsworth’s “The Daffodils” are both metrical.

Rhythmical units are called feet. Afoot nearly always has one stressed syllable and one or more unstressed syllables. Feet differ from one another according to how many syllables they have and where the stress comes. Each kind of foot has its own peculiar name:

The iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one: u /

U / u / u /To be or not to be

The trochee is the iamb in reverse, a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable: / u

/ u / uStop it Lois

The anapest has two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable: u u /

U u / u u /Decompose in the ground

The dactyl is the reverse of the anapest, a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables: / u u

/ uu / u uParachute gracefully

A mnemonic device to remember the differences:

Like meters:Vowels go together = Iamb (u/) and Anapest (uu/)Consonants for together = Trochees (/u) and Dactyls (/uu)

Opposites meters:Opposites spell wordsIT == iamb (u/) and trochee (/u)AT == anapests (uu/) and dactyls (/uu)

Iambic and trochaic feet are called double measures because they have two syllables.

Anapestic and dactylic feet are called triple measure because they have three syllables.

In metrical verse, lines have a certain number of feet. Such lines also have names that make sense when you do the math!

A two foot lines is a dimeter15

A three foot line is a trimesterA four foot line is a tetrameterA five foot lines is a pentameterA six foot line is a hexameterA seven foot line is a septameter

Most metrical lines in English have three, four, or five feet. By putting together the kind of foot used and the number of feet used, you get what is called a metrical description of a line. For example, in the following two lines the first is an anapestic trimester and the second is an anapestic dimeter.

U u / u u / u u /I have come to the borders of sleep.

U u / u u /The unfathomable deep.

This is an iambic pentameter

U / u / u / u / u /If music be the food of love play on

For deeply interesting and mysterious reasons (which we won’t go into here) iambic pentameter is by far the most common meter in English poetry. Iambic rhythms seem to be more natural to an English speaker. It seems that is more natural for us to go “de DOM” (iambic) than “DOM de” (trochaic). Trochees seem to interfere with the language more than iambs do; they seem more pushy and intrusive. Police cars wail trochaically! For whatever reason, it is likely that if you come across a line of verse which has ten syllables, that line is an iambic pentameter. And perhaps because iambic pentameters are so common, poets tend to use them very flexibly – they add a syllable here and there, for instance.

The business of working out metrical patterns in feet is called scansion or scanning.

Variations in Meter

In almost all metrical verse there will be a good deal of variation within the prevailing meter. These variations are often called metrical substitutions. Some metrical substitutions are more common than others. The two most frequently employed are:

1. swapping one foot in a line for a different kind of foot2. cutting a foot short

Example of 1: On Shakespeare’s tomb in Stratford there’s this little iambic verse:

Good friend, for Jesu’s sake forbearTo dig the dust enclosed here.Blest be the man who spares these stonesAnd curst be he who moves my bones.

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Assuming that Shakespeare wrote this himself, je clearly wanted and arresting, direct opening (I’m talking to you!), so he substitutes a double-stress foot for the first iamb:

/ / u / u / u /Good Friend, for Je su’s sake forbear

This replacing of an iamb with a double-stress foot is so common that this has its own name; it’s called a spondee. It draws attention to the words where it takes place, which is what metrical variations almost always do.

Example of 2: Cutting a foot short is called catalexis. This usually happens to feet that end with an unstressed syllable (trochees and dactyls). Here is a very well-known example:

/ u / u / u /Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

It is a sequence of four trochees (a trochaic tetrameter) with the last unstressed syllable missing. Most trochaic lines have this final syllable snipped off. The main reason for this is rhyme. “Looking” and “hooking” rhyme, whereas “standing” and “walking” do not, even though all four words end in –ing. If, therefore, you want to end a line with a strong true rhyme, a stressed syllable is what is called for. In “The Tyger” this rhyme is important becase it is one of the ways Blake sets up a very strong four-beat rhythm, almost like a hypnotic chant with which he conjures up the vision of the tiger. The strength of this beat is reinforced by the repetition of “Tyger” and the repetition of the “b” sound in “burning bright.” If the missing syllable of the last trochee was put back:

Tyger! Tyger! burning brightly

The line loses an awful lot of punch and goes limp at the end. Not only thatm but it poses a very tricky problem as far as rhyme is concerne:

Tyger! Tyger! Burning brightlyIn the forests, lit up nightly…??!!

Or:

Tyger! Tyger! Burning brightly In the forests, scorching slightly…??!!

You see how silly it could get.

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ToneIn old Western movies, when one hombre taunts another, it is customary for the second to drawl, “Smile

when you say that, pardner,” or “Mister, I don’t like your tone of voice.” Sometimes in reading a poem, although we can neither see a face nor hear a voice, we can infer the poet’s attitude from other evidence.

Like tone of voice, tone in literature often conveys an attitude toward the person addressed. Like the manner of a person, the manner of a poem may be friendly or belligerent toward its reader, condescending or respectful. Again like tone of voice, the tone of a poem may tell us how the speaker feels about himself or herself: humble or cocky, sad or glad. But usually when we ask, “What is the tone of a poem?” we mean, “What attitude does the poet take toward a theme or a subject?” Is the poet being affectionate, hostile, earnest, playful, sarcastic, or what? We may never be able to know, of course, the poet’s personal feelings. All we need know is how to feel when we read the poem.

Strictly speaking, tone isn’t an attitude; it is whatever in the poem makes an attitude clear to us: the choice of certain words instead of others, the picking out of certain detail. In A.E. Housman’s Loveliest of trees,” for example, the poet communicates his admiration for a cherry tree’s beauty by singling out for attention its white blossoms; had he wanted to show his dislike for the tree, he might have concentrated on its broken branches, birdlime, or snails. To perceive the tone of a poem rightly, we need to read the poem carefully, paying attention to whatever suggestions we find out.

 Loveliest of Trees

A.E.Housman  

LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now  

Is hung with bloom along the bough,  

And stands about the woodland ride  

Wearing white for Eastertide.  

  Now, of my threescore years and ten,          

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Twenty will not come again,  

And take from seventy springs a score,  

It only leaves me fifty more.  

  And since to look at things in bloom  

Fifty springs are little room,   10

About the woodlands I will go  

To see the cherry hung with snow.

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To a Locomotive in the Winter By Walt Whitman (1881)

THEE for my recitative!  Thee in the driving storm, even as now—the snow—the winter-day declining;  Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive;  Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel;  

Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides;          5

Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar—now tapering in the distance;  Thy great protruding head-light, fix’d in front;  Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple;  The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack;  Thy knitted frame—thy springs and valves—the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels;   10Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily-following,  Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering:  Type of the modern! emblem of motion and power! pulse of the continent!  For once, come serve the Muse, and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,  With storm, and buffeting gusts of wind, and falling snow;   15By day, thy warning, ringing bell to sound its notes,  By night, thy silent signal lamps to swing.    Fierce-throated beauty!  Roll through my chant, with all thy lawless music! thy swinging lamps at night;  Thy piercing, madly-whistled laughter! thy echoes, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all!   20Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding;  (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)  Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,  Launch’d o’er the prairies wide—across the lakes,  To the free skies, unpent, and glad, and strong.

The Railway TrainBy Emily Dickinson (1862)

I like to see it lap the miles,And lick the valleys up,And stop to feed itself at tanks;And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,And, supercilious, peerIn shanties by the sides of roads;And then a quarry pare

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To fit its sides, and crawl between,Complaining all the whileIn horrid, hooting stanza;Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges; Then, punctual as a star, Stop--docile and omnipotent--At its own stable door.

Questions:1. What differences in tone do you find between Whitman’s and Dickinson’s poems? Point

out in each poem whatever contributes to these differences.2. Boanerges in Dickinson’s last stanza means “sons of thunder,” a name given by Jesus to

the disciples John and James (Mark 3:17). How far should the reader work out the particulars of this comparison? Does it make the tone of the poem serious?

3. In Whitman’s opening line what is recitative? What other specialized terms from the vocabulary of music and poetry does each poem contain? How do they help underscore Whitman’s theme?

4. Poets and songwriters probably have regarded the locomotive with more affection than they have shown most other machines. Why do you suppose this is so? Can you think of any other poems or songs as examples?

5. What do these two poems tell you about locomotives that you would not be likely to find in a technical book on railroading?

6. Are the subjects of the two poems identical? Discuss.

“White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey

The lies I could tell,when I was growing uplight-bright, near-white,high-yellow, red-bonedIn a black place,Were just white lies.

I could easily tell the white folksthat we lived uptown,not in the pink and green shanty-fied shotgun section along the tracks. I could actlike my homemade dressescame straight out the windowof Maison Blanche. I could evenkeep quiet, quiet as I kept,like the time a white girl said(squeezing my hand), Nowwe have three of us in this class.

But I paid for it every time20

Mama found out.She laid her hads on me,then washed out my mouthwith Ivory soap. Thisis to purify your lying tongue.Believing her, I swallowed the sudsThinking they’d workfrom the inside ou

Her KindBy Anne Sexton (1960)

I have gone out, a possessed witch,haunting the black air, braver at night;dreaming evil, I have done my hitchover the plain houses, light by light:lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.A woman like that is not a woman, quite.I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,closets, silks, innumerable goods;fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:whining, rearranging the disaligned.A woman like that is misunderstood.I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,waved my nude arms at villages going by,learning the last bright routes, survivorwhere your flames still bite my thighand my ribs crack where your wheels wind.A woman like that is not ashamed to die.I have been her kind.

Oh NoBy Robert Creeley (1959)

If you wander far enoughyou will come to itand when you get therethey will give you a place to sit

for yourself only, in a nice chair,and all your friends will be therewith smiles on their facesand they will likewise all have places.

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Rites of Passage

By Sharon Olds (1983)

As the guests arrive at our son’s party   they gather in the living room— short men, men in first grade with smooth jaws and chins. Hands in pockets, they stand around jostling, jockeying for place, small fights breaking out and calming. One says to another How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So? They eye each other, seeing themselves   tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their   throats a lot, a room of small bankers, they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you up, a seven says to a six, the midnight cake, round and heavy as a turret behind them on the table. My son, freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,   chest narrow as the balsa keel of a   model boat, long hands cool and thin as the day they guided him   out of me, speaks up as a host for the sake of the group. We could easily kill a two-year-old, he says in his clear voice. The other   men agree, they clear their throats like Generals, they relax and get down to   playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

The Gold LinksBy Sarah N. Cleghorn (1917)

The golf links lie so near the millThat almost every dayThe laboring children can look out

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And see the men at pay.

Second FigBy Edna St. Vincent Millay (1920)

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

The WorkboxBy Thomas Hardy

See, here's the workbox, little wife, That I made of polished oak.'He was a joiner, of village life; She came of borough folk.

He holds the present up to her As with a smile she nearsAnd answers to the profferer, ''Twill last all my sewing years!'

'I warrant it will. And longer too. 'Tis a scantling that I gotOff poor John Wayward's coffin, who Died of they knew not what.

'The shingled pattern that seems to cease Against your box's rimContinues right on in the piece That's underground with him.

'And while I worked it made me think Of timber's varied doom;One inch where people eat and drink, The next inch in a tomb.

'But why do you look so white, my dear, And turn aside your face?You knew not that good lad, I fear, Though he came from your native place?'

'How could I know that good young man, Though he came from my native town,When he must have left there earlier than I was a woman grown?'

'Ah, no. I should have understood! It shocked you that I gaveTo you one end of a piece of wood Whose other is in a grave?'

'Don't, dear, despise my intellect,23

 Mere accidental thingsOf that sort never have effect On my imaginings.'

Yet still her lips were limp and wan, Her face still held aside,As if she had known not only John, But known of what he died.

You fit into meBy Margaret Atwood (1971)

You fit into melike a hook into an eye

a fish hookan open eye

The Victory By Anne Stevenson (1974)

I thought you were my victory though you cut me like a knife when I brought you out of my body into your life.

Tiny antagonist, gory, blue as a bruise. The stains of your cloud of glory bled from my veins.

How can you dare, blind thing, blank insect eyes? You barb the air. You sting with bladed cries.

Snail. Scary knot of desires. Hungry snarl. Small son. Why do I have to love you? How have you won?

Root CellarBy Theodore Roethke (1948)

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,Shoots dangled and drooped,Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,

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Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.And what a congress of stinks!Roots ripe as old bait,Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.Nothing would give up life:Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

SilenceBy Marianne Moore (1924)

My father used to say,"Superior people never make long visits,have to be shown Longfellow's gravenor the glass flowers at Harvard.Self reliant like the cat --that takes its prey to privacy,the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --they sometimes enjoy solitude,and can be robbed of speechby speech which has delighted them.The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;not in silence, but restraint."Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."Inns are not residences.

Tears, Idle Tears By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1847)

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,Tears from the depth of some divine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,That brings our friends up from the underworld,Sad as the last which reddens over oneThat sinks with all we love below the verge;So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawnsThe earliest pipe of half-awakened birdsTo dying ears, when unto dying eyesThe casement slowly grows a glimmering square;So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,

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And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feignedOn lips that are for others; deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

English Con SalsaBy Gina Valdes (1993)

Welcome to ESL 100, English Surely Latinized, ingles con chile y cilantro, English as American as Benito Juarez. Welcome, muchachos from Xochicalco, learn the language of dolares and dolores, of kings and queens, of Donald Duck and Batman. Holy toluca! in four months you'll be speaking like George Washington in four weeks you can ask, More coffee? In two months you can say, May I take your order? In one year you can ask for a raise, cool as the Tuxpan River.

Welcome,muchachas from Teocaltiche, in this class we speak English refrito, English con sal y limon, English thick as mango juice, English poured from a clay jug, English tuned like a requinto from Uruapan, English lighted by Oaxacan dawns, English spiked with mezcal from Juchitan, English with a red cactus flower blooming in its heart.

Welcome, welcome, amigos del sur, bring your Zapotec tongues,our Nathuatl tones, your patience of pyramids, your red suns and golden moons, your guardian angels, your duendes, your patron saints, Santa Tristeza, Santa Alegria, Santo Todolopuede. We will sprinkle holy water on pronouns, make the sign of the cross on past participles, jump like fish from Lake Patzcuaro on gerunds, pour tequila from Jalisco on future perfects, say shoes and shit, grab a cool verb and a pollo loco and dance on the walls like chapulines.

When a teacher from La Jolla or a cowboy from Santee asks you, Do you speak English? You'll answer, Si, yes, simon, of course. I love English!

And you'll huma mixtecchant that touches la tierra and the heavens.

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Eleanor RigbyBy John Lennon and Paul McCartney (1966)

Ah, look at all the lonely peopleAh, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has beenLives in a dreamWaits at the windowWearing a face she keeps in a jar by the doorWho is it for?

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Father McKenzieWriting the words of a sermon that no one will hearNo one comes nearLook at him workingDarning his socks in the night when there's nobody thereWhat does he care?

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Ah, look at all the lonely peopleAh, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby Died in the church and was buried along with her nameNobody cameFather McKenzieWiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the graveNo one was saved

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

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Snow DayBy Billy Collins

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,its white flag waving over everything,the landscape vanished,not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,schools and libraries buried, the post office lostunder the noiseless drift,the paths of trains softly blocked,the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some bootsand step out like someone walking in water,and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,and I will shake a laden branch,sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.I will make a pot of teaand listen to the plastic radio on the counter,as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,the Ding-Dong School, closed,the All Aboard Children's School, closed,the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,along with -- some will be delighted to hear --

the Toadstool School, the Little School,Little Sparrows Nursery School,Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,These are the nests where they letter and draw,where they put on their bright miniature jackets,all darting and climbing and sliding,all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

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And now I am listening hardin the grandiose silence of the snow,trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,what riot is afoot,which small queen is about to be brought down.

Uphill By Christina Rosetti (1862)

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.   But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.   Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? Those who have gone before. Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? They will not keep you standing at that door.   Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum. Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.

Snow White By Andrea Hollander Budy (1993)

It was actually one of the dwarfs who kissed her—Bashful,who still won’t admit it.That is why she remained in the forestwith all of them and made upthe story of the prince. Otherwise,wouldn’t you be out there nowscavenging through the wildflowers,mistaking the footprints of your ownchildren for those little men?And if you found some wild applesgrowing in the thickest part, if no onewere looking, wouldn’t you

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take a bit? And pray some kind of magic sleepwould snatch you from the plainness of your life?

Cinderella By Anne Sexton (1971)

You always read about it:the plumber with the twelve childrenwho wins the Irish Sweepstakes.From toilets to riches.That story.

Or the nursemaid,some luscious sweet from Denmarkwho captures the oldest son's heart.from diapers to Dior.That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,the white truck like an ambulancewho goes into real estateand makes a pile.From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwomanwho is on the bus when it cracks upand collects enough from the insurance.From mops to Bonwit Teller.That story.

Oncethe wife of a rich man was on her deathbedand she said to her daughter Cinderella:Be devout. Be good. Then I will smiledown from heaven in the seam of a cloud.The man took another wife who hadtwo daughters, pretty enoughbut with hearts like blackjacks.Cinderella was their maid.She slept on the sooty hearth each nightand walked around looking like Al Jolson.Her father brought presents home from town,

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jewels and gowns for the other womenbut the twig of a tree for Cinderella.She planted that twig on her mother's graveand it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.Whenever she wished for anything the dovewould drop it like an egg upon the ground.The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.It was a marriage market.The prince was looking for a wife.All but Cinderella were preparingand gussying up for the event.Cinderella begged to go too.Her stepmother threw a dish of lentilsinto the cinders and said: Pick themup in an hour and you shall go.The white dove brought all his friends;all the warm wings of the fatherland came,and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,you have no clothes and cannot dance.That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the graveand cried forth like a gospel singer:Mama! Mama! My turtledove,send me to the prince's ball!The bird dropped down a golden dressand delicate little slippers.Rather a large package for a simple bird.So she went. Which is no surprise.Her stepmother and sisters didn'trecognize her without her cinder faceand the prince took her hand on the spotand danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd betterget home. The prince walked her homeand she disappeared into the pigeon houseand although the prince took an axe and brokeit open she was gone. Back to her cinders.These events repeated themselves for three days.However on the third day the princecovered the palace steps with cobbler's waxand Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.Now he would find whom the shoe fitand find his strange dancing girl for keeps.He went to their house and the two sisterswere delighted because they had lovely feet.The eldest went into a room to try the slipper onbut her big toe got in the way so she simply

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sliced it off and put on the slipper.The prince rode away with her until the white dovetold him to look at the blood pouring forth.That is the way with amputations.They just don't heal up like a wish.The other sister cut off her heelbut the blood told as blood will.The prince was getting tired.He began to feel like a shoe salesman.But he gave it one last try.This time Cinderella fit into the shoelike a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremonythe two sisters came to curry favorand the white dove pecked their eyes out.Two hollow spots were leftlike soup spoons.

Cinderella and the princelived, they say, happily ever after,like two dolls in a museum casenever bothered by diapers or dust,never arguing over the timing of an egg,never telling the same story twice,never getting a middle-aged spread,their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.Regular Bobbsey Twins.That story.

Lady LazarusBy Sylvia Plath (1962)

I have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right foot

A paperweight,My face a featureless, fineJew linen.

Peel off the napkinO my enemy.Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?The sour breathWill vanish in a day.

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Soon, soon the fleshThe grave cave ate will beAt home on me

And I a smiling woman.I am only thirty.And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.What a trashTo annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.The peanut-crunching crowdShoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--The big strip tease.Gentlemen, ladies

These are my handsMy knees.I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.The first time it happened I was ten.It was an accident.

The second time I meantTo last it out and not come back at all.I rocked shut

As a seashell.They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

DyingIs an art, like everything else.I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.It's easy enough to do it and stay put.It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad dayTo the same place, the same face, the same bruteAmused shout:

'A miracle!'That knocks me out.

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There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a chargeFor the hearing of my heart--It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large chargeFor a word or a touchOr a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.So, so, Herr Doktor.So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,I am your valuable,The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.I turn and burn.Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--You poke and stir.Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap, A wedding ring,A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr LuciferBewareBeware.

Out of the ashI rise with my red hairAnd I eat men like air.

AmericaBy Claude McKay (1922)

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,Stealing my breath of life, I will confessI love this cultured hell that tests my youth!Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,Giving me strength erect against her hate.Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,I stand within her walls with not a shred

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Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,And see her might and granite wonders there,Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Annabel LeeBy Edgar Allan Poe (1849)

It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea;But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee;With a love that the winged seraphs of heavenCoveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud, chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsman cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulchreIn this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me-Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

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Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,In the sepulchre there by the sea,In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockBy T.S. Eliot (1917)

         S’io credesse che mia risposta fosseA persona che mai tornasse al mondo,Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondoNon torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

  LET us go then, you and I,When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherised upon a table;Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreats         5Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question …         10Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,         15The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panesLicked its tongue into the corners of the evening,Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,         20And seeing that it was a soft October night,Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be timeFor the yellow smoke that slides along the street,Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;         25There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;There will be time to murder and create,And time for all the works and days of hands

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That lift and drop a question on your plate;         30Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go         35Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”Time to turn back and descend the stair,With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—         40[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]Do I dare         45Disturb the universe?In a minute there is timeFor decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all:—Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,         50I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;I know the voices dying with a dying fallBeneath the music from a farther room.  So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all—         55The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,Then how should I beginTo spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?         60  And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all—Arms that are braceleted and white and bare[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]It is perfume from a dress         65That makes me so digress?Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.  And should I then presume?  And how should I begin?      .      .      .      .      .Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets         70And watched the smoke that rises from the pipesOf lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?… I should have been a pair of ragged clawsScuttling across the floors of silent seas.      .      .      .      .      .And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!         75

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Smoothed by long fingers,Asleep … tired … or it malingers,Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?         80But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,         85And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all,After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,Would it have been worth while,         90To have bitten off the matter with a smile,To have squeezed the universe into a ballTo roll it toward some overwhelming question,To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—         95If one, settling a pillow by her head,  Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.  That is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while,         100After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—And this, and so much more?—It is impossible to say just what I mean!But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:         105Would it have been worth whileIf one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window, should say:  “That is not it at all,  That is not what I meant, at all.”      .      .      .      .      .

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No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Am an attendant lord, one that will doTo swell a progress, start a scene or two,Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,Deferential, glad to be of use,         115Politic, cautious, and meticulous;Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old … I grow old …         120I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

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 I do not think that they will sing to me.         125 I have seen them riding seaward on the wavesCombing the white hair of the waves blown backWhen the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown         130Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Note: The epigraph, from Dante’s Inferno, is the speech of one dead and damned, who thinks that his hearer also is going to remain in Hell. Count Guido da Montefeltro, whose sin has been to give false counsel after a corrupt prelate had offered him prior absolution and whose punishment is to be wrapped in a constantly burning flame, offers to tell Dante his story:

If I thought my answer were to someone whomight see the world again, then there would beno more stirrings of this flame. Since it is truethat no one leaves these depths of miseryalive, from all that I have heard reported, I answer you without fear of infamy.

Not Waving but Drowningby Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought   And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking larking Playing tricks, kidding, fooling around.larking Playing tricks, kidding, fooling around. And now he’s dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   (Still the dead one lay moaning)   I was much too far out all my life   And not waving but drowning.

next to of course god america iBy e.e. cummings

"next to of course god america ilove you land of the pilgrims' and so forth ohsay can you see by the dawn's early mycountry tis of centuries come and goand are no more what of it we should worryin every language even deafanddumbthy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorryby jingo by gee by gosh by gumwhy talk of beauty what could be more beaut-

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iful than these heroic happy deadwho rushed like lions to the roaring slaughterthey did not stop to think they died insteadthen shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

The FishBy Elizabeth Bishop (1946)

I caught a tremendous fishand held him beside the boathalf out of water, with my hookfast in a corner of his mouth.He didn't fight.He hadn't fought at all.He hung a grunting weight,battered and venerableand homely. Here and therehis brown skin hung in stripslike ancient wallpaper,and its pattern of darker brownwas like wallpaper:shapes like full-blown rosesstained and lost through age.He was speckled and barnacles,fine rosettes of lime,and infestedwith tiny white sea-lice,and underneath two or threerags of green weed hung down.While his gills were breathing inthe terrible oxygen--the frightening gills,fresh and crisp with blood,that can cut so badly--I thought of the coarse white fleshpacked in like feathers,the big bones and the little bones,the dramatic reds and blacksof his shiny entrails,and the pink swim-bladderlike a big peony.I looked into his eyeswhich were far larger than minebut shallower, and yellowed,the irises backed and packedwith tarnished tinfoilseen through the lensesof old scratched isinglass.They shifted a little, but notto return my stare.--It was more like the tipping

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of an object toward the light.I admired his sullen face,the mechanism of his jaw,and then I sawthat from his lower lip--if you could call it a lipgrim, wet, and weaponlike,hung five old pieces of fish-line,or four and a wire leaderwith the swivel still attached,with all their five big hooksgrown firmly in his mouth.A green line, frayed at the endwhere he broke it, two heavier lines,and a fine black threadstill crimped from the strain and snapwhen it broke and he got away.Like medals with their ribbonsfrayed and wavering,a five-haired beard of wisdomtrailing from his aching jaw.I stared and staredand victory filled upthe little rented boat,from the pool of bilgewhere oil had spread a rainbowaround the rusted engineto the bailer rusted orange,the sun-cracked thwarts,the oarlocks on their strings,the gunnels--until everythingwas rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!And I let the fish go.

Southeast CornerBy Gwendolyn Brooks (1945)

The School of Beauty’s tavern now.The Madam is underground.Out at Lincoln, among the gravesHer own is early found.Where the thickest, tallest monumentCuts grandly into the airThe Madam lies, contentedly.Her fortune, too, lies there,Converted into cool hard steelAnd right red velvet lining;While over her tan impassivityShot silk is shining.

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anyone lived in a pretty how townBy e.e. cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town(with up so floating many bells down)spring summer autumn winterhe sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)cared for anyone not at allthey sowed their isn't they reaped their samesun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a fewand down they forgot as up they grewautumn winter spring summer)that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leafshe laughed his joy she cried his griefbird by snow and stir by stillanyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyoneslaughed their cryings and did their dance(sleep wake hope and then)theysaid their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon(and only the snow can begin to explainhow children are apt to forget to rememberwith up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess(and noone stooped to kiss his face)busy folk buried them side by sidelittle by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deepand more by more they dream their sleepnoone and anyone earth by aprilwish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)summer autumn winter spring

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reaped their sowing and went their camesun moon stars rain

   What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and whyBy Edna St. Vincent Millay (1923)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning; but the rainIs full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sighUpon the glass and listen for reply;And in my heart there stirs a quiet painFor unremembered lads that not againWill turn to me at midnight with a cry.Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,Yet know its boughs more silent than before:I cannot say what loves have come and gone;I only know that summer sang in meA little while, that in me sings no more.

Acquainted with the NightBy Robert Frost (1923)

I have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by the watchman on his beatAnd dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night.

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AP English Poetry TermsListed and defined below are literary terms that you will need to know in order to discuss and write about works of poetry.  You are already familiar with many of these.

l. alliteration- the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the                     beginnings of words.  “Gnus never know pneumonia” is an example of alliteration since,                     despite the spellings, all four words begin with the “n” sound.

2. allusion- a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work.  When T.S. Eliot writes, "To have squeezed the universe into a ball" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," he is alluding to the lines "Let us roll our strength and all/ Our sweetness up into one ball" in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."

3. antithesis- a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, as in “Man proposes; God disposes.”  Antithesis is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness.  The second line of the following couplet by Alexander Pope is an example of antithesis:                 The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,                 And wretches hang that jury-men may dine.

4. apostrophe- a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present.  Following are two examples of apostrophe:                 Papa Above!                 Regard a Mouse.                                  -Emily Dickinson

                Milton!  Thou shouldst be living in this hour;                 England hath need of thee . . ..                                  -William Wordsworth

5. assonance- the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds.  “A land laid waste with all its young men slain” repeats the same “a” sound in “laid,” “waste,” and “slain.”

6. ballad meter- a four-line stanza rhymed abcd with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four.                 O mother, mother make my bed.                 O make it soft and narrow.                 Since my love died for me today,                 I’ll die for him tomorrow.

7. blank verse- unrhymed iambic pentameter.  Blank verse is the meter of most of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as that of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

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8. cacophony- a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones.  It may be an unconscious flaw in the poet’s music, resulting in harshness of sound or difficulty of articulation, or it may be used consciously for effect, as Browning and Eliot often use it.  See, for example, the following line from Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra”:

                Irks care the crop-full bird?  Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

9. caesura- a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause.  For example, one would naturally pause after “human’ in the following line from Alexander Pope:                 To err is human, to forgive divine.

10. conceit- an ingenious and fanciful notion or conception, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things.  A conceit may be a brief metaphor, but it also may form the framework of an entire poem.  A famous example of a conceit occurs in John Donne’s poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” in which he compares his soul and his wife’s to legs of a mathematical compass.

11. consonance- the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words.  The term usually refers to words in which the ending consonants are the same but the vowels that precede them are different.  Consonance is found in the following pairs of words:  “add” and “read,” “bill and ball,” and “born” and “burn.”

12. couplet- a two-line stanza, usually with end-rhymes the same.

13. devices of sound- the techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry.  Among devices of sound are rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia.  The devices are used for many reasons, including to create a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, to imitate another sound, or to reflect a meaning.

14. diction- the use of words in a literary work.  Diction may be described as formal (the level of usage common in serious books and formal discourse), informal (the level of usage found in the relaxed but polite conversation of cultivated people), colloquial (the everyday usage of a group, possibly including terms and constructions accepted in that group but not universally acceptable), or slang (a group of newly coined words which are not acceptable for formal usage as yet).

15. didactic poem- a poem which is intended primarily to teach a lesson.  The distinction between didactic poetry and non-didactic poetry is difficult to make and usually involves a subjective judgement of the author’s purpose on the part of the critic or the reader.  Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism is a good example of didactic poetry.

16. dramatic poem- a poem which employs a dramatic form or some element or elements of dramatic techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends.  The dramatic monologue is an example.

17. elegy- a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme.  Examples include Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”; Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam; and Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

18. end-stopped- a line with a pause at the end.  Lines that end with a period, a comma, a colon, a semicolon, an exclamation point, or a question mark are end-stopped lines.                 True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance,                 As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

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19. enjambment- the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next.  Milton’s Paradise Lost is notable for its use of enjambment, as seen in the following lines:                    . . . .Or if Sion hill                   Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d                   Fast by the oracle of God, . . . .

20. extended metaphor- an implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem.  In “The Bait,” John Donne compares a beautiful woman to fish bait and men to fish who want to be caught by the woman.  Since he carries these comparisons all the way through the poem, these are considered “extended metaphors.”

21. euphony- a style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate.  Its opposite is cacophony.  The following lines from John Keats’ Endymion are euphonious:                 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:                 Its loveliness increases; it will never                 Pass into nothingness; but still will keep                 A bower quiet for us, and a sleep                 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

22. eye rhyme- rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is half-rhyme or slant rhyme from the pronunciation.  Examples include “watch” and “match,” and “love” and “move.”

23. feminine rhyme- a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as “waken” and “forsaken” and “audition” and “rendition.”  Feminine rhyme is sometimes called double rhyme.

24. figurative language- writing that uses figures of speech (as opposed to literal language or that which is actual or specifically denoted) such as metaphor, irony, and simile.  Figurative language uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning.  “The black bat night has flown” is figurative, with the metaphor comparing night and bat.  “Night is over” says the same thing without figurative language.

25. free verse- poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical.  The poetry of Walt Whitman is perhaps the best-known example of free verse.

26. heroic couplet- two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit.  See the following example from Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock:                 But when to mischief mortals bend their will,                 How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

27.  hyperbole- a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration.  It may be used for either serious or comic effect.  Macbeth is using hyperbole in the following lines:                 . . . .No; this my hand will rather                 The multitudinous seas incarnadine,                 Making the green one red.

28. imagery- the images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work.  Imagery has several definitions, but the two that are paramount are the visual auditory, or tactile

images evoked by the words of a literary work or the images that figurative language evokes.  When an AP question asks you to discuss imagery, you should look especially carefully at the sensory details and the metaphors and similes of a passage.  Some diction is also imagery, but not all diction evokes sensory responses.

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29. irony- the contrast between actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning.  Verbal irony is a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning.  Irony is likely to be confused with sarcasm, but it differs from sarcasm in that it is usually lighter, less harsh in its wording though in effect probably more cutting because of its indirectness.  The ability to recognize irony is one of the surer tests of intelligence and sophistication.  Among the devices by which irony is achieved are hyperbole and understatement.

30. internal rhyme- rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end.  The following lines contain internal rhyme:                 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,                 Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—                 While I nodded, nearly napping. . suddenly there came a tapping . . . .

31. lyric poem- any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings.  Love lyrics are common, but lyric poems have also been written on subjects as different as religion and reading.  Sonnets and odes are lyric poems.

32. masculine rhyme- rhyme that falls on the stressed and concluding syllables of the rhyme-words.  Examples include “keep” and “sleep,” “glow” and “no,” and “spell” and “impel.”

33. metaphor- a figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like “as,” “like,” or “than.”  A simile would say, “night is like a black bat”; a metaphor would say, “the black bat night.”

34. meter- the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry.  The meter of a poem emphasizes the musical quality of the language and often relates directly to the subject matter of the poem.  Each unit of meter is known as a foot.

35. metonymy- a figure of speech which is characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself.  In this way we commonly speak of the king as the “crown,” an object closely associated with kingship.

36. mixed metaphors- the mingling of one metaphor with another immediately following with which the first is incongruous.  Lloyd George is reported to have said, “I smell a rat.  I see it floating in the air.  I shall nip it in the bud.”

37. narrative poem- a non-dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short.  Epics and ballads are examples of narrative poems.

38. octave- an eight-line stanza.  Most commonly, octave refers to the first division of an Italian sonnet.

39. onomatopoeia- the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning.  Examples are “buzz,” “hiss,” or “honk.”

40. oxymoron- a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression.  This combination usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness.  Examples include “wise fool,” “sad joy,” and “eloquent silence.”

41. paradox- a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense.  The following lines from one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets include paradoxes:                 Take me to you, imprison me, for I

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                Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,                 Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

42. parallelism- a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry.  Parallelism is characteristic of Asian poetry, being notably present in the Psalms, and it seems to be the controlling principle of the poetry of Walt Whitman, as in the following lines:                   . . . .Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to                     connect   them.                   Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,                   Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

43. paraphrase- a restatement of an ideas in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form.  A paraphrase is often an amplification of the original for the purpose of clarity.

44. personification- a kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics.

45. poetic foot- a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it.  The most common type of feet are as follows:                 iambic   u /                 trochaic   / u                 anapestic  u u /                 dactylic   / u u                 pyrrhic   u u                 spondaic  / /

The following poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge illustrates all of these feet except the pyrrhic foot:                  Trochee trips from long to short.                  From long to long in solemn sort                  Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able                  Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.                  Iambics march from short to long;                  With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

46. pun- a play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings.  Puns can have serious as well as humorous uses.  An example is Thomas Hood’s:" They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.”

47. quatrain- a four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes.

48. refrain- a group of words forming a phrase or sentence and consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.

49. rhyme- close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse.  For a true rhyme, the vowels in the accented syllables must be preceded by different consonants, such as “fan” and “ran.”

50. rhyme royal- a seven-line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets.

51. rhythm- the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables.  The presence of rhythmic patterns lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response to the listener or reader.

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52. sarcasm- a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it.  Its purpose is to injure or to hurt.

53. satire- writing that seeks to arouse a reader’s disapproval of an object by ridicule.  Satire is usually comedy that exposes errors with an eye to correct vice and folly.  Satire is often found in the poetry of Alexander Pope.

54. scansion- a system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the type(s) of feet per line.  Following are the most common types of meter:                 monometer                  one foot per line                 dimeter                        two feet per line                 trimeter                        three feet per line                 tetrameter                    four feet per line                 pentameter                   five feet per line                 hexameter                    six feet per line                 heptameter                   seven feet per line                 octameter                     eight feet per line

Using these terms, then, a line consisting of five iambic feet is called “iambic pentameter,” while a line consisting of four anapestic feet is called “anapestic tetrameter.”

In order to determine the meter of a poem, the lines are “scanned,” or marked to indicate stressed and unstressed syllables which are then divided into feet.  The following line has been scanned:

                   u       /      u       /      u    /      u      /       u      /                  And   still  she  slept  an  az  ure-   lid  ded  sleep

55. sestet- a six-line stanza.  Most commonly, sestet refers to the second division of an Italian sonnet.

56. simile- a directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with “like,” “as,” or “than.”  It is easier to recognize a simile than a metaphor because the comparison is explicit: my love is like a fever; my love is deeper than a well. (The plural of “simile” is “similes” not “similies.”)

57. sonnet- normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem.  The conventional Italian, or Petrarchan sonnet is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

58. stanza- usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.

59. strategy (or rhetorical strategy)- the management of language for a specific effect.  The strategy or rhetorical strategy of a poem is the planned placing of elements to achieve an effect.  The rhetorical strategy of most love poems is deployed to convince the loved one to return to the speaker’s love.  By appealing to the loved one’s sympathy, or by flattery, or by threat, the lover attempts to persuade the loved one to love in return.

60. structure- the arrangement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical divisions of a work.  The most common units of structure in a poem are the line and stanza.

61. style- the mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author. 

Many elements contribute to style, and if a question calls for a discussion of style or of 49

“stylistic techniques,” you can discuss diction, syntax, figurative language, imagery, selection of detail, sound effects, and tone, using the ones that are appropriate.

62. symbol- something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else.  For example, winter, darkness, and cold are real things, but in literature they are also likely to be used as symbols of death.

63. synecdoche- a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole.  For example, we refer to “foot soldiers” for infantry and “field hands” for manual laborers who work in agriculture.

64. syntax- the ordering of words into patterns or sentences.  If a poet shifts words from the usual word order, you know you are dealing with an older style of poetry or a poet who wants to shift emphasis onto a particular word.

65. tercet- a stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme.

66. terza rima- a three-line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc,etc. Dante’s Divine Comedy is written in terza rima.

67. theme- the main thought expressed by a work.  In poetry, it is the abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person, action, and image in the work.

68. tone- the manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning.  (Remember that the “voice” need not be that of the poet.)  Tone is described by adjectives, and the possibilities are nearly endless.  Often a single adjective will be enough, and tone may change from stanza to stanza or even line to line.  Tone is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, and style.

69. understatement- the opposite of hyperbole.  It is a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is.  For example, Macbeth, having been nearly hysterical after killing Duncan, tells Lenox, “’Twas a rough night.”

70. villanelle- a nineteen-line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain.  The villanelle uses only two rhymes which are repeated as follows:  aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa.  Line 1 is repeated entirely to form lines 6, 12, and 18, and line 3 is repeated entirely to form lines 9, 15, and 19; thus, eight of the nineteen lines are refrain.  Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is an example of a villanelle.

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