Meter

Definition: A pattern of rhythm - stressed and unstressed syllables.

Example:

- - / - - /

Hickory, dickory, dock,

- / - / - /

The mice ran up the clock.

- / - /

The clock struck one,

- / - /

The mice ran down.

/ - - / - - /

Hickory, dickory , dock.

Significance: We use meter to help the reader enjoy the poem better. When they read it out loud, it will sound like a song.

A Boy Named Sue

Stanza

Definition: Number of lines that form a group of a poem.

Example:

I Am Fast and Fun

I am fast and fun.
I can dream, dreams that nobody has dreamt before.
I would go on adventures all over the world.
I want to write out my imagination.
I enjoy seeing peace.

I am fast and fun.
I want to fly and taste the air.
I am not afraid to say what I want.
I feel such smooth things that touch my fingers.
I find such pretty things in nature.

I am fast and fun.
I want to be a soccer star.
I think hard about things.
I wonder where we go when we fade.
I feel so great when I help someone.

Tasha (Age 9)

Significance: We use stanza to separate each part of the poem. It make the reader understand easier, and also, maybe each stanza, it has it's own meaning.

Symbol

Definition: Something that represent something else in a deeper meaning.

Example:

Storm me

I already tasted my one piece
of a crazy love that took away
my sanity as if a spider inside of me
you devoured me and attack me
in an inverted way, you’re creeping’ here
inside of me where I’m more fragile
oh how clever you are, your simple
you made me sleepless and raise my breathe
and turn it to a tornado, I now whirls
in my own little world now my beds
looks like a thousand storms has passed by
oh that made me tired.

Significance: We use symbol to represent something that we want to talk about. Maybe we want the poem to have both meaning of the symbol, and the meaning of the thing it symbolize for. It can make the reader think more, and also understand it in their own way.

Extended Metaphor

Definition: when two things are compare to each other and the things that relate to that two things are also connect to each other.

Example:

Painting
Painting is an untamed bird.
You're free to show how you feel
without consequence.
There's nothing holding you back.
Your emotions fly wildly.
Megan Sutter, Laura Young, and Sarah Peterson

Signification: We use extended metaphor to make the reader think more about our poem and it will make the poem sounds more interesting. It will attract more readers to think and want to read the poem to see what's next.

Tone

Definition: The pitch of the voice that we use when we read a poem aloud. The up and down of our voices create mood for the poems.

Example:

Funny...but not
it's funny how hello is always accompanied with goodbye
it's funny how good memories can start to make you cry
it's funny how forever never seems to last
it's funny how much you'd lose if you forgot about your past
it's funny how “friends” can just leave when you are down
it's funny how when you need someone they never are around
it's funny how people change and think they're so much better
it's funny how many lies are packed into one “love letter”
it's funny how one night can contain so much regret
it's funny how you can forgive but not forget
it's funny how ironic life turns out to be
but the funniest part of all, is none of thats funny to me
Arianna Loshnowsky

Signification: We read with tones help the reader feel the mood of the poems better. We can express the feelings, emotions of the poems better when we go up or down our voice.

Speaker

Definition: The narrator of the poem or the first person of the poem

Example:

Oh Susana

I came from Alabama
wid my banjo on my knee,
I'm g'wan to Louisiana,
My true love for to see,
It raind all night the day I left
The weather it was dry,
The sun so hot I frose to death
Susana dont you cry.
[Chorus] Oh! Susana Oh! dont you cry for me
I've come from Alabama wid mi ban jo on my knee.
[Solo] I jumped aboard de telegraph,
And trabbelled down de riber,
De Lectric fluid magnified,
And Killed five Hundred Nigger
De bullgine buste, de horse run off,
I realy thought I'd die;
I shut my eyes to hold my breath,
Susana, dont you cry.
Stephen Foster

Significance: When we use first person perspective for our poem, we can express more feelings of the characters and the thoughts that the characters are thinking.

Types of Poetry

Narrative:
Definition: Two words which have similar sound in the last syllables.
Example:

Poetry, not prose

Tom Friedman says that we need poetry, not prose,
to get this country into better shape.
Although we surely know a rose would be a rose
if called by any other name, a grape
becomes much more when sublimated into wine,
and politics don’t matter till its message
becomes poetic. Prose won’t help to make it shine,
and all predications politicians presage
won’t come to pass unless they’re elevated with
poetic language that shifts paradigms,
and brings into reality what seemed mere myth,
promoting the prosaic with its rhymes.
We need a narrative that we can memorize,
not complicated data on a chart,
and yearn for tuneful songs that we can harmonize,
and poems we love learning off by heart.
Gershon Hepner

Ballad:
Definition: A poem that written like a song which tells a sad, death story.
Example:

Ballad Of The Black Slave
This is the ballad of the black slave,
Who has been beaten and disgraced,
Who has been called the n-word and negro,
Who has received no pay.
This is the ballad of the black slave,
Who prays for freedom every night,
Who is going to rebel,
For what he thinks is right.
Now this is the ballad of the freed slave,
Who has seen much blood shed,
Who has fought for equal rights,
And who has won his freedom.
Michael Issac Palmer

Sonnet:

Definition: A kind of poetry that follow the rules of 14 lines with each line 10 syllables. Unstressed syllable then stressed syllable.
Example: Epic:
Definition:Long poem that talk about a hero with elegant languages
Example:

Tiddalick - The Frog Who Caused a Flood

In the time of dreaming
Before the earth was old
Myths were in the making
Legends yet untold

Here began a story
Of one huge enormous frog
Solemn in his glory
He drank from every bog

Tiddalick the great one
Had to quench his mighty thirst
He drank from all the waterholes
So much he nearly burst

He drained the lake and river
The stream and billabong
Soon there was no water left
It was very wrong

Others now grew thirsty
There was no sign of rain
Hot sun scorched the arid earth
No water did remain

Tiddalick's swollen stomach
Was squelchy round and wide
He was so big he couldn't move
The water was inside

Animals assembled
Men gathered with them too
They had to end this great distress
And work out what to do

Boomerangs were useless
Spears bounced off his side
Getting angry didn't help
Even though they tried

The kookaburra had a plan
We need to make him laugh
To hold his side and open wide
We need to show some gaffe

If only we can do that
The water will pour out
We all must work together
To end this mighty drought

C'mon laugh you big fat frog
You're like a bursting pot
If only you could see yourself
Squelching as you squat

Tiddalick moved his mournful head
He had a doleful face
He didn't see the humour
Of smiles there were no trace

The kangaroo and platypus
Wombat and emu
All tried their best to make him laugh
But Tiddalick stayed blue

Some danced and some told stories
Others somersaulted
Tiddalick grew tired and bored
And slept when antics halted

The last to try was Norang the Eel
He was their final hope
He turned himself into a hoop
And wriggled like a rope

The rope stood upright on the sand
Then it began to spin
It went round like a whirlwind
Tiddalick began to grin

Then out slopped some water
Before it reached the sand
Man and beast began to drink
It worked like they had planned

But Norang went on spinning
Till he was scarcely seen
Tiddalick began to chuckle
It really made a scene

As his belly rumbled
The frog rocked to and fro
With his hands upon his sides
A stream began to flow

Tiddalick's mouth was open wide
With water gushing out
A surging tidal river
Spewed like a water spout

It swept away the animals
And covered all the sand
A shining lake of water
Had spread over the land

Now Tiddalick has shrunken
He's just a little frog
Who sometimes hides in desert sands
Or sits upon a log

A. W. Reed Reed Books

Odes:
Definition: Long poem that celebrate a person or an idea
Example:

Ode To A Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
John Keats

Elegies:
Definition: A mourning poem about a someone who has died.
Example:

Elegy
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast

Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,

I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead

Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,

I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,

Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.

The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.

Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the liught of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go

Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'

Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

Until I die he will not leave my side.)

Dylan Thomas

Lyric:
Definition: Poem that express the feelings, emotions, thoughts of the poet or speaker
Example:

I Felt a Funeral in my Brain

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My Mind was going numb - And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then - ”
Emily Dickinson

Free verse:
Definition: Poem that doesn’t follow a regular meter or rhyme scheme
Example:

After the Sea-Ship

After the Sea-Ship—after the whistling winds;

After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,

Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,

Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship:

Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,

Waves, undulating waves—liquid, uneven, emulous waves,

Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,

Where the great Vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface;

Walt Whitman

Rhythm

Definition: The up and down sound of your voice when you read a poetry.

Example:

February

A chimney, breathing a little smoke.
The sun, I can't see
making a bit of pink
I can't quite see in the blue.
The pink of five tulips
at five P.M. on the day before March first.
James Schuyler

Significance: We use rhythm when we read poems to show the feelings, expressions of the poem and to attract the listeners. When we read with rhythm, it will gives more emotion to the listeners and readers.

Metaphor

Definition: When you compare to different things.

Example:

Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer's Day
Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

Significance: We use metaphor to compare to things together in an indirectly way. It will make the readers think more and attract the readers better.

Personification

Definition: When you use human's feelings, actions, characteristics for a non-living object (things, colors, qualities, or ideas).

Example:

My Town

The leaves on the ground danced in the wind
The brook sang merrily as it went on its way.
The fence posts gossiped and watched cars go by
which winked at each other just to say hi.
The traffic lights yelled, ”Stop, slow, go!”
The tires gripped the road as if clinging to life.
Stars in the sky blinked and winked out
While the hail was as sharp as a knife.

Significance: We use personification to "upgrade" the non-living objects into living objects. It is important for us to study personification because when we write poems, we need to use personification when we want to describe the non-living objects in more interesting and attractive ways.

Simile

Definition: When you use as or like to compare to different things.

Example:

Your Feet
Your feet smell so bad,

just like limburger cheese,

that I'm holding my nose tight

between my two knees.

Denise Rodgers

Significance: We use simile to compare to things and help us to imagine the picture better. We need to study simile in Language Arts because simile will make our poems sound more interesting.

Imagery

Definition: When you use the 6 senses to describe something with words that make the reader can imagine the picture of what you are describing.

Example:

Age of Innocent

A child's eyes view the potential of the world
Mankind appears as it should be
And not as it really is
Yesterday is gone
And today is forever
Tomorrow will always be
An unfathomable promise

Wonder and awe in a leaf
And in each blade of grass
Clean sheets and falling rain
Are personal luxuries
Squiggly worms, such a treat
Hidden in fresh, dark dirt
Drivelets of dew trickle
Down a cloudy pane

Treasures are timeless amusements

Mary O. Fumento, 1986

Significance: We use imagery to make the poem sound better, more attractive to the reader. The reader can imagine the image that we are telling them about better and it would make the reader love the poem even more.

Poetry

Definition: a written art of a combination of words which express a feeling, an idea, an expression. Poetry can be rhyme, rhythm and each words in the poem has each own meaning.

Example:

I am not yours

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind
Sarah Teasdale

Significance: We should use poetry to express our feelings, to describe something. Poetry is a part of Language Art because when we read a poem, we will have to think closely about the meaning of it, we need to analyze the art.