The Jewel
There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.
James Wright
258
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it give us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the Seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air
When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –
712
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Grazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
Filling Station
Oh, but it is dirty!
─this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station)
all quite thoroughly dirty.
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.
Some comic books provide
the only note of color─
of certain color. they lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet)
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO—so—so—so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.
Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Sonnet 130 – William Shakespeare
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Let Evening Come – Jane Kenyon
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun movers down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, oh what black hours, we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their, their sweating selves; but worse.
Warning – Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes to keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Topography – Sharon Olds
After we flew across the country we
got into bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Wildpeace - Yehada Amichai
Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds – who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)
Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly,
because the field
must have it: wildpeace.
Funeral Blues – W.H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos, and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East, my West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
The Country of Marriage – Wendell Berry
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth’s empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in this blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.
III.
Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
the forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep going in.
IV.
How many times have I caome to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.
V.
Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. we don’t know what its limits are
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen time and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.
VI.
What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter.
willing to die, into the commonwealth of joy.
VII.
I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I ]
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfyand this poem
no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.
Donal Og – Anonymous translated by Lady Gregory “Young Daniel”
It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the wood;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.
You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.
You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.
You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.
When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.
It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.
My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith’s forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!
Star Gazing with My Brothers – Judith Vollmer
I have to walk through the darkness to get to them
down through the cellar then up through the little greenhouse
our father built instead of a bomb shelter in 1960─
I step out onto the patio where they’re taking turns at the big black scope,
and another of Jupiter’s moons glides out from behind that gigantic
planet of emotions. Rege says we’re standing under The Summer Triangle:
there’s Albireo, the Double Star. The colors─how can clear fire have color─
drug me, my father is on his chair murmuring about the War in the Pacific
again: “The Equator was one big centrifugal force, coconuts were falling,
trees were swaying, Manos Island was the most beautiful place
but everyone was lonely.” He laughs. Stars are in motion around
his body. I have to run my back on him to look
into the dark tunnel that leads upward. Saturn’s rings slant,
oily dust, here comes the white crystal of Jupiter’s hidden fourth moon.
Out here the zinnias touch my right shoulder. This one is black velvet,
this afternoon it was dark red, and these graywhite ones were pink
in daylight. My black sandals are black, my mother’s voice is silver
falling down from the kitchen window
where she’s wrapping food in foil for her shut-in neighbors
and she’s delirious to have all her children here.
I ask Bob where Cassiopeia is and Rege answers. His son Paul
calls me over to get a look at M2 awash with studded
veils of stars on stars. He is so shy & beautiful I want to dance.
Now my brothers are assuring me
there is life as we know it in all the distant places.
Our mother the genius eavesdropper calls down, “Of course,
remember Copernicus.”
Here is one of the centers of my world, so momentary
I wonder if it’s even a system. A sister might mean anything
to her dreamers-for brothers. I wish for friend for life. How easy
that feels, how fragile here at our childhood home
where every fir tree in the yard was once a Christmas tree,
where the oldest dog is buried,
where I stand with my brothers, we have always been three.
Phenomenal Woman - Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing of my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally,
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
what they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
the sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally,
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Wild Geese – Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
To You – Walt Whitman
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of
dreams
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your
feet and hands,
Even now your features, joys speech, house, trade, manners,
troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops,
work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating,
drinking, suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you
be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear
I have loved women and men, but I love none better
than you.
Oh I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago
I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted
nothing but you.
I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to
yourself,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no
imperfection in you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will
never consent to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better,
God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-
figures of all,
From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of
gold-color’d light,
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its
nimbus of gold-color’d light,
From my hand from the brain of every man an woman it
streams, effulgently flowing forever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon
yourself all your life,
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries,
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in
mockeries, what is their return?)
The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the
accustom’d routine, if these conceal you from others or
from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if
these balk others they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform’d attitude, drunkenness, greed,
premature death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied
in you,
There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good
is in you,
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits
for you.
As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like
carefully to you,
I sing the songs of the glory of none, no God, sooner than
I sing the songs of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own at an hazard
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are
immense and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of
apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or
mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements,
pain, passion, dissolution.
The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing
sufficiency,
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
whatever you are promulges itself,
through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided,
nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what
you are picks its way.
Woolworth’s – Mark Irwin
Everything stands wondrously multi-colored
and at attention in the always Christmas air.
What scent lingers unrecognizably
between that of popcorn , grilled cheese sandwiches
Preparation for April's poetry class.Open with The Jewel The JewelTby James WrightStory, via Molly Peacock, of the Talisman poem. The prelinguistic state, understanding so profound we are returned to a prelinguistic state
I have no idea what poetry is. I have no idea what life is, if there is a meaning, what god is. In poetry we try to approximate something, we make up rules like those for children’s games.
Explaining the unexplainable – what is life - (religion and philosophy – big issues), poetry as magic, ritual deriving from the first religious ceremomies, grounded in spirituality, knowing the unknown. (prayers) – spirit (ual) – ritual – chant (something between speaking and singing – song – Logos – thread -
What is poetry? Poetry is a constant reformulation of the question, not giving the answer - Another language, an emotional language? Instinctual, non-rational. It is wisdom we want from poetry. (peacock). Point of a story is the telling, a poem points to realization (often epiphany). Poetry is not factual, logical, but experiential, emotional. A poem is an experience and not the description of an experience (interaction of the reader and the poem – is there a poem without a reader?)
*** Read entry in Hirsch for POETRYCriticism - the story of Dr. Scanlon. Didn't know much about what I wanted to do,knew what I didn't want to do (the war).
You can say anythinganything in this class about any poem, the caveat being that it bebased on something in the poem, something you can point to and say,"This is why I mean that."
Personal experience – Diane Wakoski Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch
Reading poetry everyday …
The only other rule is to allow others their opinions. We can disagree,just not belittle.Criticism - like pulling off the wings of butterfly to find beauty.
Enjoyment over analysis -
How does a poem mean – sense does not come first, sometime sound or feeling (like music) – Read first for the music (visceral) not the sense (intellectual) - appealing to the instinctive, the intuitiveTherefore, what we'll be doing today will be poetry appreciationappreciation not poetry analysis
The one thing missing is history (survey), which is important, but cannot be covered in one session. However I’ve deliberately selected some poems that have strong relationships to each that might suggest an historical connectionanalysis.Few basics based on Molly Peacock: (3 systems of a poem)1) The line 2) The sentence 3) The image (imagery is the central nervous system of the poem)
“When we attain the state of not knowing, that becomes the only knowledge we have.” peacock
Words – nouns (imagery is largely built on nouns – places and ideas) - verbs (action) – adjectives, adverbs (emotional ambience – tone)
Importance of punctuation in rhythm, hence sense.
Rhythm, the weight of line endings. Who is speaking to whom.
Who is speaking to whom?
Never assume "I" is the poet.
Specifically choosing some poems because of their popularity – Angelou, Joseph, Auden
Preparation for April's poetry class.Open with The Jewel by James WrightStory, via Molly Peacock, of the Talisman poem.Explaining the unexplainable, poetry as magic, ritual deriving fromthe first religious ceremomies, grounded in spirituality,knowing the unknown. (prayers)What is poetry?Criticism - the story of Dr. Scanlon. Didn't know much about what I wanted to do,knew what I didn't want to do (the war).You can say anything in this class about any poem, the caveat being that it bebased on something in the poem, something you can point to and say,"This is why I mean that."The only other rule is to allow others their opinions. We can disagree,just not belittle.Criticism - like pulling off the wings of butterfly to find beauty.Therefore, what we'll be doing today will be poetry appreciationnot poetry analysis.Few basics based on Molly Peacock:1) The line 2) The sentence 3) The imageNever assume "I" is the poet.
Glossary – freely adapted from
Accent – The vocal stress or emphasis placed on certain syllables in a line of verse.
Allegory – An allegory is a story operating on two levels simultaneously. The narrative acts as an extended metaphor with a primary or surface meaning that continually discloses a secondary or representational meaning.
Alliteration – The audible repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or within words.
Allusion – A passing or indirect reference to something implied but not stated.
Analogy – A resemblance between two different things, frequently expressed as a simile.
Anaphora – The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of a series of phrases, lines, or sentences.
Apostrophe – A figure of speech which consists of addressing an absent or dead person, thing, or an abstract idea as if it were alive or present.
Assonance – The audible repetition of vowel sounds within words encountered near each other.
Blank verse – Unrhymed (hence “blank”) iambic pentameter, the five-beat, ten syllable line.
Conceit – An elaborate figure of speech comparing two extremely dissimilar things. A complex and arresting metaphor, in context usually part of a larger pattern of imagery, which stimulates understanding by combining objects and concepts in unconventional ways.
Elegy – A poem of mortal loss and consolation.
Enjambment – The carryover of one line of poetry to the next without a grammatical break. A run-on or enjambed line is the alternative to an end-stopped line. The lineation bids the reader to pause at the end of each line even as the syntax pulls the reader forward. This creates a sensation of hovering expectation.
End-stopped line – A poetic line in which a natural grammatical pause (such as the end of a phrase, clause, or sentence) coincides with the end of a line.
Feminine rhyme – (also called double rhyme) A rhyme of two syllables, the first stressed and the second unstressed (trances/glances).
Foot – A group of syllables forming a metrical unit. The poetic foot is a measurable, conventional unit of rhythm. The most common feet in English versification are:
iamb: a pair of syllables with the stress on the second one as in the word ǎdóre.
trochee: a pair of syllables with the stress on the first one, as in the word árdŏr
dactyl: a triad consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones as in the word rádĭaňt
anapest: a triad consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed one, as ĭn ǎ blaze
spondee: Two equally stressed syllables, as in the word ǎmén.
Free verse – A poetry of organic rhythms, of deliberate irregularity, improvisatory delight. Free verse is distinguished from meter by the lack of a structuring grid based on counting of linguistic units and/or position of linguistic features. Some of free verse’s primary features are nonmetrical structuring, heavy reliance on grammatical breaks, and absence of regular endrhyme.
.
Masculine rhyme - (also called single rhyme) A rhyme on a terminal syllable (Pan/man).
Iambic pentameter – A five-stress (or beat), ten syllable (decasyllabic) line.
Image – A mental representation of anything not actually present to the senses; a picture drawn by the fancy; broadly, a conception, an idea. A mental picture evoked through the use of figures of speech such as metaphor and simile; a representation in poetry of a sensation produced by sensuous experience.
Metaphor – A figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another. Language that implies a relationship between two things and so changes our apprehension of either or both. Dictionary definition: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another by way of suggesting a likeness between them. See simile.
Meter – Meter is a way of describing rhythmic patterning in poetry, of keeping time, of measuring poetic language.
Pure accentual meter – This system measures only the number of stressed or accented syllable in each line. Example: nursery rhymes.
Pure syllabic meter – This system measures only the number of syllables in each line.
Quantitative meter – This system measures duration – the time it takes to pronounce a syllable – rather than contrasting stresses or accents.
Accentual-syllabic meter – This system counts both the number of accents and the number of syllables in each line. Rhythm results from the interplay between them.
Metonymy – A figure of speech that replaces or substitutes the name of one thing with something else closely associated with it. For example, the pen is mightier than the sword.
Ode – A celebratory poem in an elevated language on an occasion of public importance or on a lofty universal theme.
Onomatopoeia – the formation and use of words which imitate sound, such as swish, bam, purr, quack, rustle etc.
Persona – The mask or character – the voice – created by the speaker or narrator in a literary work. These can be, for example, unidentified autobiographical speakers. Emily Dickinson called the speaker in her poems “a supposed person.”
Personification – The attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects, to animals or ideas.
Poetry – A magical, mysterious, inexplicable (though not incomprehensible) event in language.
Prose poem – A prose work that has poetic characteristics such as vivid imagery, cadence, concentrated expression, and non-literal language.
Quatrain – A four line stanza, probably the most common stanzaic form in the world.
Simile – The explicit comparison of one thing to another, using the word as or like. Dictionary definition: a figure of speech by which one thing, action or relation is likened or explicitly compared, often with as or like, to something of different kind or quality. The function of the comparison is to reveal an unexpected likeness between two seemingly disparate things. Generally, simile is more explicit than metaphor and thus less evocative.
Bibliography
Deutsch, Babette. Poetry Handbook: a Dictionary of Terms. New York : HarperPerennial, 1990.
Hirsch, Edward. How to Read a Poem: and Fall in Love with Poetry. New York : Harcourt Brace & Co., c1999.
Koch, Kenneth. Making Your Own Days: the Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. New York, NY : Scribner, c1998.
Peacock, Molly. How to Read a Poem – – and Start a Poetry Circle. New York : Riverhead Books, 1999.
Poetry for Students. Detroit, MI : Gale Research, Inc., c1998-2006
Preminger, Alex and Brogan, T.V.F., editors. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1993.
One high quality, unabridged dictionary
One high quality, one volume encyclopedia or dictionary of allusions
Kohl, Herbert. A Grain of Poetry. New York : HarperFlamingo, c1999.
Mayes, Frances. The Discovery of Poetry. San Diego : Harcourt, 2001.
Poetry Center and John Timpane, with Maureen Watts. Poetry for Dummies. New York : Hungry Minds, c2001.
Criticism – Individual poems (3 questions)
