PoetryandEmily Dickinson

Types of Poetry

Narrative poetry: tells a story

Dramatic poetry: uses drama to present the speech of one or more characters

Lyric poetry: expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single speaker

Elements of Poetry

Meter: the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line of poetry

Sound devices: elements that enhance a poem’s meaning by adding a musical quality to the language

Imagery: language that uses words or phrases that appeal to the senses

Figurative language: language used imaginatively instead of literally

Name its main type of foot Foot: each unit of rhythmIamb ( ˘ / ) around Trochee ( / ˘ ) brokenSpondee ( / / ) airship Dactyl ( / ˘ ˘ )

argumentAnapest (˘ ˘ / ) understand

Count the number of feet in each lineMonometer = one foot Dimeter = two feetTrimeter = three feet Tetrameter = four

feetPentameter = five feet

Name the different types of stanzas Stanza: groups of poetic lines

Couplets = two lines Tercets = three linesQuatrains = four lines Sestets = six lines

Ways to Describe a Poem’s Meter

Sound Devices

Rhyme: repetition of sounds at the ends of words (top and drop)

Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds (weak and weary)

Consonance: repetition of final consonant sounds (pull and fall)

Assonance: repetition of similar vowelsounds (low and tow)

Onomatopoeia: use of a word thatsounds like what it means (fizz and hiss)

Figurative Language: Figures of Speech

Simile: compares two unlike things by using like or as I wandered lonely as a cloud

Metaphor: compares two unlike things without using like or as Life is a broken-winged bird

Personification: gives human traits to something nonhuman Let the rain sing you a lullaby

Oxymoron: combines two contradictory words; expresses a paradox (an idea that seems contradictory but is actually true) A wise fool

Emily Dickinson

1830-1886 Amherst,

Massachusetts Wrote 1,775 poems

only 7 were published before she died (anonymously)

Very private, small circle of friends

Emily Dickinson: Adult Life

Traveled as young woman butbarely left hometown as an adult

Spent the last 10 years of herlife in house/garden

Dressed only in white Wouldn’t let friends/family near her

Failing health doctor was only allowed to observe from afar

Sometimes lowered a basket of candy/fruit to children from her upstairs window

Emily Dickinson: Post-Death

Died in the same house she’d been born in

Left drawers full of poems Gave instructions to destroy

poems after death Family disobeyed edited

and published Did not become fully

recognized until 1955 Publication of The Poems of

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

Uses both exact rhyme and slant rhyme Exact rhyme: two words had identical

sounds in their final syllables Glove - - Above

Slant rhyme: the final sounds are similar but not identical Glove - - Prove

“Because I could not stop for death”

Symbols: objects/ideas representing something else1. Death2. Immortality3. Slow pace of carriage4. Recess5. Fields of “gazing grain”6. Setting sun7. Gossamer gown and tulle tippet8. House9. Feeling that each century feels shorter than a day