Writing P o etry
Session 2 Sharing Homework (w/ partners) 3 Broad types of poetry Figurative Language Lines v . Sentences: syntax & structure The Writing Habit: Passion & Productivity Rhythmic Forms Preparing for our auction
4 Dimensions of Poetry: • Intellect • Emotions • Imagination • Senses
The Foundations of Poetry • it doesn’t tell about experience; rather, it allows us to participate in it. • it broadens our experience by making us acquainted with a range of experience we have no access to; • it deepens our experience by making us feel more poignantly about experiences we are accustomed to
3 forms of poetry Continuous Form: Stanzaic Form: Fixed Form:
3 forms of poetry Continuous Form: • Design is slight or non-existent • Poem contains no line breaks or formal groupings
Continuous Form: THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turned away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them. -William Carlos Williams
3 forms of poetry Stanzaic Form: Design contains repeated units with the same number of lines, (usually with the same rhyme and metrical scheme)
Stanzaic Form: Reduced Circumstances He wasn’t always stretched that way, you know strained through that fine sieve and powdered out into polite society, a mote in someone else’s eye. The guy trained hard, compressed himself into the various molds others thought he’d fit. Nobody bothered to show they cared–to try to add three days back into his week or put July back into his year–they just smiled, used him for their purposes, the last of which was as the subject of some brief but witty poem, and nobody knew or wished to know the worst, most violent effect: His circumstances were reduced until he merely sat with folded hands. -Harvey Stanbrough
3 forms of poetry Fixed Form: Follows a traditional pattern that applies to entire poem.
Fixed Form: Do not go gentle into that good night, Refrain 1 (A 1 ) Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Line 2 (b) Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Refrain 2 (A 2 ) Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Line 4 (a) Because their words had forked no lightning they Line 5 (b) Do not go gentle into that good night. Refrain 1 (A 1 ) Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Line 7 (a) Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Line 8 (b) Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Refrain 2 (A 2 ) Line 10 (a) Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Line 11 (b) Do not go gentle into that good night. Refrain 1 (A 1 ) Line 13 (a) Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Line 14 (b) Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Refrain 2 (A 2 ) Line 16 (a) And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Line 17 (b) Do not go gentle into that good night. Refrain 1 (A 1 ) Refrain 2 (A 2 ) Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Proposition # 4 Language can become your enemy! • some poems are more thought than emotion • more concept than image, • The Poet should speak in images rather than sentences • Free yourself from exposition, narration!
what is The # 1 Question poets seek to answer?
We want to know...
We want to know...
Figurative Language
Figurative Language
We ask, “What’s it Like?”
Your Brain, not your Spleen, a Connection-Making Machine
Figurative Language Poetry’s Workhorses: Simile Metaphor
Figurative Language Simile
Figurative Language Simile Simply: A is like B Using ‘like’ or ‘as’ or ‘seems’ Comparisons, though, should make use of common, ordinary material to explain the extraordinary
Figurative Language Simile “I farm a pasture where the boulders lie, As touching as a basketful of eggs…” -Frost "and knitting up their brows they squinted at us like an old tailor at the needle’s eye...” -Dante “We walk a great deal when the weather allows, The women in shoes that look like baked potatoes.” -Summers “It was cold. A ragman passed with his horses, their breaths blooming like white peonies...” -Hall
Please, Please...No! My heart is like a burning furnace, Burning in me and through me Until my whole vital organism is charred Like a piece of burnt meat no one can eat. My mind swirls like a whirlpool in murky waters Waters dark, black as death, thick as oil: The confusion is too big, No living creature of a thought can live Just like in an oil spill no creature can live, Nothing gives but pain. My joy died yesterday, my happiness yesteryear; Yesterday when you left me I died like a star And became like a black hole of death. LJ Kundananji
Figurative Language Metaphor
Figurative Language Metaphor A comparison that asserts one thing IS another: The figurative term is substituted for the literal term.
Figurative Language Metaphor “Out of the chimney of the court-house a greyhound of smoke leapt and chased the northwest wind.” -Masters "...an eagle was perched on the jag of a burnt pine, insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders...” -Jeffers “She held out a deck of smiles, I cut and she dealt...” -Jarrell
Figurative Language Introduction To Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. - Billy Collins
Figurative Language s A List of Your (recent) Life
Your Brain Ingrained:
Your Brain Ingrained: ABACK AFRAID ABASHED AGAINST ABATE AGREE ABIDE AHEAD ABLAZE AJAR ABLOOM ALARM ABOARD ALERT ABODE ALIGN ABOUT ALIKE ABOVE ALIVE ABRUPT ALLEGE ABSOL VED ALLOW ABSORB ALOFT ABSTAIN ALONE ABSURD ALONG iambs
Your Brain Ingrained: ABBEY AIRY ABLE ALBUM ABSENT ALICE ACHING ALLEY ACID ALMOND ACORN ALTAR ACRE ALWAYS ACTION AMPLE ACTOR ANCHOR ADVERB ANCIENT AFTER ANGEL AGENT ANGER AGING ANGUISH AILMENT ANKLE AIMLESS ANSWER trochee
Your Brain Ingrained: AARDVARK ALLSPICE ABSCESS ALMOST ABSTRACT ALOE AD-HOC ALPINE AD-LIB ALWAYS ADDICT AMBUSH ADVENT ARCHDUKE ARCHIVE AFGHAN ARMBAND AIRBAGS ARMCHAIR AIRBORNE ARMPIT AIRCRAFT ARTWORK AIRLINE ASHTRAY ATHLETE AIRTIGHT AZTEC ALL-OUT BACKACHE spondee
Your Brain Ingrained: AMBULANCE ABACUS AMETHYST ABDOMEN AMNESTY ANALYST ABSTINENCE ANARCHY ABSTINENT ANGRILY ANIMAL ACCIDENT ANNUAL ACCURATE ANXIOUSLY APATHY ACRONYM APPLICANT ACTIVIST ARCHERY ARGUMENT ADDITIVE ARSENIC ADJECTIVE ARSONIST ARTISAN ADMIRAL ATHEIST ADVOCATE AUDIENCE AUSTRIA AFRICA AVARICE AGENCY AVERAGE AWFULLY AGONY dactyl
Your Brain Ingrained: CHANDELIER DISAGREE DISAPPROVE DISENGAGED DOMINIQUE as the boat INCOMPLETE at the dock INCORRECT by the sea INDIRECT for the love INDISCREET from the heart INDISTINCT in the neck INHUMANE near the woods INTERTWINED of the truth MARYANNE on the shore MISCONCEIVED to the beach MISCONSTRUE up the creek MISINFORMED with the tide PERSEVERE REASSESS REDEFINE REENACT SUBMARINE VIOLIN anapest
Lines The unit of composition is the line, not the sentence. Rhythmic units do not always coincide with syntactical units: that is, phrases, clauses & sentences.
Lines Enjambement: the running on of a thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without a syntactical break or, the continuation of a sentence or phrase across a line break - as opposed to an end- stopped line. End Stopped Line: A line of verse that ends with a grammatical break such as a comma, colon, semi-colon or period.
Lines Transformational Line Endings: He just laid bare
Lines Lines Transformational Line Endings: He just laid bare his heart and the young woman
Lines Lines Transformational Line Endings: He just laid bare his heart and the young woman kissed him until he yelled “Stop
Lines Lines Transformational Line Endings: He just laid bare his heart and the young woman kissed him until he yelled “Stop fooling around and get down
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