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1. What is Poetry?
It is difficult to define; we have been more successful at describing and appreciating poetry than at defining it. Poetry might be defined, initially, as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language. William Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquility." Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature, saying most in the fewest number of words.
2. Reading the Poem:
A. Read a poem more than once.
B. Keep a dictionary by you and use it.
C. Read so as to hear the sounds of the words in your mind. Poetry is written to be heard: its meanings are conveyed through sound as well as through print. Every word is therefore important.
D. Always pay careful attention to what the poem is saying.
E. Practice reading poems aloud. Ask yourself the following questions: i. Who is the speaker and what is the occasion?
ii.What is the central purpose of the poem?
iii. By what means is the purpose of the poem achieved?
3. Denotation and Connotation:
The average word has three components parts: sound, denotation, and connotation.
Denotation is the dictionary meaning(s) of the word.
Connotations are what it suggests beyond what it expresses: its overtones of meaning. It acquires these connotations by its past history and associations, by the way and the circumstances in which it has been used.
4. Imagery:
Poetry communicates experience and experience comes to us largely through the senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, and touching). Imagery may be defined as the representation through language of sense experience. The word image perhaps most often suggests a mental picture, something seen in the mind's eye - and visual imagery is the most frequently occurring kind of imagery in poetry. But an image may also represent a sound; a smell; a taste; a tactile experience; and an internal sensation.
5. Figurative Language 1:
Metaphor, Personification, and Metonymy: Figures of speech are another way of adding extra dimensions to language. Broadly defined, a figure of speech is any of saying something other than the ordinary way, and some rhetoricians have classified as many as 250 separate figures. Figurative language is language that cannot be taken literally.
Metaphor and simile are both used as a means of comparing things that are essentially unlike; in simile the comparison is expressed by the use of some word or phrase such as like, as than, similar to, resembles or seems; in metaphor the comparison is implied - that is, the figurative term is substituted for or identified with the literal term.
Personification consists in giving the attributes of a human being to an animal, an object, or a concept. Closely related to personification is apostrophe, which consists in addressing someone absent or something non human as if it were alive and present and could reply to what is being said.
Synecdoche (the use of the part for the whole) and metonymy (the use of something closely related for the thing actually meant) are alike in that both substitute some significant detail or aspect of an experience for the experience itself.
6. Figurative Language 2:
Symbol and Allegory: A symbol may be roughly defined as something that means more than what it is. Image, metaphor, and symbol shade into each other and are sometimes difficult to distinguish. In general, however, an image means only what it is; a metaphor means something other than what it is; and a symbol means what it is and something more too.
Allegory is a narrative or description that has a second meaning beneath the surface one. Although the surface story or description may have its own interest, the author's major interest is in the ulterior meaning. Allegory has been defined as an extended metaphor and sometimes as a series of related symbols.
7. Figurative Language 3:
A paradox is an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless true. It may either be a situation or a statement ("damn with faint praise"). Overstatement, or hyperbole, is simply exaggeration but exaggeration in the service of truth. Understatement, or saying less than one means, may exist in what one says or merely in how one says it Like paradox, irony has meanings that extend beyond its use merely as a figure of speech. Verbal irony, saying the opposite of what one means, is often confused with sarcasm and with satire. Sarcasm and satire both imply ridicule, one on the colloquial level, the other on the literary level. The term irony always implies some sort of discrepancy or incongruity: between what is said and what is meant, or between appearance and reality, or between expectation and fulfillment (dramatic irony and irony of situation). Allusion, a reference to something in history or previous literature, is, like a richly connotative word or a symbol, a means of suggesting far more that it says. Allusions are a means of reinforcing the emotion or the ideas of one's own work with the emotion or ideas of another work or occasion. Because they are capable of saying so much in so little, they are extremely useful to the poet.
Some Glossary Terms
i. Sonnet:
Sonnet is a fourteen line poem. The Italian or Petrarchan has two stanzas: the first of eight lines is called octave and has the rhyme-scheme abba abba ; the second of six lines is called the sestet and has the rhyme cdecde or cdcdcd. The English sonnet, developed by Shakespeare, has three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic pentameter with rhymes abab cdcd efef gg.
ii. Rhyme:
The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words. When the rhyme occurs in a final stressed syllable, it is said to be masculine: cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve. When the rhyme occurs in a final unstressed syllable, it is said to be feminine: longing/yearning. The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for each final sound. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second, and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another
And this is an example of the way of writing rime scheme:
1 "Had he and I but met
2 By some old ancient inn,
3 We should have sat us down to wet
4 Right many a nipper kin!
5 "But ranged as infantry,
6 And staring face to face,
7 I shot at him as he at me,
8 And killed him in his place.
9 "I shot him dead because --
10 Because he was my foe,
11 Just so: my foe of course he was;
12 That's clear enough; although
13 "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
14 Off-hand like -- just as I --
15 Was out of work -- had sold his traps --
16 No other reason why.
17 "Yes; quaint and curious war is!
18 You shoot a fellow down
19 You'd treat if met where any bar is,
20 Or help to half-a-crown."
The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
A. We will see at the end of each lines some words similar in pronunciation or they have similar sound like: met in line ( 1) / wet in line (3), inn in line ( 2) / kin in line (4).
Now, we found the word in end of line 1 ( met) have similar sound the word in end of line 3( wet), so that we'll write – in the rime scheme Aa.
Also, we found the word in end of line 2 (inn) have similar sound the word in end of line 4 (kin), so that we'll write – in the rime scheme Bb.
Finally the rime scheme in first stanza is ABab.
What is the rime scheme in 2nd, 3td, 4th and 5th stanza in this poem?
If u fine similar rime scheme in all stanzas writ this poem has rime scheme and if there is a difference writ this poem has not rime scheme.
B. But if the words at the end of each lines similar in finally letters called perfect and if there is a difference called imperfect.
iii. stanza
Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme. Maybe you fine numbers to know the Beginning and end of stanzas.
