Theme; subject
What the emotion of a poetry is telling youWhat the poem talks about upfront
Means/elements; structure, form, sounds, rhythm, allusions, references, and poetic language; unexpected words, unexpected definitions
Required to construct a poemWhat are they?What is categorized into the last one?
Paraphrasing
What can help one with the close reading of a poem?
Rhyme
Using sounds of words, typically in repetition, to make a poem “good”
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Alliteration (dang dog)
Repetition of primary consonant/vowel sounds in close-by words
Assonance
Repetition of vowel sounds anywhere in a word throughout a line
Onomatopoeia (screech)
Usage of words that mimic sounds
Eye rhyme (‘dead’ and ‘mead’)
Usage of words that look like they would rhyme but do not when sounded out
Perfect rhyme; near (slant) rhyme; end rhyme; internal rhyme
‘Bat’ and ‘cat”Body’ and ‘hottie’ Rhyme coming at the end of a lineRhyme occurring inside the line
Syllable (ta-ble); accent
How words are pronouncedThe emphasis in a word
Masculine rhyme; feminine rhyme
Rhyme where the accent goes on the last accented syllableRhyme where the accent goes on an unaccented syllable
End-stopped; enjambed (enjambment)
If a line comes to a definite endWhen a line’s meaning carries over to the next
Rhyme scheme; rhyme royal
The pattern of a rhymePopular rhyme pattern of ABABBCC
Poetic meter
Poetic rhythm is also called this
Stressed and unstressed
Another way to say accented and unaccented
Scansion
Analyzing a poem by its meter
Foot; iamb (again); trochee (Charley); iambic meter; trochaic meter
Basic poetic meter measureOne basic measure of unstressed, stressedOne basic measure of stressed, unstressedRhythm of unstressed, stressed measure that is most popular poetic meterRhythm of stressed, unstressed measure that is most popular poetic meter
Anapest/ anapestic meter; dactyl/ dactylic meter; pyrrhus; spondee
Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable in foot and meter formOne accented syllable followed by two accented syllables in foot and meter formTwo unstressed syllables in a rowTwo stressed syllables in a row
Caesura (||); anacrusis
The poetic pause, symbolized by punctuation usually or an end-stop; additional beginning unstressed syllable that doesn’t affect the poem’s meter
Monometer; dimeter; trimeter; tetrameter; pentameter (MOST USED); hexameter; heptameter; octameter
One foot Two feetThree feetfour feetfive feetsix feetseven feeteight feet
Rising meter; falling meter
Iambic and anapestic feetTrochaic and dactylic feet
Iambic pentameter; blank verse
Most used meter in English languageSame thing but unrhymed
Stanza
A poem’s paragraph, affected by meter
Figurative language (figures of speech); tone; literal language; irony
figures of speech and fancy, clever word usage are thisThe way a writer conveys attitudes through diction and sound usageContrast to the above word; words by definition usageIn poetry, when a person says something and means the opposite
DenotativeConnotative
A word’s upfront meaning, definitionA word’s other meanings/usages, by associations
DictionPoetic dictionSyntax
A poet’s choice of wordsRefined language sometimes reserved for poetryThe order in which words appear
Imagery; visual images; aural images; tactile images; abstractions (love)
The use of physical imagesImages one can seeImages one can hearImages one can touchWords about concepts with no immediate reality
Simile; metaphor
A comparison using like or asA comparison without like or as
PersonificationApostrophe
Metaphor in which something non-human is compared to a human by characteristics Addressing something that is no longer or never was alive (dead, inanimate, conceptual)
SymbolMetonymy Synecdoche
A word having so much meaning that the symbol is almost implicit; Usage of word in place of another related to it; usage of a word as a part of a whole to symbolize the whole
ParadoxOxymoronHyperbole Understatement
A statement that on the surface seems to contradict itself/ be impossible but has hidden importance/possibility; phrases that do contradict themselves; exaggeration in poetry; using words to suggest something is smaller than we know it really is
Closed poetryFree verse/ open form
A poem with end rhymePoetry style usually without rhyme/defined meter
Couplet; stanza/verse; quatrain; sestet; octave; tercet
A unit of two perfect rhymed linesTwo of these create the basic what?The basic 4-line unit is called what (usually within the framework of a larger poem)?Six lines with recurring rhyme schemes?Eight lines with recurring rhyme schemes?Three lines creating a poetic unit
Narrative poem; epic; ballad; refrain; literary ballad
Poem that tells a story, by developing a theme/character at length, then conclude story Oldest and longest form of this is what; usually describes a moment in historyLong, song-like, ancient narrative poems in a slow tempo, usually in quatrains, which make use of repeating choruses called what?Narrative poems like the one above, but without a chorus, more contemporary, telling a story, and quieter
Ode; terza rima
A praise poem going all the way back to ancient Greece; can be about a person or object; long, serious, lyric poem (song-like), philosophic/ moral ideas discussedRhyme scheme of tercets which link by rhyme from one to the next (ABA-BCB-CDC.
..), used for narrative poems and ones with restless mood
Elegy
Long, formal poem to mourn the death of someone/something, and discuss the philosophical implications of such loss and how it might immortalize the subject
Sonnet; presents a theme, considers the implications, and a summarized response of the speaker to the theme; William Shakespeare; English (Shakespearian) sonnet; Italian sonnet
Famous (about) 14-line poems used for 500 years with similar line lengths and many discoverable ‘rules’; what does it usually discuss?Greatest sonneteer of them all?Style of above poem with rhyme scheme ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG (3 quatrains, 1 couplet)Style of above poem with rhyme scheme ABBA-ABBA-CDECDE/CDCDCD (1 octave, 1 sestet)
Sestina; envoy; villanelle; 2nd, 4th; 3rd, 5th
Six stanzas, each six lines long, with concluding 3-line stanza called what?; French origin; same end words repeated every stanzaFive tercets (ABA) and a quatrain (ABAA) at the end, in iambic pentameter; the first line becomes the final line of the ___ and ____ tercets, and the second-to-last one of the quatrain; the last line of the first tercet becomes the last line of the ___ and ___ tercets, and the poem’s last line
Dramatic poetry
Poetry used for dramaPoem written as a speech or long narrative that the person/subject of poem delivers to another
Pattern poem (shaped poem)
Exotic traditional poetry style, usually unrhymed, no traditional meter, uses visual set-up to express meaning behind words (or vice-versa)
Surrealists; Guillaume Apollinaire
A group of young, rebellious early 20th century writers/artists/ musicians that challenged societal/behavioral/belief/traditional normsLed by Polish-French modernist poet who was wounded in WWI
Epigram; aphorism; limerick
Short, comical/satirical lyric poem with rhyme, making commentary/wit/observationExtremely similar poetry style, a concise, humorous maxim/sentimentShort, humorous, structured folk poem, with 5 lines, and 1 stanza; AABBA; rhythm is always 2 rhymed lines of three strong accents, 2 different-rhyming lines of 2 strong accents, and one line that ties to the first two is accents and rhyme; meter is anapest usually
Imagism; Erza Pound; Amy Lowell; classical Chinese and Japanese; LiT’ (Po) and Du Fu (Tu Fu); haiku; kigo; 3-line poem of 17 syllables, with lines of 5-7-5 syllables
Newer poetry style with a clear, precise message and descriptive imagery; did away with meter, rhyme, mysticism, abstractions; free verse; term coined by what poet?What American poet took up cause?What traditions were also being mixed into popular contemporary poetry around this time? What two poets were main influences? Japanese traditional poem of 17 characters (ideograms/’on’), written on a single descending line; a ‘_____’ or reference to a season, was in most of them, had juxtaposition of different images The ‘American’ version is what?
Open form (free verse); lyric poetry; persona; confessional poetry; prose poem; associative
Poetry often without many of the restrictions of classic/traditional poetryShort, song-like poetry expressing a speaker’s thoughts/feelingsThe narrator of a poem, in described poetry above goes by ‘I’Private, personal poems, usually expressing women’s’ rightsA kind of poetry-writing hybrid where the poem is only one part of expressing a theme; like a parablePoetry to suggest some new image or thought
Allusion; parody
indirect reference to something the speaker/ reader would know; not a quotationIndirectly tributes poet whose work is subject
Cities; people; animals; gestures; dislike; contempt; genuine
Rainer Maria RilkeFor the sake of a single poem, you must see many _____, many ________ and things, you must understand _________, must feel how birds fly, and know the ________ which small flowers make when they open in the morning”Poetry” by Marianne MooreI, too, _______ it.
Reading it, however, with a perfect _________ for it, one discovers in it, after all, a place for the __________
Searched for; summoned; a face; fever or forgotten wings; fire; the heavens; the Universe/the abyss
Pablo Nerudo’s PoetryPoetry did what for speaker?Speaker was what?He was there without what?What started in his soul?Deciphered what?After writing a line saw what?Felt like part of what?
Globed fruit; old medallions; moss-covered stone; flight of birds; moon; history; grief; not mean but be
Archibald MacLeish’s ‘Ars Poetica’Poem should be mute as what?Should be dumb as what?Silent as what?Wordless as what?Motionless as what?For all ________ of ______A poem should what?
Talks about how poetry begins; compares it to looking up into the night sky, then seeing a man walking a dog, and questioning the unseen possibilities; ends talking about human mortality
Ann Menebroker’s ‘A Mere Glimpse’
Discusses how poetry is not just something from the past, his reluctance to pursue poetry as a mechanic, and how we must see poetry in a contemporary time; talks about how things seemingly nonbeautious are poetry in their own rights
Fred Voss’ ‘How Many Times Can We Follow Dante Into Hell’
Talks about the power of poetry over a poet at any time
Alice Walker’s ‘I Said to Poetry’
Celebrates an alternate Universe where poetry is used to incite change; puts poetry in responsibility of revolutionaries
Victor Hernández Cruz’s ‘Today is a Day of Great Joy’
Talks about a man who died because his friends misinterpreted him in life and death; makes use of doubles; uses change in narrative, haunting sounds, and repetition
Stevie Smith’s ‘Not Waving But Drowning’
Describes a tender moment between a father and son where they dance about the house; includes references to death, perhaps the father’s inevitable one
Theodore Roethke’s ‘My Papa’s Waltz’
Trochaic trimeter poem where last couplet holds much significance in psychological thought
Mary Coleridge’s ‘Eyes’
Grecian Urn; a depiction of a man chasing a woman; art and mortality
John Keats’ ‘Ode to a ________ ___’what does he describe on the subject?Discusses?
The hidden genius, talent, and characteristics of unknown past generations; educational opportunities like his generation; a graveyard
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ Thomas GrayDiscusses what?What does speaker think the addressed should have had?Where is the speaker at?
Sonnet; speaker makes several comparisons of himself to things that are ending (day, season, fire) to tell his lover that he will not always last, which should make their love even stronger
Willy Shake’s ‘That Time of the Year Thou Mayest In Me Behold’ is what?
Death; makes fun of death by saying how transient and non-powerful it is
John Donne’s ‘_______, Be Not Proud’
Coy Mistress; telling lover that if he had enough time and space he’d take her everywhere and focus on her forever, but time will destroy them both unless they seize the day/ become united
Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His ___ _________’
Imagism poem about the linkage between a boy and his horse, part of another, unseen world
DH Lawrence’s ‘The White Horse’
13; Blackbird; snowy mountains; 3 blackbirds in a tree/ traditional family/ arguing entities; pantomime; 1; 1; innuendos; just after; icicles; women (blackbirds); golden birds (perfect women); accents and rhythms; periphery vision; green light; brothelwomen; Connecticut; shadow of baggage (looked like blackbird); river; cedar; snow
Wallace Steven’s ‘__ Ways of Looking at a _________’1. Blackbird in what?2. Undecided mind compared to what?3. Blackbird in wind is part of what?4.
Man+woman= __Man+woman+blackbird+__5. Inflections or what?Blackbird whistling or what?6. What are monstrous on window?7.
Thin men of Hadden should focus on what? Instead of what?8. Knows what?9. Blackbird leaves what?10. Blackbirds in what scare who?11. Man going where? Sees what?12. Blackbird is flying, ______ is moving13.
Blackbird in _____, it was going to what?
Talks about two different men coming together to fix a wall, one mischievous newer generational man and an older, stern man; sterner ones says ‘Good fences make good neighbors’; speaker wonders why; the hunters are using dogs to look for rabbits; speaker is apple tree and neighbor is pine
Robert Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’
Talks about two seemingly identical paths and a guy that went down both and wonders if he made the right decision and if it matters; he is deluded in many ways
Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’
Poem about a dead child and the parents struggling to deal with this; the mother is more liberal in claim than the father, who wants to return everything to normal
Home Burial by Robert Frost
Speaker in a dream picked too many apples and many spoiled; extended metaphor to life and taking on too many things at once to be better
After the Apple-Picking by Robert Frost
A lengthy, ironically childish-sounding poem about a woman who has rejected the image of her late father and ex-husband to rid of their lasting influence; compares them to Nazis
Sylvia Plath’s Daddy
Speaking meter and word sounds
What does Alexander Pope use effectively in his poem “An Essay on Criticism”
Describes love as immortal, going past death and age and the end of the world; speaks at a wedding ceremony; uses repetition, speaking meter, word sounds
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116
Rushed, compacted, ‘patriotic’ parody of the hard patriotic man, throwing different American phrases and maxims together to create a scene; uses almost no punctuation
EE Cumming’s poem
Oddly un-narrative poem about the bringing of something human/artificial into a natural setting and how the two personified concepts interact; repetition of words, sounds creates tone; jar is made to seem everywhere, and wild yields to it
Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens
Meter, sharp diction, punctuation, repetition create sense of beating; describes a gang who has gotten caught up in the moment and will die soon; pattern of 8s
We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
Soothing, slow, soft poem with child-like diction/imagery contrasting with the death and burial of the child
Upon a Child that Died by Robert Herrick
Poem that hashes together the many negative phrases of poem to express its controlling/negative/corrupting factors
Money by Dana Gioia
Metaphor of ‘pure’, stripped down mind to a bat beating about a cave, using instinct to get about; in end, says that making mistakes improves our surroundings (the cave)
Mind by Richard Wilbur
Tenor; vehicle
Metaphor relies on two things:The abstraction/unrelatable/unmoving partThe relatable/moving/ compared part
