Chapter 1: individual
words
Poetry can be possible as many
things. Poetry does not only mean the expression of feeling of the author, or
just the experience of life, but poetry can be philosophical, or emotional, or
sentimental. It can paint pictures, in a descriptive mode, or tell stories, in
a narrative one. Poetry can also be satirical, or funny, or political, or just
informative. Yet none of these activities is specific to poetry, or reveals how
poetry differs from other kinds of writing or speaking. One of the most
important definition that poetry is language in which every component
element—word and word order, sound and pause, image and echo—is significant,
significant in that every element points toward or stands for further
relationships among and beyond themselves. Poetry is language that always means
more than one. On this first level, poetry is an art of word choice, made up of
chosen words. The first element of poetry is diction as the basic unit of the
word and how the the word is selected. Diction is the selection of individual
words in terms not only of a word’s meaning but of its level or type. to
appreciate the kinds of diction, of course we are required some language-levels
understanding. We have to be able to distinguish between formal and informal
language.
Chapter 2:
syntax and the poetic line
In this chapter we learned about the
second element of poetry that building from the unit of the word, it is called
poetic line. Just like all language, poetry include of syntax. Poets use syntax
to various ends and effects. Word order in a poem also often works in ways
similar to word choice in diction levels. The word order may be very formal,
raising the “pitch” of a poem the way high diction does or it may be very
colloquial to lower the level of diction. The extent to which a poet can also
break the rules of syntax for his or her own purposes can be seen in Emily
Dickinson (1830–1886).
Chapter
3: Images: Simile and Metaphor
The most important
points in speaking and writing are diction and syntax. But
in poetry their use may be more conscious, more considered, and they may take
on special meanings and effects—like a dancer who walks or runs, but does so
with more grace, more intention, and as part of a fuller purpose of design and
beauty. Imagery is another basic poetic unit, one more specific to poetry and
much more obviously exciting; it is the fireworks of poetry, often thought of
as poetry’s defining characteristic. Actually, how large a role the kind of
vivid visual picture we think of as the very stuff of poetry plays varies from
literary period to period, with changes in literary taste and literary fashion.
Different ages admire different things in poetry, and our admiration for
certain kinds of imagery has its own specific historical context. There is a
number of kinds of poetic image, start from the most familiar images, those are
simile and metaphor. A simile is a comparison that tells you it is a
comparison. Metaphor is also a structure of comparison. But in metaphor the
likeness happens without warning, and involves its own distinctive structure.
Chapter 4: Metaphor And
The Sonnet
To make a poem, image of comparison
such as simile and metaphor, and word choice and poetic are the precedence way.
They are the smaller structural components from which larger ones are
constructed. This is especially vivid in the role of metaphor in the
construction of a sonnet; that is, the way the sonnet form can make use of
metaphor build its structure. A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines. Each line
generally has, in English, ten syllables, accented in the traditional English
rhythm called iambic. The careful construction of the sonnet in parallel
image-blocks is cemented by the poem’s syntax. Each quatrain is made up of one
sentence, marked by a period. Because the sonnet structure is so carefully
defined, departures from the expected pattern acquire special force.
Chapter 5: Verse
Forms: The Sonnet
In the previous chapter it discussed
about relation between the sonnet and
metaphor, focusing on how metaphor can be used to build a sonnet structure. In
chapter 5 considered the sonnet more generally as a verse form. Besides
allowing a fuller examination of the sonnet itself, it will help us to begin
thinking about the importance of formal features— frameworks, rules,
conventions—for poetry and for the way poetry works. Boiling sweat is much less
polite than the elevated diction of the rest of the sonnet. It slaps us in the
face with the fact that the poet is not only describing a psychological
condition, but also a physical one.
Chapter 6: Poetic Conventions
The name poetry
means poiein: to make or suggests original creativity. Even simile and
metaphor, along with other figures of speech, are conventions we recognize, and
indeed expect, from poetry. The poem is going to propose other images of
passing time: the sun whose advance also marks its descent; youth, whose warm
blood precedes and hence signals an inevitable decline. But the first image
should sound familiar.
Chapter 7: More
Verse Form
In chapter of poetic conventions, show
us how those can be quite small units, such as an image that is returned to
repeatedly in the history of literature (the rose); or how conventions
can involve
larger structures, indeed whole topics, such as love, and ways of handling
them. We now can see that in a sense a verse form is itself a kind of
convention, with a history that is recalled each time a poet uses the form.
What is paramount in each case is how the form of the poem is significant and
functional—the part it plays in the way the poet shapes the poem’s material. We
now can see that in a sense a verse form is itself a kind of convention, with a
history that is recalled each
time a poet uses
the form. What is paramount in each case is how the form of the poem is
significant and functional—the part it plays in the way the poet shapes the
poem’s material. There are other verse forms that are much more formal, much
more defined, containing repeating lines like refrains, arranged invery special
orders. These forms mostly come out of the early lyric tradition, in Old French
and Italian—the lyric history out of which the sonnet too first emerged. The
point is not to memorize the different kinds of verse forms, but to get a sense
of how a verse form works and what it does.
Chapter 8: Personification
The form of poetry can be appeared
in small or larger, brief moments in a text or general organizing principles.
Personification, like poetic conventions (topoi) or simile, can take either
form and size. Personification is basically a type of comparison and in this
sense is a subset of simile and metaphor. But it is a comparison of a
particular kind, in that it always likens something that is not human to the
human realm. The comparison may be implicit, as in metaphor, or explicit, as in
simile.
Although
personification is just one kind of comparison, it is in practice a very
pervasive and overarching poetic category. There is a further element in each
of these personifications, with further implications regarding personification
itself. The action of the sea-lady who bares her bosom is one of opening, of
giving, even of exposure. There is a further element in each of these
personifications, with further implications regarding personification itself.
In personifying, the poem implies, we are opening ourselves up to the world,
giving ourselves to it—and therefore also to ourselves. In poetry written
subsequent to Romanticism—call it Modernism or post-Romanticism—there is an
increasingly critical sense of personification as limited in what it can claim,
but also of its importance to understanding and asserting the human position.
Because of this, personification in modern verse is strangely balanced between
a sense of its inevitable importance, alongside a resistance to it, a
skepticism about how far it can take us.
Chapter
9: Poetic Voice
In the lyric, Poetic voice is often
pretend, to mean the voice of the poet.
A generalized speaker, called a “lyric I,” allows the poet to speak in some
pure language, perhaps as the spirit of poetry itself. This notion, however,
applies to only one kind of poetic voice. Conversely, when the poet try to
speak in his or her own voice, she or he still is speaking as a poet, in poetic
language, and not merely privately or casually. In terms of poetic voice, what
is outstanding about this, as in Robert Browning’s other dramatic monologues,
is the multiplication of points of view that the poem incorporates,
distributes, and directs. mistress’s grace: “I am not I, pity the tale of me.”
The notion of poetic voice can be used in still broader ways. In the course of
a text, a poet may refer to some body of material; some set of conventions;
some topical interest or political situation or concern; a theological or
philosophical, commitment or dispute; or some aesthetic conception. The
importance of poetic voice in a text can also vary: that is, poetic voice may
be a central, or a more secondary aspect of the text. In the case of Percy
Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), poetic voice becomes particularly central,
thrusting the poet into prominence so that the whole text becomes a kind of
figure for him, and claiming special powers for the poet that endow him with
almost preternatural
sources of
authority.
Chapter 10: Gender and Poetic Voice
A
list of characteristically feminine figures in poetry might include female
speaking voices; female actors; domestic imagery and spaces, traditionally the
domain of women; traditional female roles, such as daughter, wife, sister, and
mother; female experiences, such as pregnancy and birth; responsibilities such
as childcare and sick care that have typically been delegated to women. Traditional
female occupations, such as sewing, cloth-making, and cooking; and gendered
sexuality.
A
female voice may be overtly or covertly dissident, projecting a muted and
marginal stance against a dominant, official one. Historically, women’s
writings have been logical as well as associative, experimental as well as
traditional, and cannot be characterized in one stylistic way. Yet, female experience
in a historical. Perhaps the first woman poet to (re-)gain a broader currency
in literary discussion is Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), who was also the first
published poet of America. sense may itself comprise a stratum from which arise
common representations and new perspectives on culture. One feminist theory of
voices posits that the dominant social group projects a dominant language,
which subordinate groups then adopt and internalize. The female is perhaps more
effaced than the male. But the reduction of the woman entails the reduction of
the man, in a poetic voice that is disturbed and accusatory.
Chapter
11: Poetic Rhythm: Meter
poetic
rhythm is the very heart sense of the matter of poetry. The full weight of the
importance of the rhythm of the words in poetry can only be felt if you already
have some experience with poetry. But to people immersed in poetry, the sounds
of the words, in their rhythms and repetitions, are perhaps the fundamental
poetic experience. To study the rhythms outside of a poetic context and the
whole complex of patterns that make up the poem is to miss the experience that
alone makes these rhythms accessible and significant. Metrical study can be
very elaborate and technical. But meter is, fundamentally, a pattern of
emphasis. A given line is defined as having a number and pattern of units.
Fortunately for readers of English, despite the many metrical possibilities,
very few patterns are actually used in most English verse.
Chapter
12 : Poetic Rhythm: Sound and Rhyme
Sound rhythm of poetry is one of the
most technical of poetic features. As with meter, sound patterns can be
identified, but in a different sense their effects resist discussion. Just like
a meter the sound structures and patterns that make a poem can’t be appreciated
outside the many overlaying patterns of language in a text. Pure sound should
not be neglected, especially not the “rhymes” which the poem starts by calling
dull, an accusation it then disproves. Rhyme is a feature of verse that first
looks very important; then unimportant and merely mechanical; and finally very
important again. There is the challenge, especially in English, of finding
rhyme words that appear completely natural and necessary, and not just contrived
to fit the rhyme scheme (one of the marks of a minor poem).
Chapter
13: Rhetoric: More Tropes
A
trope is a unit of rhetoric. Rhetoric means artful and calculated organization
of words in writing or speaking so that they can have the greatest impact.
There are tropes that do not rely only on word order, Tropes, then, are the
names given to the different kinds of rhetorical word formations that writers
and speakers have recognized to be particularly effective. Repetition, for
example, gives shape and structure to a poem. It can serve, as we saw, to help
organize a sonnet, recall how the opening lines of each quatrain may echo each other,
repeating syntactic patterns in ways that strengthen the structure and bind the
sonnet together but offer additional specific relationships between the
elements in the poem. Or, repetition can give an effect of chanting or
incantation, or a musical effect. Or it can serve to emphasize a main point.
Chapter 14: Incomplete Figures and the Art of Reading
In
poetic structure, a term offered by the text means to “stand for” or represent
something further, outside the text, which remains unnamed. The term is
presented as a figure for some further term. But the text itself does not
explicitly define what that further term is. Such an incomplete or open poetic
structure puts a special burden on the reader, or rather, puts the reader in a
position that in turn has implications for reading poetry in general.
