Chapter 1: Because
There Is Language There Is Poetry
In the evolution of human life,
every sound has different meaning and so to give the respond. Just like Kenneth Koch (1925–2002) writes, ‘Each
word has a little music of its own.’ We can conclude that all of the words in
language have its own sounds as the art of language itself. The sounds of language are very
enjoyable when they are combined in a string of word or the repetition of
certain words or rhythmic patterns. Gesture in language means the aspects of
the nature language itself.
Chapter 2: Deliberate Space
In previous chapter it described
that gesture are the aspects of the nature of language than those covered by
dictionary definition and word-order. All the resources of verse emphasize the
gesturing elements of words and their combinations in ways that draw attention
and impress. These include sound effects like alliteration and assonance,
reiteration, rhyme, rhythm and meter, figures of speech
or tropes, limericks, sonnets,
haiku. A poem is a part of the functioning and the gesturing of the
words we use every day. The ‘deliberate space’ of the poems have been looked at
so far is created primarily by patterns of sound and we follow the poems by
ear.
Chapter
3: Tone Of Voices
In everyday conversation, we usually
speak in many different ways. It is depend on the condition or who are we speak
to. And in poetry we see that although poetry as the most intimate of the literary
genres, through most of its history it has worked as a medium society. In
another sense poets can seek another
kind of idealized return: to a simpler, less elaborate manner of writing. Modernist
poets of the early 20s century, especially keen to break the
identification of the individual poet with what is spoken in the poem. The
broad assumption so far in this chapter has been that the poet chooses his or
her ‘tone of voice’ for a poem just as, hopefully, we choose when we speak and
write in everyday life. Language, especially ‘everyday language’, is subject to
the wear of custom.
Chapter
4: The Verse Line
Poetry explains the element of time
and timing in how the particular sounds of words fall against each other and make
the harmony of sound. It implies that
the question of whether poetry is ‘sound’ or ‘meaning’ is most critics. Until
20s century explorations of ‘free verse’, lines usually recurred
in the sense that their lengths and patterns had the same measure, or
that the same measures recurred within reach of one another. In this chapter
also explained about Rhythm which refers to the way
the sound of a poem moves in a general sense either in part or through its
whole length. Meters is more specific and refers to a set pattern
which recurs line by line. syllables is crucial to the
composition and the study of formal measures. But, in the sounds of a language,
the phoneme, not the syllable, is the most basic item. A syllable,
however, might be made up of a number of phonemes: k/a/t go to
make up the single expressed voicing of cat. We do not articulate all
its component sounds separately (‘k/a/t spells cat’) but when we
say catarrh we must voice two separate sounds, cat-arrh, for catapult
three: cat-a-pult, for catamaran four: cat-a-mar-an.
Chapter
5: Free Verse
In this chapter I learned about one
of the most popular theory about “Free Verse” in 20s century by William Blake
(1757-1872) in his writing. As Blake acknowledges, poets have frequently chafed
at the formal demands they inherit, which is why Shakespeare and Milton ‘derived’
their verse from rhyme and wrote blank verse.
According to Blake’s view of poetry is visionary, and for him its true voice is
the original voice of human kind. He
states that his verse is ‘dictated’ to him, not composed within the schemes of
tradition.
Chapter
6: Rhyme And Other Noises
Rhyme is a play with
words and its first effect is pleasure. It comes from delighted surprise as
words, remote from each other in meaning but which happen to sound alike, are
made to coincide. Rhyme can make language disorderly because following its nose
can entirely subvert normal sense, especially when words are corrupted to fit.
But in other ways rhyme might be said to organize language into tidy shapes. The
definition of rhyme in English has to do with the arrangement of
consonants and vowels.
Chapter
7: Stanza
In 1950s, the word Stanza refers to a group of lines. It
was quiet new in English. But, with the sixteenth century’s attraction to
Italian models, it was coming to displace the Old English word staff.
The French word verse, then as now, could refer to a group of
lines or a single line, or simply mean poetry in the generic sense. The
original sense of stanza in Italian is ‘stopping-place’, a place to take
a stand, and more particularly ‘room’. According to American poet Kenneth
Koch (1925–2002) a stanza is ‘nothing more than organizing other forms of
poetic music— rhythm and rhyme’. Four-line forms are usually known as quatrains
and reckoned to be the most common verse form in European poetry.
Before the twentieth century quatrains would normally be rhymed either abab,
abba—sometimes known as envelope rhyme—or aabb. As we have
seen, it is the usual structure for the ballad, but also for far too
many tones and styles to itemize here. Four-line forms are usually known as quatrains
and reckoned to be the most common verse form in European poetry. Of
course, there is no reason why a stanza might not consist of any number of
lines. Thus we can have five-line quintets, six-line sestets
and seven-line septets, and in many respects their
effects will be similar to those of the quatrain. Six lines also
form the basis for one on the most interesting of poetic forms, the sestina.
The seven-line stanza or septet can vary metre and rhyme scheme,
or indeed have none. Eight-line stanzas are dominated by a particular form of
Italian origin still known as ottava rima or, more rarely, ottava
toscana. Ottava rima uses a ten-syllable line which rhymes abababcc.
It is a form to be found in several European poetries and came into English
with the enthusiasm for Italian literature and culture of the sixteenth-century
Tudor poets such as Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–42). The rondeau and
the rondel are often associated with the triolet (see
above) and also have their origin in medieval French poetry. Like much poetry
their ancestry is in song, and especially the dance-songs of rondes or
rounds.
Chapter 8: Image—Imagination—Inspiration
At
the heart of metaphor, the vehicle which connects the subject of the
utterance with the quality being evoked, is an image: the brush,
the lemon, the crossroads, the act of lifting the eyes. In the poem at the head
of this chapter our body is first a spark, then a piece of straw, then a
bubble. By contrast, imagination suggests a quite different definition of poetry.
‘Inspiration’ is one of the great clichés associated with poetry. Until
confronted by the cold realities of the creative writing class, would-be poets
loiter by guttering candles impatient for the moon flash
of
the poem’s arrival.
