Poetry analysis
Encyclopedia
and content, in an informed way, with the aim of heightening one's own and others' understanding and appreciation of the work.
The words poem and poetry
derive from the Greek
poiēma (to make) and poieo (to create). That is, a poem is a made thing: a creation; an artefact. One might think of a poem as, in the words of William Carlos Williams
, a "machine made of words". Machine
s produce some effect, or do some work. They do whatever they are designed to do. The work done by this "machine made of words" is the effect it produces in the reader's mind. A reader analyzing a poem is akin to a mechanic taking apart a machine in order to figure out how it works.
Like poetry itself, poetry analysis can take many forms, and be undertaken for many different reasons. A teacher might analyze a poem in order to gain a more conscious understanding of how the poem achieves its effects, in order to communicate this to his or her students. A writer learning the craft of poetry might use the tools of poetry analysis to expand and strengthen his or her own mastery. A reader might use the tools and techniques of poetry analysis in order to discern all that the work has to offer, and thereby gain a fuller, more rewarding appreciation of the poem.
s, flashlight
s — can be taken apart by hand or with only the simplest tools. Similarly, some poems reward careful reading, and respond to analysis, but do not require that the reader have mastery of an extensive set of critical terms. This short poem, written by Robert Herrick
in the 17th century, provides a good example:
h
In the first three lines, the reader understands the speaker to be describing a sleeping baby. At the fourth line, this understanding is shaken. The baby is covered, not by a blanket, but by earth. That is, the baby has been buried. The baby is dead.
This realization can produce a sharp emotional reaction, an almost physical pang. And this reaction, this effect on the reader, is the "work" that this "machine of words" is designed to do. Although this poem is not humorous, its "mechanism" is akin to that of most jokes: a sudden alteration of perspective produces an immediate and visceral response.
At the outset of the joke, the listener imagines the fish to be in a fish tank
. For the listener who "gets it" (and who cares for this sort of joke), there is an immediate and visceral reaction (pleasure, perhaps laughter) when this perspective is suddenly altered. The fish are not in a fish tank: they are in a military tank
, a tracked, armored, combat vehicle.
Just as one needs no critical terminology or tools to "get" the joke, one does not really need critical terminology or tools to appreciate Herrick's poem. One needs only to read attentively and thoughtfully (it is crucial to recognize the incongruence and significance of the phrase "Th'easy earth"). Critical terminology, though, becomes useful when one attempts to articulate one's reaction to the poem in order to share it with others.
For example, a simile
is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another, typically using the words like or as: "My love is like a red, red rose." A metaphor
is a figure of speech in which the comparison is implicit, with one thing replacing another: "My love is a red, red rose" or "The red, red rose of my love." Constructions such as similes and metaphors are known as figurative speech
.
Italic texthelolllooeewkoj i jm,i yhq j
This terminology becomes useful when one attempts to articulate how Herrick's poem works. Because the poem begins with natural language, and a common, easily imagined scene, and because it does not include "like" or "as", a reader first understands lines 1-3 to be literal
(nonfigurative). The revelation that this "sleeping" baby is covered not by a blanket, but instead by earth, causes a sudden and dramatic shift in perspective, and in how the reader understands what he or she has just read. The effect of the poem traces to an almost instantaneous reversal of the reader's own understanding. The preceding lines are not literal: they are instead a sustained metaphor in which an unbearable reality (the baby is dead) is replaced by something else (the comforting but unsustainable fantasy that the baby is merely sleeping).
and rhyme
— without necessarily knowing a lot of terminology, as in this, the first stanza
of Byron
's "The Destruction of Sennacherib":
Byron's use of meter and rhyme is especially evident and rewarding when one reads the lines out loud. The lines have a powerful, rolling, and very evident rhythm, and they rhyme in a way that is impossible to ignore. In other words, the physicality of the language — how it sounds and feels — accounts for a large measure of the poem's effect. The poem does not have a deep, hidden, symbolic
meaning. Rather, it is simply pleasurable to read, say, and hear.
Critical terminology becomes useful when one attempts to account for why the language is pleasurable, and how Byron achieved this effect. The lines are not simply rhythmic: the rhythm is regular within a line, and is the same for each line. A poem having a regular rhythm (not all poems do) is said to follow a certain meter
. In "The Destruction of Sennacherib", each line has the basic pattern of two unstressed syllables followed by a third stressed syllable, with this basic pattern being repeated four times in a line. Those basic patterns are called feet
, and this particular pattern (weak weak STRONG) is called an anapest. A line with four feet is said to be in tetrameter
(tetra-, from the Greek for four). This poem has a pleasurable and appropriate rhythm, and that rhythm has a name: this poem is written in anapestic tetrameter. (This process of analyzing a poem's rhythms is called scansion
.) The poem also rhymes (not all poems do), and the rhymes follow a pattern (they do not have to). In this case, the rhymes come right next to each other, which emphasizes them, and therefore emphasizes the sound, the physical nature, of the language. The effect of the poem's language derives in part from Byron's choice of an appropriate pattern of rhyme (or rhyme scheme
): these adjacent, rhyming lines are called couplet
s. The sound, the physical nature, of the language is also emphasized by alliteration
, as in the repetition of s sounds in the third line.
"The Silken Tent".
Often, a good way to begin analyzing a poem is to reword it, putting it in one's own words, or into ordinary speech, in order to get a good grasp of the poem's content. (This is called doing a prose paraphrase.) Like Shakespeare's
"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day", this poem uses a sustained image to describe another person. Frost draws out an extended comparison between a woman and a silken tent in order to make some essential aspect of the woman's character real and available to the reader. The comparison is not to just any tent, but to a tent imagined in a very specific way. Ropes or cords draw up, become taut, when wet. In this case, the tent is imagined at midday. Any morning dew which would have soaked the tent's guy-lines has evaporated, and the ropes are now somewhat slack. The tent sways slightly in response to the wind. This image
ry conveys — at a subconscious but very real and effective level — a sense that the woman being described is not tense or nervous, but is instead genial, relaxed, comfortable to be around. This does not mean, though, that she is wishy washy, someone who is blown about by every gust of fad and fashion. The tent's pole — its upright nature, its strength — conveys a sense of backbone, character, and firmness. In this woman's case, firmness of character does not lead to her becoming dogmatic or insistent. Rather, her character derives in part at least from her deep investment in friends, family, and community, from "countless silken ties of love and thought". Some people would experience numerous relationships and the obligations they entail as something entangling, binding, or limiting. This woman does not seem to. She seems to be very much at ease in this situation, so much so that she and those around her are only likely to be aware of their bounds and limits in unusual circumstances.
When one reads this poem aloud, rhythm and meter are much less evident, much less emphatically presented than in "The Destruction of Sennacherib". In fact, most people who hear the poem read aloud for the first time will say that it does not rhyme and it does not have any particular rhythm. Closer examination reveals that the poem does rhyme though. In fact, it rhymes in a specific pattern: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG (that is, the first line rhymes with the third line (the A's), the second line rhymes with the fourth line (the B's), and so forth). But, the rhymes are much less forceful, much less emphatic and noticeable, than in Byron's poem. This is in part because Byron arranged the words such that each line ending (and therefore each rhyme) corresponds a natural pause in speech. That is, the lines end at the same places where one would pause if the lines were set as prose and one were reading the words aloud. Such lines are said to be end stopped. End stopping makes rhyme more noticeable. Frost, though, arranged at least some of the lines in "The Silken Tent" such that the line endings do not coincide with natural pauses (such as the end of line two: someone reading the words "a sunny, summer breeze / has dried the dew" would not necessarily pause after "breeze"). This technique is called enjambment
. Enjambment de-emphasizes rhyming lines.
And, there is a rhythm, albeit a rather subtle or muted one. Each line has ten syllables, and (with slight and pleasant variations) they follow a pattern of weak syllables followed by strong syllables:
This pattern (weak STRONG) is called an iamb (See Foot (prosody)
). There are five iambs to the line here: these are pentameter lines (penta- is from the Greek for "five"). The poem does have a meter: it is called iambic pentameter
. Frost employs the meter with a very light touch, though, and feels free to "play around with it", briefly departing from the regular pattern as appropriate.
The whole poem is a single sentence: a single, rather long, but nonetheless conversational sounding sentence that covers fourteen lines.
So, this poem, which at first seems rather formless, in fact has a very specific structure: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. There is a term for this structure: it is called the Shakespearean sonnet
, and it is regarded as one of the stricter, more difficult forms. Frost is not writing a shapeless poem; he is writing within very strict rules, and in fact has raised the bar by making himself do it all in one sentence. The poem is a single, long, graceful sentence that unfolds — in a very relaxed, natural sounding way — within the strict boundaries of the Shakespearean sonnet form.
And — going back to the prose paraphrase — it describes a woman whose life unfolds in a very relaxed, natural way, within numerous strict boundaries. In the woman's character, as in the poem's form, one is not really aware that the boundaries are even there. The woman, like the poem, exists comfortably, naturally, easily within numerous limits and boundaries.
And this is the poem's great accomplishment: the form enacts the content; the language of the poem does what the language itself says. Though this analysis proceeded by temporarily separating form and content, the result of the analysis is the realization that in "The Silken Tent", form and content are truly inseparable: they are exact complements to each other. The effect of this poem, the work it is designed to do, is to create a sharp sense of pleasure and appreciation when one recognizes how skillfully and appropriately the poet has used the words.
In this case, a certain amount of critical terminology and analytic skill is necessary in order to appreciate the poem. If the reader does not know what a sonnet is, much less more subtle aspects of form such as enjambment, he or she will have no way to see what the poem does. He or she will have no way to "get the joke". In this case, poetry enjoyment is enabled by poetry analysis. It is also widely accepted that this poem refers to some sort of sexual frustration in a woman's point of view.
or limerick
. Such poems exhibit closed form. Others (which exhibit open form) have less structure or, indeed, almost no apparent structure at all. This appearance, though, is deceptive: successful open form poems are informed throughout by organic structure which may resist formal description but is nonetheless a crucial element of the poem's effect on the reading mind.
that they survive for centuries and are renewed with each generation of poets (sonnet
s, sestinas, limericks
, and so forth), while others come into being for the expression of one poem and are then set aside (Frost's
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
" is a good example).
Of all closed forms in English prosody, none has demonstrated greater durability and range of expression than blank verse
, which is verse
that follows a regular meter but does not rhyme. In English, iambic pentameter is by far the most frequently employed meter. Among the many exemplary works of blank verse in English are Milton's
Paradise Lost
and most of the verse passages from Shakespeare's plays, such as this portion of a famous soliloquy
from Hamlet
:
Note that Shakespeare does not rigidly follow a pattern of five iambs per line. Rather, most lines have five strong syllables, and most are preceded by a weak syllable. The meter provides a rhythm that informs the line: it is not an invariable formula.
Rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines form the heroic couplet
. Two masters of the form are Alexander Pope
and John Dryden
. The form has proven especially suited to conveying wit and sardonic humor, as in the opening of Pope's An Essay on Criticism.
Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter arranged in a more elaborate rhyme scheme form a sonnet
. There are two major variants. The form originated in Italy
, and the word derives from "sonetto", which is Italian
for "little song". The Italian sonnet or Petrarchan sonnet follows a rhyme scheme of ABBA ABBA CDE CDE, ABBA ABBA CD CD CD, ABBA ABBA CCE DDE, or ABBA ABBA CDD CEE. In each of these, a group of eight lines (the octave
) is followed by a group of six (the sestet
). Typically, the octave introduces a situation, idea, or problem to which the sestet provides a response or resolution. For example, consider Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
's "The Sound of the Sea":
The octave presents the speaker's experience of the sound of the sea, coming to him from some distance. In the sestet, this experience mutates into a meditation on the nature of inspiration and man's connection to creation and his experience of the numinous.
English has (proportionally) far fewer rhyming words than Italian. Recognizing this, Shakespeare adapted the sonnet form to English by creating an alternate rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The poet using this, the English sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet form, may use the fourteen lines as single unit of thought (as in "The Silken Tent" above), or she may treat the groups of four rhyming lines (the quatrains) as organizational units, as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 73:
In lines 1-4, the speaker compares his time of life to autumn. In lines 5-8, the comparison is to twilight; in lines 9-12, the comparison is to the last moments of a dying fire. Each quatrain presents a shorter unit of time, creating a sense of time accelerating toward an inevitable end, the death implied in the final couplet.
At the "high end" of closed forms are the sestina and villanelle
. At the "low end" are forms such as the limerick
, which follows a metrical pattern of two lines of anapestic trimeter (three anapests per line), followed by two lines of anapestic dimeter (two anapests per line), followed by one line of anapestic trimeter. (The beginning of the metrical foot does not have to coincide with the beginning of the line.) Any poem following this metrical pattern would generally be considered a limerick, however most also follow an AABBA rhyme scheme. Most limericks are humorous, and many are ribald, or outright obscene (possible rhymes that could follow an opening like "There once was a man from Nantucket
" are left as an exercise for the reader). Nonetheless, the form is capable of sophisticated and playful expression:
") seeks to find fresh and uniquely appropriate forms for each poem, letting the structure grow out of the poem's subject matter or inspiration. A common perception is that open form is easier and less rigorous than closed form (Frost likened it to "playing tennis without a net"), but such is not necessarily the case (skeptics should try playing tennis without a net): success with the open form requires great sensitivity to language and a particular type of adaptable understanding. In the best open form poems, the poet achieves something that is inaccessible through closed form. As X. J. Kennedy has said, "Should the poet succeed, then the discovered arrangement will seem exactly right for what the poem is saying" (582).
Walt Whitman
was an important innovator of open form, and he demonstrates its merits in "A Noiseless Patient Spider
".
The long, rolling lines — unified, held together like strong cords, by alliteration
and assonance
— partake of the same nature as the spider's filaments and the soul's threads. Two balanced stanzas, one describing a spider, the other the speaker's soul, perfectly frame the implicit comparison, with neither being privileged over the other. Just as the spider and the soul quest outward for significance, the two stanzas throw links to each other with subtly paired words: isolated/detached, launched/fling, tirelessly/ceaselessly, surrounding/surrounded.
In this poem, Whitman uses synonyms and antonyms to give structural integrity to a poem comprising two yoked stanzas, much like (but not exactly like) the way poets working within closed forms use meter and rhyme to give structural integrity to their poems. The form works quite well, but there is no established term that describes it. Rather, Whitman created this form so that he could write this poem. Conceivably, other poets could adopt the form, and repeated examples would give literary analysts the material they would need to specify its defining characteristics and give it a name. But, that hasn't happened. Instead, we have one poem that deploys a structure very well suited to its subject. The poem has form, but the form was not imposed by previous conventions. It has open form.
, connotation
and metaphor
are some of the subtler ways in which a poet communicates with the reader.
Before getting seduced into explorations of subtle nuance, however, the reader should establish the theme of the poem. What is the 'story' that is being told? Not the literal story but the heart of the poem. For example: "Another" tells of a buried child; "The Destruction of Sennacherib" tells of the annihilation of an Assyrian army by divine intervention; "The Silken Tent" compares a woman to a tent. Part of this involves recognising the voice of the poem (who is speaking), and the rest of Kipling
's "six honest serving men"
: the events in the poem; when these occur; where is the 'speaker' and where do the events occur; why does the speaker speak? William Harmon
has suggested that starting an analysis with: "This poem dramatizes the conflict between …" is a key technique.
George Herbert
in his poem Jordan (I) asks if poetry must be about the imaginary. The poem opens:
He was railing against the prevalent enthusiasm for pastoral
poetry above all other forms (as becomes apparent in subsequent verses). Curiously, this verse uses metaphors to challenge the use of indirect approaches to their subject. False hair and a painted chair are decorations of the mundane. The winding stair is obstructive concealment of meaning. Herbert is criticising the overuse of allegory, symbolism or elaborate language.
For most poets — even the plain-speaking Herbert — metaphor is the fundamental means of communicating complexity succinctly. Some metaphors become so widely used that they are widely recognised symbols and these can be identified by using a specialist dictionary.
Allegorical verse uses an extended metaphor to provide the framework for the whole work. It was particularly prevalent in seventeenth century English but a more recent example is Charles Williams
' The Masque of the Manuscript, in which the process of publishing is a metaphor for the search for truth. Allegories are usually readily apparent because of the heavy use of metaphor within them.
The symbolism used in a poem may not always be as overt as metaphor. Often the poet communicates emotionally by selecting words with particular connotations. For example, the word "sheen" in The Destruction of Sennacherib has stronger connotations of polishing, of human industry, than does the similar "shine". The Assyrians did not simply choose shiny metal; they worked to make it so. The word hints at a military machine.
Other tropes that may be used to increase the level of allusion include irony
, litotes
, simile
, and metonymy
(particularly synecdoche
).
s. It thus stands in contrast to poetry in other languages, such as French
, where syllabic stress is not present or recognized and syllable count is paramount. This often makes scansion
(the analysis of metrical patterns) seem unduly arcane and arbitrary to students of the craft.
In the final analysis, the terms of scansion are blunt instruments, clumsy ways of describing the infinitely nuanced rhythms of language. Nonetheless, they provide a tool for discerning and describing the underlying structure of poems (especially those employing closed form).
The terms fall into two groups: the names of the different feet, and the names of the varying line lengths.
The most common feet in poetry written in English are the iamb (weak STRONG), the anapest (weak weak STRONG), the trochee
(STRONG weak), and the dactyl
(STRONG weak weak). The iamb and anapest are known as rising meters (they move "up" from weak to strong syllables); the trochee and dactyl are falling meters (they move "down" from strong to weak). Less common, but frequently important for the variety and energy they bring to a line, are the monosyllabic foot (weak) and the spondee
(STRONG STRONG).
The terms for line length follow a regular pattern: a Greek prefix denoting the number of feet and the root "meter" (for "measure"): monometer
, dimeter
, trimeter
, tetrameter
, pentameter
, hexameter
, heptameter
, and octameter
(lines having more than eight feet are possible but quite rare).
Another useful term is caesura
, for a natural pause within a line.
Meter and line length are not formulas for successful lines of poetry. They are rough forms of notation for the many satisfying and variable rhythms of language. Slavish adherence to meter produces doggerel
. Skillful poets structure their poems around a meter and line length, and then depart from it and play against it as needed in order to create effect, as Robert Browning
does in the first line of "My Last Duchess":
The opening spondees, which throw the iambic line out of pattern, gives the Duke's words a certain virulent energy: he's spitting the words out.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
took this idea of poetric energy through departure from meter to its extreme, with his theory and practice of sprung rhythm
, an approach to poetry in which the language constantly frustrates the reading mind's expectation of a regular meter.
A detached tone, or an opposite tone than the reader would expect, are sometimes purposely employed to elicit more of a response. In the opening lines of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", T. S. Eliot
quickly sets a certain tone, and then creates effect by juxtaposing it with a very different tone:
experiment with punctuation and the words' layout on a page. In doing so, they venture into a realm of poetry that really cannot be read aloud: it can only be experienced through the eye.
Cummings has fractured language into its most atomic elements. To analyze the poem, the reader must first reassemble these into meaningful units: a brief, evocative image — "a leaf falls" — appearing, like an unbidden thought, in the middle of a word, "loneliness". A single falling leaf is by itself a fine image for the feeling of loneliness, but in order to fully experience the poem, the reader must then put the elements of language back into the visual form in which Cummings arranged them: a vertical line (like a leaf falling to the ground), followed by a horizontal series of letters (like a leaf laying flat on the ground). The vertical line is dominated by the word "one" (an absolutely appropriate expression of loneliness) and by the letter "l" (which, on the page, looks like the numeral 1... it looks like "one").
Numerous other poets, including George Herbert
, Lewis Carroll
, William Blake
, Wyndham Lewis
, and John Hollander
have used the layout of words, letters, and images on the page to create effect in their poems. An analytic reader of poetry must attend to the eye as well as the ear and the mind.
There are many different 'schools' of poetry: oral, classical, romantic, modernist, etc. and they each vary in their use of the elements described above.
Schools of poetry may be self-identified by the poets that form them (such as Imagism
), or defined by critics who see unifying characteristics of a body of work by more than one poet (for example The Movement). To be a 'school' a group of poets must share a common style or a common ethos. A commonality of form is not in itself sufficient to define a school; for example, Edward Lear
, George du Maurier
and Ogden Nash
do not form a school simply because they all wrote limericks.
. At various times and places, groups of like-minded readers and scholars have developed, shared, and promoted specific approaches to poetry analysis.
The New Criticism
dominated English
and American
literary criticism
from the 1920s to the early 1960s. The New Critical approach insists on the value of close reading
and rejects extra-textual sources. The New Critics also rejected the idea that the work of a critic or analyst is to determine what author's intended meaning (a view formalized by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
as the intentional fallacy
). The New Critics prized ambiguity
, and tended to favor works that lend themselves to multiple interpretations.
Reader Response developed in Germany and the United States as a reaction to New Criticism. It emphasises the reader's role in the development of meaning.
Reception aesthetics is a development of Reader Response that considers the public response to a literary work and suggests that this can inform analysis of cultural ideology at the time of the response.
In fact, many poems reveal themselves fully only when they are read aloud. The characteristics of such poems include (but are not limited to) a strong narrative, regular poetic meter, simple content and simple form. At the same time, many poems that read well aloud have none of the characteristics exhibited by T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi", for example. Poems that read aloud well include:
The words poem and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
derive from the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
poiēma (to make) and poieo (to create). That is, a poem is a made thing: a creation; an artefact. One might think of a poem as, in the words of William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
, a "machine made of words". Machine
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
s produce some effect, or do some work. They do whatever they are designed to do. The work done by this "machine made of words" is the effect it produces in the reader's mind. A reader analyzing a poem is akin to a mechanic taking apart a machine in order to figure out how it works.
Like poetry itself, poetry analysis can take many forms, and be undertaken for many different reasons. A teacher might analyze a poem in order to gain a more conscious understanding of how the poem achieves its effects, in order to communicate this to his or her students. A writer learning the craft of poetry might use the tools of poetry analysis to expand and strengthen his or her own mastery. A reader might use the tools and techniques of poetry analysis in order to discern all that the work has to offer, and thereby gain a fuller, more rewarding appreciation of the poem.
"Another" by Robert Herrick
Returning to the mechanical metaphor introduced earlier, some machines — ballpoint penBallpoint pen
A ballpoint pen is a writing instrument with an internal ink reservoir and a sphere for a point. The internal chamber is filled with a viscous ink that is dispensed at its tip during use by the rolling action of a small sphere...
s, flashlight
Flashlight
A flashlight is a hand-held electric-powered light source. Usually the light source is a small incandescent lightbulb or light-emitting diode...
s — can be taken apart by hand or with only the simplest tools. Similarly, some poems reward careful reading, and respond to analysis, but do not require that the reader have mastery of an extensive set of critical terms. This short poem, written by Robert Herrick
Robert Herrick (poet)
Robert Herrick was a 17th-century English poet.-Early life:Born in Cheapside, London, he was the seventh child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous goldsmith....
in the 17th century, provides a good example:
- Here a pretty baby lies
- Sung asleep with lullabies:
- Pray be silent and not stir
- Th' easy earth that covers her.
h
In the first three lines, the reader understands the speaker to be describing a sleeping baby. At the fourth line, this understanding is shaken. The baby is covered, not by a blanket, but by earth. That is, the baby has been buried. The baby is dead.
This realization can produce a sharp emotional reaction, an almost physical pang. And this reaction, this effect on the reader, is the "work" that this "machine of words" is designed to do. Although this poem is not humorous, its "mechanism" is akin to that of most jokes: a sudden alteration of perspective produces an immediate and visceral response.
- There are these two fish in a tank. The first fish looks over at the second fish and says, "Hey, do you know how to drive this thing?"
At the outset of the joke, the listener imagines the fish to be in a fish tank
Aquarium
An aquarium is a vivarium consisting of at least one transparent side in which water-dwelling plants or animals are kept. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, marine mammals, turtles, and aquatic plants...
. For the listener who "gets it" (and who cares for this sort of joke), there is an immediate and visceral reaction (pleasure, perhaps laughter) when this perspective is suddenly altered. The fish are not in a fish tank: they are in a military tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
, a tracked, armored, combat vehicle.
Just as one needs no critical terminology or tools to "get" the joke, one does not really need critical terminology or tools to appreciate Herrick's poem. One needs only to read attentively and thoughtfully (it is crucial to recognize the incongruence and significance of the phrase "Th'easy earth"). Critical terminology, though, becomes useful when one attempts to articulate one's reaction to the poem in order to share it with others.
For example, a simile
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...
is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another, typically using the words like or as: "My love is like a red, red rose." A metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
is a figure of speech in which the comparison is implicit, with one thing replacing another: "My love is a red, red rose" or "The red, red rose of my love." Constructions such as similes and metaphors are known as figurative speech
Literal and figurative language
Literal and figurative language is a distinction in traditional systems for analyzing language. Literal language refers to words that do not deviate from their defined meaning. Figurative language refers to words, and groups of words, that exaggerate or alter the usual meanings of the component...
.
Italic texthelolllooeewkoj i jm,i yhq j
This terminology becomes useful when one attempts to articulate how Herrick's poem works. Because the poem begins with natural language, and a common, easily imagined scene, and because it does not include "like" or "as", a reader first understands lines 1-3 to be literal
Literal and figurative language
Literal and figurative language is a distinction in traditional systems for analyzing language. Literal language refers to words that do not deviate from their defined meaning. Figurative language refers to words, and groups of words, that exaggerate or alter the usual meanings of the component...
(nonfigurative). The revelation that this "sleeping" baby is covered not by a blanket, but instead by earth, causes a sudden and dramatic shift in perspective, and in how the reader understands what he or she has just read. The effect of the poem traces to an almost instantaneous reversal of the reader's own understanding. The preceding lines are not literal: they are instead a sustained metaphor in which an unbearable reality (the baby is dead) is replaced by something else (the comforting but unsustainable fantasy that the baby is merely sleeping).
"The Destruction of Sennacherib", by Lord Byron
Similarly, one can derive pleasure from two of the most fundamental tools in the poet's toolbox — meterMeter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
and rhyme
Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
— without necessarily knowing a lot of terminology, as in this, the first stanza
Stanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
of Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
's "The Destruction of Sennacherib":
- The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
- And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
- And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
- When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Byron's use of meter and rhyme is especially evident and rewarding when one reads the lines out loud. The lines have a powerful, rolling, and very evident rhythm, and they rhyme in a way that is impossible to ignore. In other words, the physicality of the language — how it sounds and feels — accounts for a large measure of the poem's effect. The poem does not have a deep, hidden, symbolic
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
meaning. Rather, it is simply pleasurable to read, say, and hear.
Critical terminology becomes useful when one attempts to account for why the language is pleasurable, and how Byron achieved this effect. The lines are not simply rhythmic: the rhythm is regular within a line, and is the same for each line. A poem having a regular rhythm (not all poems do) is said to follow a certain meter
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
. In "The Destruction of Sennacherib", each line has the basic pattern of two unstressed syllables followed by a third stressed syllable, with this basic pattern being repeated four times in a line. Those basic patterns are called feet
Foot (prosody)
The foot is the basic metrical unit that generates a line of verse in most Western traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited, with a few...
, and this particular pattern (weak weak STRONG) is called an anapest. A line with four feet is said to be in tetrameter
Tetrameter
Tetrameter: [ti'tramitə]; te·tram·e·ter; a verse of four measuresOrigin: early 17th century : from late Latin tetrametrus, originally neuter from Greek tetrametros 'having four measures,' from tetra- 'four' + metron 'measure'....
(tetra-, from the Greek for four). This poem has a pleasurable and appropriate rhythm, and that rhythm has a name: this poem is written in anapestic tetrameter. (This process of analyzing a poem's rhythms is called scansion
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
.) The poem also rhymes (not all poems do), and the rhymes follow a pattern (they do not have to). In this case, the rhymes come right next to each other, which emphasizes them, and therefore emphasizes the sound, the physical nature, of the language. The effect of the poem's language derives in part from Byron's choice of an appropriate pattern of rhyme (or rhyme scheme
Rhyme scheme
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. In other words, it is the pattern of end rhymes or lines...
): these adjacent, rhyming lines are called couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...
s. The sound, the physical nature, of the language is also emphasized by alliteration
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
, as in the repetition of s sounds in the third line.
"The Silken Tent" by Robert Frost
The first two examples show how rarely poetic analytical terms are actually necessary to appreciate a poem; they are only needed to explain or describe the poem's effect. Sometimes, though, the reader needs a certain skill in analyzing poetry, and a certain level of technical expertise, in order to appreciate the poem. If a listener doesn't know what fish tanks and military tanks are, he or she will not "get the joke" about the two fish. Similarly, sometimes a poem cannot work, cannot produce its intended effect, and cannot do what it was designed to do, unless the reader brings a certain level of analytical skill to the experience of reading it. One such poem is Robert Frost'sRobert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
"The Silken Tent".
- She is as in a field a silken tent
- At midday when a sunny summer breeze
- Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
- So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
- And its supporting central cedar pole,
- That is its pinnacle to heavenward
- And signifies the sureness of the soul,
- Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
- But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
- By countless silken ties of love and thought
- To everything on earth the compass round,
- And only by one's going slightly taut
- In the capriciousness of summer air
- Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
Often, a good way to begin analyzing a poem is to reword it, putting it in one's own words, or into ordinary speech, in order to get a good grasp of the poem's content. (This is called doing a prose paraphrase.) Like Shakespeare's
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day", this poem uses a sustained image to describe another person. Frost draws out an extended comparison between a woman and a silken tent in order to make some essential aspect of the woman's character real and available to the reader. The comparison is not to just any tent, but to a tent imagined in a very specific way. Ropes or cords draw up, become taut, when wet. In this case, the tent is imagined at midday. Any morning dew which would have soaked the tent's guy-lines has evaporated, and the ropes are now somewhat slack. The tent sways slightly in response to the wind. This image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
ry conveys — at a subconscious but very real and effective level — a sense that the woman being described is not tense or nervous, but is instead genial, relaxed, comfortable to be around. This does not mean, though, that she is wishy washy, someone who is blown about by every gust of fad and fashion. The tent's pole — its upright nature, its strength — conveys a sense of backbone, character, and firmness. In this woman's case, firmness of character does not lead to her becoming dogmatic or insistent. Rather, her character derives in part at least from her deep investment in friends, family, and community, from "countless silken ties of love and thought". Some people would experience numerous relationships and the obligations they entail as something entangling, binding, or limiting. This woman does not seem to. She seems to be very much at ease in this situation, so much so that she and those around her are only likely to be aware of their bounds and limits in unusual circumstances.
When one reads this poem aloud, rhythm and meter are much less evident, much less emphatically presented than in "The Destruction of Sennacherib". In fact, most people who hear the poem read aloud for the first time will say that it does not rhyme and it does not have any particular rhythm. Closer examination reveals that the poem does rhyme though. In fact, it rhymes in a specific pattern: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG (that is, the first line rhymes with the third line (the A's), the second line rhymes with the fourth line (the B's), and so forth). But, the rhymes are much less forceful, much less emphatic and noticeable, than in Byron's poem. This is in part because Byron arranged the words such that each line ending (and therefore each rhyme) corresponds a natural pause in speech. That is, the lines end at the same places where one would pause if the lines were set as prose and one were reading the words aloud. Such lines are said to be end stopped. End stopping makes rhyme more noticeable. Frost, though, arranged at least some of the lines in "The Silken Tent" such that the line endings do not coincide with natural pauses (such as the end of line two: someone reading the words "a sunny, summer breeze / has dried the dew" would not necessarily pause after "breeze"). This technique is called enjambment
Enjambment
Enjambment or enjambement is the breaking of a syntactic unit by the end of a line or between two verses. It is to be contrasted with end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with a single line, and caesura, in which the linguistic unit ends mid-line...
. Enjambment de-emphasizes rhyming lines.
And, there is a rhythm, albeit a rather subtle or muted one. Each line has ten syllables, and (with slight and pleasant variations) they follow a pattern of weak syllables followed by strong syllables:
- has DRIED the DEW and ALL its ROPES reLENT
This pattern (weak STRONG) is called an iamb (See Foot (prosody)
Foot (prosody)
The foot is the basic metrical unit that generates a line of verse in most Western traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The unit is composed of syllables, the number of which is limited, with a few...
). There are five iambs to the line here: these are pentameter lines (penta- is from the Greek for "five"). The poem does have a meter: it is called iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter
Iambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama. The term describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called "feet"...
. Frost employs the meter with a very light touch, though, and feels free to "play around with it", briefly departing from the regular pattern as appropriate.
The whole poem is a single sentence: a single, rather long, but nonetheless conversational sounding sentence that covers fourteen lines.
So, this poem, which at first seems rather formless, in fact has a very specific structure: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. There is a term for this structure: it is called the Shakespearean sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
, and it is regarded as one of the stricter, more difficult forms. Frost is not writing a shapeless poem; he is writing within very strict rules, and in fact has raised the bar by making himself do it all in one sentence. The poem is a single, long, graceful sentence that unfolds — in a very relaxed, natural sounding way — within the strict boundaries of the Shakespearean sonnet form.
And — going back to the prose paraphrase — it describes a woman whose life unfolds in a very relaxed, natural way, within numerous strict boundaries. In the woman's character, as in the poem's form, one is not really aware that the boundaries are even there. The woman, like the poem, exists comfortably, naturally, easily within numerous limits and boundaries.
And this is the poem's great accomplishment: the form enacts the content; the language of the poem does what the language itself says. Though this analysis proceeded by temporarily separating form and content, the result of the analysis is the realization that in "The Silken Tent", form and content are truly inseparable: they are exact complements to each other. The effect of this poem, the work it is designed to do, is to create a sharp sense of pleasure and appreciation when one recognizes how skillfully and appropriately the poet has used the words.
In this case, a certain amount of critical terminology and analytic skill is necessary in order to appreciate the poem. If the reader does not know what a sonnet is, much less more subtle aspects of form such as enjambment, he or she will have no way to see what the poem does. He or she will have no way to "get the joke". In this case, poetry enjoyment is enabled by poetry analysis. It is also widely accepted that this poem refers to some sort of sexual frustration in a woman's point of view.
Poetic forms
Poems can have many forms. Some forms are strictly defined, with required line counts and rhyming patterns, such as the sonnetSonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
or limerick
Limerick (poetry)
A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line or meter with a strict rhyme scheme , which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century...
. Such poems exhibit closed form. Others (which exhibit open form) have less structure or, indeed, almost no apparent structure at all. This appearance, though, is deceptive: successful open form poems are informed throughout by organic structure which may resist formal description but is nonetheless a crucial element of the poem's effect on the reading mind.
Closed forms
A poet writing in closed form follows a specific pattern, a specific design. Some designs have proven so durable and so suited to the English languageEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
that they survive for centuries and are renewed with each generation of poets (sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s, sestinas, limericks
Limerick (poetry)
A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line or meter with a strict rhyme scheme , which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century...
, and so forth), while others come into being for the expression of one poem and are then set aside (Frost's
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a poem written in 1922 by Robert Frost, and published in 1923 in his New Hampshire volume. Imagery and personification are prominent in the work...
" is a good example).
Of all closed forms in English prosody, none has demonstrated greater durability and range of expression than blank verse
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
, which is verse
Verse (poetry)
A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza....
that follows a regular meter but does not rhyme. In English, iambic pentameter is by far the most frequently employed meter. Among the many exemplary works of blank verse in English are Milton's
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
and most of the verse passages from Shakespeare's plays, such as this portion of a famous soliloquy
Soliloquy
A soliloquy is a device often used in drama whereby a character relates his or her thoughts and feelings to him/herself and to the audience without addressing any of the other characters, and is delivered often when they are alone or think they are alone. Soliloquy is distinct from monologue and...
from Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
:
- To be, or not to be — that is the question.
- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
- The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
- Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
- And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep —
- No more, and by a sleep to say we end
- The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
- That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
- Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
- To sleep — perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub.
Note that Shakespeare does not rigidly follow a pattern of five iambs per line. Rather, most lines have five strong syllables, and most are preceded by a weak syllable. The meter provides a rhythm that informs the line: it is not an invariable formula.
Rhymed pairs of iambic pentameter lines form the heroic couplet
Heroic couplet
A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in...
. Two masters of the form are Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
and John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
. The form has proven especially suited to conveying wit and sardonic humor, as in the opening of Pope's An Essay on Criticism.
- ’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
- Appear in writing or in judging ill;
- But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offence,
- To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
- Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
- Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
- A fool might once himself alone expose,
- Now one in verse makes many more in prose.
Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter arranged in a more elaborate rhyme scheme form a sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
. There are two major variants. The form originated in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and the word derives from "sonetto", which is Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
for "little song". The Italian sonnet or Petrarchan sonnet follows a rhyme scheme of ABBA ABBA CDE CDE, ABBA ABBA CD CD CD, ABBA ABBA CCE DDE, or ABBA ABBA CDD CEE. In each of these, a group of eight lines (the octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...
) is followed by a group of six (the sestet
Sestet
A sestet is the name given to the second division of an Italian sonnet , which must consist of an octave, of eight lines, succeeded by a sestet, of six lines. The first documented user of this poetical form was the Italian poet, Petrarch. In the usual course the rhymes are arranged abc abc, but...
). Typically, the octave introduces a situation, idea, or problem to which the sestet provides a response or resolution. For example, consider Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
's "The Sound of the Sea":
- The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
- And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
- I heard the first wave of the rising tide
- Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
- A voice out of the silence of the deep,
- A sound mysteriously multiplied
- As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
- Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
- So comes to us at times, from the unknown
- And inaccessible solitudes of being,
- The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
- And inspirations, that we deem our own,
- Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
- Of things beyond our reason or control.
The octave presents the speaker's experience of the sound of the sea, coming to him from some distance. In the sestet, this experience mutates into a meditation on the nature of inspiration and man's connection to creation and his experience of the numinous.
English has (proportionally) far fewer rhyming words than Italian. Recognizing this, Shakespeare adapted the sonnet form to English by creating an alternate rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The poet using this, the English sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet form, may use the fourteen lines as single unit of thought (as in "The Silken Tent" above), or she may treat the groups of four rhyming lines (the quatrains) as organizational units, as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 73:
- That time of year thou mayst in me behold
- When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
- Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
- Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
- In me thou seest the twilight of such day
- As after sunset fadeth in the west,
- Which by and by black night doth steal away,
- Death's second self, which seals up all in rest.
- In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
- That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
- As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
- Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
- This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
- To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
In lines 1-4, the speaker compares his time of life to autumn. In lines 5-8, the comparison is to twilight; in lines 9-12, the comparison is to the last moments of a dying fire. Each quatrain presents a shorter unit of time, creating a sense of time accelerating toward an inevitable end, the death implied in the final couplet.
At the "high end" of closed forms are the sestina and villanelle
Villanelle
A villanelle is a poetic form that entered English-language poetry in the 19th century from the imitation of French models. The word derives from the Italian villanella from Latin villanus . A villanelle has only two rhyme sounds...
. At the "low end" are forms such as the limerick
Limerick (poetry)
A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line or meter with a strict rhyme scheme , which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century...
, which follows a metrical pattern of two lines of anapestic trimeter (three anapests per line), followed by two lines of anapestic dimeter (two anapests per line), followed by one line of anapestic trimeter. (The beginning of the metrical foot does not have to coincide with the beginning of the line.) Any poem following this metrical pattern would generally be considered a limerick, however most also follow an AABBA rhyme scheme. Most limericks are humorous, and many are ribald, or outright obscene (possible rhymes that could follow an opening like "There once was a man from Nantucket
There once was a man from Nantucket
"There once was a man from Nantucket" is the opening line for many limericks. The popularity of this literary trope can be attributed to the way the name of the island of Nantucket lends itself easily to humorous rhymes and puns, particularly ribald ones...
" are left as an exercise for the reader). Nonetheless, the form is capable of sophisticated and playful expression:
- Titian was mixing rose madder.
- His model posed nude on a ladder.
- Her position to Titian
- Suggested coition
- So he nipped up the ladder and had her.
Open forms
In contrast, a poet using open form (sometimes called "free verseFree verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
") seeks to find fresh and uniquely appropriate forms for each poem, letting the structure grow out of the poem's subject matter or inspiration. A common perception is that open form is easier and less rigorous than closed form (Frost likened it to "playing tennis without a net"), but such is not necessarily the case (skeptics should try playing tennis without a net): success with the open form requires great sensitivity to language and a particular type of adaptable understanding. In the best open form poems, the poet achieves something that is inaccessible through closed form. As X. J. Kennedy has said, "Should the poet succeed, then the discovered arrangement will seem exactly right for what the poem is saying" (582).
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
was an important innovator of open form, and he demonstrates its merits in "A Noiseless Patient Spider
A Noiseless Patient Spider
"A Noiseless Patient Spider" is a poem by Walt Whitman, published in 1867 in an edition of Leaves of Grass.- Word Choice :The words that Whitman chooses to use in his poem can be significant because of their secondary meanings...
".
- A noiseless patient spider,
- I marked where on a little promonotory it stood isolated,
- Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
- It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
- Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
- And you O my soul where you stand,
- Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
- Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
- Till the bridge you will need to be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
- Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
The long, rolling lines — unified, held together like strong cords, by alliteration
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
and assonance
Assonance
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the is repeated within the sentence and is...
— partake of the same nature as the spider's filaments and the soul's threads. Two balanced stanzas, one describing a spider, the other the speaker's soul, perfectly frame the implicit comparison, with neither being privileged over the other. Just as the spider and the soul quest outward for significance, the two stanzas throw links to each other with subtly paired words: isolated/detached, launched/fling, tirelessly/ceaselessly, surrounding/surrounded.
In this poem, Whitman uses synonyms and antonyms to give structural integrity to a poem comprising two yoked stanzas, much like (but not exactly like) the way poets working within closed forms use meter and rhyme to give structural integrity to their poems. The form works quite well, but there is no established term that describes it. Rather, Whitman created this form so that he could write this poem. Conceivably, other poets could adopt the form, and repeated examples would give literary analysts the material they would need to specify its defining characteristics and give it a name. But, that hasn't happened. Instead, we have one poem that deploys a structure very well suited to its subject. The poem has form, but the form was not imposed by previous conventions. It has open form.
Imagery and symbolism
Most poetry can be read on several levels. The surface is not necessarily the essence of the poem although in some cases (notably, the works of William McGonagall) there is little beyond the immediate. AllegoryAllegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
, connotation
Connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood subjective cultural or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to the word's or phrase's explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation....
and metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
are some of the subtler ways in which a poet communicates with the reader.
Before getting seduced into explorations of subtle nuance, however, the reader should establish the theme of the poem. What is the 'story' that is being told? Not the literal story but the heart of the poem. For example: "Another" tells of a buried child; "The Destruction of Sennacherib" tells of the annihilation of an Assyrian army by divine intervention; "The Silken Tent" compares a woman to a tent. Part of this involves recognising the voice of the poem (who is speaking), and the rest of Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's "six honest serving men"
Just So Stories
The Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are highly fantasised origin stories and are among Kipling's best known works.-Description:...
: the events in the poem; when these occur; where is the 'speaker' and where do the events occur; why does the speaker speak? William Harmon
William Harmon
William Harmon is James Gordon Hanes Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of five books of poetry and editor of A Handbook to Literature. His most recent poetry has appeared in Blink and Light.- Life :William Harmon was born in Concord,...
has suggested that starting an analysis with: "This poem dramatizes the conflict between …" is a key technique.
George Herbert
George Herbert
George Herbert was a Welsh born English poet, orator and Anglican priest.Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education that led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert excelled in...
in his poem Jordan (I) asks if poetry must be about the imaginary. The poem opens:
- Who sayes that fictions onely and false hair
- Become a verse? Is there in truth no beautie?
- Is all good structure in a winding stair?
- May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
- Not to a true, but painted chair?
He was railing against the prevalent enthusiasm for pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
poetry above all other forms (as becomes apparent in subsequent verses). Curiously, this verse uses metaphors to challenge the use of indirect approaches to their subject. False hair and a painted chair are decorations of the mundane. The winding stair is obstructive concealment of meaning. Herbert is criticising the overuse of allegory, symbolism or elaborate language.
For most poets — even the plain-speaking Herbert — metaphor is the fundamental means of communicating complexity succinctly. Some metaphors become so widely used that they are widely recognised symbols and these can be identified by using a specialist dictionary.
Allegorical verse uses an extended metaphor to provide the framework for the whole work. It was particularly prevalent in seventeenth century English but a more recent example is Charles Williams
Charles Williams (UK writer)
Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings.- Biography :...
' The Masque of the Manuscript, in which the process of publishing is a metaphor for the search for truth. Allegories are usually readily apparent because of the heavy use of metaphor within them.
The symbolism used in a poem may not always be as overt as metaphor. Often the poet communicates emotionally by selecting words with particular connotations. For example, the word "sheen" in The Destruction of Sennacherib has stronger connotations of polishing, of human industry, than does the similar "shine". The Assyrians did not simply choose shiny metal; they worked to make it so. The word hints at a military machine.
Other tropes that may be used to increase the level of allusion include irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
, litotes
Litotes
In rhetoric, litotes is a figure of speech in which understatement is employed for rhetorical effect when an idea is expressed by a denial of its opposite, principally via double negatives....
, simile
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...
, and metonymy
Metonymy
Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept...
(particularly synecdoche
Synecdoche
Synecdoche , meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which a term is used in one of the following ways:* Part of something is used to refer to the whole thing , or...
).
Meter and rhyme
English language poetic meter depends on stress, rather than the number of syllableSyllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
s. It thus stands in contrast to poetry in other languages, such as French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, where syllabic stress is not present or recognized and syllable count is paramount. This often makes scansion
Scansion
Scansion is the act of determining and graphically representing the metrical character of a line of verse.-Overview:Systems of scansion, and the assumptions that underlie them, are so numerous and contradictory that it is often difficult to tell whether differences in scansion indicate opposed...
(the analysis of metrical patterns) seem unduly arcane and arbitrary to students of the craft.
In the final analysis, the terms of scansion are blunt instruments, clumsy ways of describing the infinitely nuanced rhythms of language. Nonetheless, they provide a tool for discerning and describing the underlying structure of poems (especially those employing closed form).
The terms fall into two groups: the names of the different feet, and the names of the varying line lengths.
The most common feet in poetry written in English are the iamb (weak STRONG), the anapest (weak weak STRONG), the trochee
Trochee
A trochee or choree, choreus, is a metrical foot used in formal poetry consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one...
(STRONG weak), and the dactyl
Dactyl (poetry)
A dactyl is a foot in meter in poetry. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight...
(STRONG weak weak). The iamb and anapest are known as rising meters (they move "up" from weak to strong syllables); the trochee and dactyl are falling meters (they move "down" from strong to weak). Less common, but frequently important for the variety and energy they bring to a line, are the monosyllabic foot (weak) and the spondee
Spondee
In poetry, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables, as determined by stress in modern meters...
(STRONG STRONG).
The terms for line length follow a regular pattern: a Greek prefix denoting the number of feet and the root "meter" (for "measure"): monometer
Monometer
In poetry, a monometer is a line of verse with just one metrical foot, exemplified by this portion of Robert Herrick's "Upon His Departure Hence":A more famous example is the slogan of the Milk Marketing Board in the 1970s:DrinkaPintaMilkaDay...
, dimeter
Dimeter
In poetry, a dimeter is a metrical line of verse with two feet. Consider Thomas Hood's "Bridge of Sighs:"In poetry, a dimeter is a metrical line of verse with two feet. Consider Thomas Hood's "Bridge of Sighs:"...
, trimeter
Trimeter
In poetry, a trimeter is a metre of three metrical feet per line—example:...
, tetrameter
Tetrameter
Tetrameter: [ti'tramitə]; te·tram·e·ter; a verse of four measuresOrigin: early 17th century : from late Latin tetrametrus, originally neuter from Greek tetrametros 'having four measures,' from tetra- 'four' + metron 'measure'....
, pentameter
Pentameter
Pentameter may refer to:*the iambic pentameter of the modern period*the dactylic pentameter of antiquity...
, hexameter
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verse consisting of six feet. It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the Iliad and Aeneid. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Greek mythology, hexameter...
, heptameter
Heptameter
Heptameter is one or more lines of verse containing seven metrical feet .An example from Lord Byron's Youth and Age:...
, and octameter
Octameter
Octameter in poetry is a line of eight metrical feet. It is not very common in English verse. E.g.: -TrochaicOctameter in poetry is a line of eight metrical feet. It is not very common in English verse. E.g.: -Trochaic...
(lines having more than eight feet are possible but quite rare).
Another useful term is caesura
Caesura
thumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, a caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in a musical composition. The plural form of caesura is caesuras or caesurae...
, for a natural pause within a line.
Meter and line length are not formulas for successful lines of poetry. They are rough forms of notation for the many satisfying and variable rhythms of language. Slavish adherence to meter produces doggerel
Doggerel
Doggerel is a derogatory term for verse considered of little literary value. The word probably derived from dog, suggesting either ugliness, puppyish clumsiness, or unpalatability in the 1630s.-Variants:...
. Skillful poets structure their poems around a meter and line length, and then depart from it and play against it as needed in order to create effect, as Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
does in the first line of "My Last Duchess":
- That's my last Duchess painted on the wall.
The opening spondees, which throw the iambic line out of pattern, gives the Duke's words a certain virulent energy: he's spitting the words out.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...
took this idea of poetric energy through departure from meter to its extreme, with his theory and practice of sprung rhythm
Sprung rhythm
Sprung rhythm is a poetic rhythm designed to imitate the rhythm of natural speech. It is constructed from feet in which the first syllable is stressed and may be followed by a variable number of unstressed syllables...
, an approach to poetry in which the language constantly frustrates the reading mind's expectation of a regular meter.
Sound, tone, diction, and connotation
Analyzing diction and connotation — the meanings of words as well as the feelings and associations they carry — is a good place to start for any poem. The use of specific words in the poem serve to create a tone — an attitude taken towards the subject. For example, consider the words "slither" and "sneak." When used in a poem, the words conjure up images of a snake. The sibilant s sound reinforces the image. The connotations of the words suggest something surreptitious and undercover. From the tone, one can infer that the author is suspicious or fearful of the subject.A detached tone, or an opposite tone than the reader would expect, are sometimes purposely employed to elicit more of a response. In the opening lines of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
quickly sets a certain tone, and then creates effect by juxtaposing it with a very different tone:
- Let us go then, you and I,
- When the evening is spread out against the sky
- Like a patient etherized upon a table
Visual and concrete poetry
Poets such as E. E. CummingsE. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
experiment with punctuation and the words' layout on a page. In doing so, they venture into a realm of poetry that really cannot be read aloud: it can only be experienced through the eye.
- le
- af
- fa
- s)
- one
- l
- iness
Cummings has fractured language into its most atomic elements. To analyze the poem, the reader must first reassemble these into meaningful units: a brief, evocative image — "a leaf falls" — appearing, like an unbidden thought, in the middle of a word, "loneliness". A single falling leaf is by itself a fine image for the feeling of loneliness, but in order to fully experience the poem, the reader must then put the elements of language back into the visual form in which Cummings arranged them: a vertical line (like a leaf falling to the ground), followed by a horizontal series of letters (like a leaf laying flat on the ground). The vertical line is dominated by the word "one" (an absolutely appropriate expression of loneliness) and by the letter "l" (which, on the page, looks like the numeral 1... it looks like "one").
Numerous other poets, including George Herbert
George Herbert
George Herbert was a Welsh born English poet, orator and Anglican priest.Being born into an artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education that led to his holding prominent positions at Cambridge University and Parliament. As a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, Herbert excelled in...
, Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
, Wyndham Lewis
Wyndham Lewis
Percy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
, and John Hollander
John Hollander
John Hollander is a Jewish-American poet and literary critic. As of 2007, he is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University...
have used the layout of words, letters, and images on the page to create effect in their poems. An analytic reader of poetry must attend to the eye as well as the ear and the mind.
Schools of poetry
- For main article see List of poetry groups and movements.
There are many different 'schools' of poetry: oral, classical, romantic, modernist, etc. and they each vary in their use of the elements described above.
Schools of poetry may be self-identified by the poets that form them (such as Imagism
Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...
), or defined by critics who see unifying characteristics of a body of work by more than one poet (for example The Movement). To be a 'school' a group of poets must share a common style or a common ethos. A commonality of form is not in itself sufficient to define a school; for example, Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
, George du Maurier
George du Maurier
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...
and Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...
do not form a school simply because they all wrote limericks.
Schools of criticism
Poetry analysis is almost as old as poetry itself, with distinguished practitioners going back to figures such as PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
. At various times and places, groups of like-minded readers and scholars have developed, shared, and promoted specific approaches to poetry analysis.
The New Criticism
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
dominated English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
from the 1920s to the early 1960s. The New Critical approach insists on the value of close reading
Close reading
Close reading describes, in literary criticism, the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. Such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they...
and rejects extra-textual sources. The New Critics also rejected the idea that the work of a critic or analyst is to determine what author's intended meaning (a view formalized by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
Monroe Beardsley
Monroe Curtis Beardsley was an American philosopher of art. He was born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and educated at Yale University , where he received the John Addison Porter Prize...
as the intentional fallacy
Intentional fallacy
Intentional fallacy, in literary criticism, addresses the assumption that the meaning intended by the author of a literary work is of primary importance. By characterizing this assumption as a "fallacy", a critic suggests that the author's intention is not important. The term is an important...
). The New Critics prized ambiguity
Ambiguity
Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...
, and tended to favor works that lend themselves to multiple interpretations.
Reader Response developed in Germany and the United States as a reaction to New Criticism. It emphasises the reader's role in the development of meaning.
Reception aesthetics is a development of Reader Response that considers the public response to a literary work and suggests that this can inform analysis of cultural ideology at the time of the response.
Reading poetry aloud
Poems may be read silently to oneself, or may be read aloud solo or to other people. Although reading aloud to oneself raises eyebrows in many circles, few people find it surprising in the case of poetry.In fact, many poems reveal themselves fully only when they are read aloud. The characteristics of such poems include (but are not limited to) a strong narrative, regular poetic meter, simple content and simple form. At the same time, many poems that read well aloud have none of the characteristics exhibited by T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi", for example. Poems that read aloud well include:
- "The Frog", by Jean Dao
- "One Art", by Elizabeth BishopElizabeth BishopElizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...
- "The TygerThe Tyger"The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794 . It is one of Blake's best-known and most analyzed poems...
", by William BlakeWilliam BlakeWilliam Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age... - "Meeting at Night", by Robert BrowningRobert BrowningRobert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
- "She Walks in BeautyShe Walks in Beauty"She Walks in Beauty" is a poem written in 1814 by Lord Byron. One of Lord Byron’s most famous, it is a narrative poem that describes a woman of much beauty and elegance. The poem appears to be told from the view point of third person omniscient. There are no hints as to the identity of the...
", by ByronGeorge Gordon Byron, 6th Baron ByronGeorge Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement... - "The Song of the Western Men", by Robert Stephen HawkerRobert Stephen HawkerRobert Stephen Hawker was an Anglican priest, poet, antiquarian of Cornwall and reputed eccentric. He is best known as the writer of The Song of the Western Men with its chorus line of And shall Trelawny die? / Here's twenty thousand Cornish men / will know the reason why!, which he published...
- "November in England", by Thomas HoodThomas HoodThomas Hood was a British humorist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor.-Early life:...
- "Dream Variations", by Langston HughesLangston HughesJames Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
- "The Jackdaw of RheimsThe Ingoldsby LegendsThe Ingoldsby Legends is a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham....
", by Thomas Ingoldsby - "To put one brick upon another", by Philip LarkinPhilip LarkinPhilip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...
- "Paul Revere's Ride", by Henry Wadsworth LongfellowHenry Wadsworth LongfellowHenry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
- "Adventures of Isabel", by Ogden NashOgden NashFrederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...
- "Nothing but Death", by Pablo NerudaPablo NerudaPablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
translated by Robert BlyRobert BlyRobert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving... - "A Small Elegy", by Jirí OrtenJirí OrtenJiří Orten was a Czech poet. His work was influenced by surrealism and folklore. His first book of poems, Čítanka jaro , came out in 1939. He spent time in Paris, but ultimately returned to Prague...
translated by Lynn Coffin - "OzymandiasOzymandias"Ozymandias" is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818 in the January 11 issue of The Examiner in London. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem...
", by Percy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron... - "Sea Surface Full of Clouds", by Wallace StevensWallace StevensWallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar",...
- "Silver", by Walter de la MareWalter de la MareWalter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....
- "How to Tell a Story", by Robert Penn WarrenRobert Penn WarrenRobert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
- "On Westminster Bridge", by William WordsworthWilliam WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
Poetry in different cultures
This article is focused on poetry written in English and reflects anglophone culture. Other cultures have other poetic forms and differ in their attitudes towards poetry.Further reading
- Olderr, Steven. Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 1986) ISBN 0-7864-2127-4
- Olderr, Steven. Reverse Symbolism Dictionary: Symbols Listed by Subject (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 1992) ISBN 0-7864-2125-8