AP Language and CompositionPoetry Unit

Unit Objectives•This Unit is going to be about poetry and

we are going to begin to explore what poetry is and how we can read it in order to appreciate it fully.

•The presentations are meant as an introduction to English Poetry.

po·et·rynoun

•1 a : metrical writing : verse b : the productions of a poet : poems

•2 : writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm

•3 : something likened to poetry especially in beauty of expression

•First Known Use of POETRY•14th century

What is poetry?• "I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow

of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment."--William Wordsworth, 1798

Poetry Data Sheet•how to analytically break a poem down•this is a logical instruction based way of

knowing what to look for and what to comment on for poetry.

•We will go through each bracket and explain it accordingly

TPCASTT•T-title: The meaning of the title without

reference to the poem.

•P-paraphrase: Put the poem, line by line, in your own words. DO NOT READ INTO THE POEM. Only read on surface level.

TPCASTT• C- Diction and symbolism - Imagery - Metaphors and similes - Rhyme scheme - End rhymes and internal

rhymes - End stop - Enjambment - Alliteration

Assonance - Consonance - Mood - Allusions -Punctuation -Personification -connotation: looking for

deeper meaning

TPCASTT•A-attitude: Looking for the author’s tone.

How is the writer speaking?•S-shifts: Looking for shifts in tone, action,

and rhythm. Don’t just write the number. Discuss

• how the shift(s) affects the poem. •T-title: reevaluate the title as it pertains

to the poem •T-theme: What does the poem mean?

What is it saying? How does it relate to life?

Categories of the Poetic Method:I.DictionII.Imagery: Sensuous, Figurative, SymbolicIII.Sound DevicesIV.Formal Devices: Formal Structure, Meter, Rhythm, Other Factors, Rhyme

*These 4 categories make up what is known as the Physical Structure of a poem.*The other aspect of a poem is the Developmental Structure.

The Poetic Method:The terminology and

concepts required for the study of poetry

I. Diction: Word Choice

Why is diction important?

Determines the emotion the poet wishes to convey. Words create a tone of sadness, melancholy, fear, happiness, concern, excitement, suspense, etc.

Connotation: Refers to the feeling or emotion a word conveys.

Denotation: Refers to the dictionary definition of a word.

Diction works in conjunction with Tone Tone = DIDLS

Diction: The author’s word choice.

Images: Word pictures created by groups of words.

Details: Facts

Language: Formal, Informal, Slang, Colloquial

Sentence Structure: Short sentences are usually more emotional or assertive.Longer ones move toward more logical or scholarly intent.

II. ImageryA.Sensuous

1.Tactile – appeals to our sense of touch

2.Visual – appeals to our sense of sight

3.Auditory – appeals to our sense of sound

4.Gustatory – Appeals to our sense of taste

5.Olfactory – Appeals to our sense of smell

B. Figurative Imagery or Figures of Speech

1.Simile – A definitely stated comparison between 2 unlike objects that have one point in common using the words “like” or “as”.

Example: He is as proud as a peacock. She eats like a pig.

2. Metaphor: A comparison between 2 unlike objects that have one point in common.

Example: Love is fire.

The point in common is the intensity and warmth of love and fire.

Example: Her voice was silk amid our homespun talk. The point in common is the softness of her voice and the texture of silk.

3. Personification: This is a type of comparison in which a lifeless thing (an inanimate object) is described in human terms or given human, life-like qualities.

Example: The sun kissed the fields with warmth and brightness.

4. Apostrophe:

• Addressing or speaking to the dead as if living

• To an object as if it is alive

• To the absent as if they are present and able to understand the speaker

The speaker turns away from the reader and addresses someone or something in the poem.

Example:“Speak gently, Spring, and make no sudden sound.Walk softly, March, forbear the bitter blow.”

5. Metonymy:

A.The use of a word or an object to suggest something closely associated with it.

Example: Give me a hand with this. (helping hand)

B.The use of part of something to suggest the whole thing.

Example: All hands on deck. (hands represent people)

C.The use of a container to suggest the thing it contains.

Example: May I approach the bench? (Bench refers to judge)

6. Hyperbole: An extreme exaggeration that is designed to have an impact on the reader. It is not intended to deceive. Its purpose is humour and/or emphasis.Example: I’ve heard that story a thousand times.

7. Irony: The speaker’s meaning is far from the usual meaning of their words, and it is the reader’s task to differentiate between the two. There is a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. It adds force and emphasis to the speaker’s meaning.

Example of Verbal Irony: “It was very kind of you to remind me of my humiliation.”

Example of Dramatic Irony: Lady Macbeth’s comments about cleansing the blood in Act 2 and its psychological effect in Act 5 as she sleepwalks and tries to wash the blood from her hands.

8. Antithesis: A contrast of words or ideas. A thought is balanced with a contrasting thought in parallel arrangements of words and phrases.

Examples: -His mind is active but his body is sluggish.-He promised wealth and provided poverty.-It was the best of times; it was the worst of

times.

9. Oxymoron: Technique used to produce an effect by a seeming self-contradiction. Examples: small crowd

cruel kindnessjumbo shrimp

Humourous Figures of SpeechHer face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a thigh master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

She grew on him like E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep throaty genuine laugh like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad, as, like, whatever.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7 pm instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

The hailstones leapt up off the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the east river.

Even in his last years, grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

The plan was simple like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a landmine or something.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids with power tools.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

C. Symbolism:

A symbol is an object that stands for something larger than itself. It means both what it is and something more.

Example: A dove is both a bird and a symbol of peace.

III. Sound Devices

Purpose: Used to convey tone or mood in a poem by determining the rhythm of the piece.

1.Alliteration: The repetition of the initial (first) consonant sound in a series of words in a

line of verse. It helps form the pattern of poetry.

Example:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew.The day of his death was a dark cold day.

2. Assonance:

The repetition of the same vowel sounds in a line of verse, creating partial or internal rhyme.

Examples:Time out of mind

Free and easy

3. Consonance:

The repetition of a final consonant sound in a line of verse. The vowel sounds that precede them are usually different.

Examples:

“first and last”

“hill and dale”

4. Dissonance:

A series of harsh consonant sounds in a line of verse. This is also known as cacophony.

Example: “All day cars mooed and shriekedHollered and bellowed and wept”

5. Euphony:

A pleasant musical quality produced by a series of vowel sounds in a line of verse. Also known as vowel melody.

Example:

“And the words hung hushed in their long white dreamBy the ghostly, glimmering, ice-blue stream.”

6.Onomatopoeia:

The use of a word to represent or to imitate natural sounds.

Examples: clang, buzz, pop, fizz, sizzle, hiss

IV.Formal Devices

1.Stanza: A regular combination of 2 or more lines in a poem.

2.Couplet: A 2-line stanza forming a rhymed pair. The lines usually have the same number of feet or beats.

3. Tercet: A stanza of 3 lines; most common meter is iambic pentameter.

4. Quatrain: A stanza of 4 lines with a variety of rhyme schemes and metrical patterns. Rhyme scheme is typically abba

5. Ballad Stanza: A quatrain made up of 2nd and 4th lines that rhyme.

Rhyme scheme is abcb, iambic tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter.

Example of a Ballad Stanza: “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

U / U / U / U /About, about in reel and rout (4)

U / U / U /The death-fires danced at night; (3)

U / U / U / U /The water, like a witch’s oils (4)

U / U / U /Burnt green and blue and white (3)

6. Sonnets

A.Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet

B.Shakespearean/English Sonnet

*All sonnets have 14 lines

Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet:

•Consists of an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines)

•Rhyme scheme for the octave (also known as an octet) is abba abba

•Rhyme scheme for the sestet is cde cde or cdc dcd

•Octave presents an idea, story, doubt, picture or problem

•Sestet provides a reflection, answer or solution to the octave problem

Shakespearean/English:

•Consists of 3 quatrains and a concluding couplet

•Rhyme scheme is typically abab cdcd efef gg

•Couplet is a brief statement to clinch the thought and give a strong ending

7. Heroic Couplet:

Composed of iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs.

Used often by Geoffrey Chaucer in his poem The Canterbury Tales written in the Middle Ages.

Became best known during the Restoration Period when it was primarily used by John Dryden and Alexander Pope.

Examples of lines written by Alexander Pope:

U / U / U / U / U /But when to mischief mortals bend their will,

U / U / U / U / U /How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

8. Blank Verse:

Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameterShakespeare is the best known writer to have used this form.

9. Meter:

Determined by the regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse.

Determines the rhythm in a poem.

Each line of verse is made up of feet that are groups of regularly recurring stressed and unstressed syllables.

When we say a word out loud that has more than one syllable, we always stress one syllable more than others.

One-syllable words are sometimes stressed and sometimes not. It depends on whether or not meaning is emphasized.

In a 3-syllable word, the middle syllable is usually stressed.

In a line of verse, the stressed and unstressed syllables form a pattern. This is called meter.

Example: If a line of verse has 5 iambic feet; that is, it has 5 groups of unstressed and stressed syllables, then it is called iambic pentameter (pentameter meaning 5 feet).

Example of a line of verse with iambic pentameter:

U / U / U / U / U /They also serve who only stand and wait.

Trimeter: Refers to 3 feet in a line of verse

Tetrameter: 4 feet

Pentameter: 5 feet

Hexameter: 6 feet

Heptameter: 7 feet

Scansion: This is the term used to describe the process of determining the metrical pattern in a line of verse.

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater

Had a wife and couldn’t keep her

He put her in a pumpkin shell

And there he kept her very well.

/ U / U / U / UPeter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater Trochaic

tetrameter / U / U / U / UHad a wife and couldn’t keep her

U / U / U / U /He put her in a pumpkin shell Iambic

tetrameter U / U / U / U /And there he kept her very well.

10. Rhythm:

The pleasing or tuneful arrangement of the accented and unaccented syllables; therefore, the meter determines the rhythm of the poem.

Other factors that affect rhythm:

Vowels: Long vowels slow it down; short vowels speed it up.

Punctuation: Within and at the end of a line slow the rhythm.

Absence of punctuation at the end of a line produces a swifter rhythm. Known as enjambment or run-on lines.

Caesura: A natural pause that slows the rhythm.Example: Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

End-stopped line: A line with a grammatical pause at the end.

11. Rhyme: Similarity of sound, usually at the end of lines of verse. Rhyme is not determined by spelling but rather by pronunciation or sound.

2 Key Concepts:

What is the Physical Structure of a Poem?

It is the diction, sensuous imagery, figurative imagery, symbolism, sound devices and formal devices.

What is the Developmental Structure of a Poem?

It is the movement of thought an/or emotion through the stanzas in the poem. Considered to be the idea that is at the centre or at the heart of the poem.

Emotion & Idea:

Developmental Structure

I. Diction

II. Imagery:

SensuousFigurativeSymbolic

IV. Formal Devices

III. Sound Devices