© 2013 W. W. Norton Co., Inc. Introduction to Poetry Speaker: Whose Voice do We Hear? 1

© 2013 W. W. Norton Co., Inc.

Introduction to Poetry

Speaker: Whose Voice do We Hear?

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Subject, Topic

• Categories of poetry, such as “the love poem,” can indicate the subject of a poem—the topic it engages—but poems about the same subject can be very different in their attitudes, ideas, and approaches.

• A poem’s theme is the statement it makes about its subject.

• Tone is closely related to style and diction.

• denotation, connotation• syntax

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Speaker

• The speaker of a poem is the voice offering the poem’s words to the reader. That voice may be the poet’s or it may be that of a created character who expresses ideas or feelings very different from the poet’s own.

• In some poems we are meant to dislike or distrust the speaker rather than take his or her words at face value.

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Margaret Atwood’s “Death of a Young Son by Drowning”

This poem is from Atwood’s book The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), which is written as if spoken by Susanna Moodie, a real person (1805– 85) who emigrated from England to upper Canada and wrote several books about her experiences. In these poems, Atwood fictionalizes Moodie’s life considerably but works from actual incidents recounted by Moodie. “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” is from section II of the book, which recounts incidents in Moodie’s life between 1840 and 1871.

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Atwood, cont.

• Does Atwood's poem provide any internal evidence to suggest it is not a personal, confessional poem?

• How might the reader discover that Atwood based the poem on another person’s experience?

• Does the knowledge that Atwood based her poem on incidents in the life of Susanna Moodie change your reaction to the work?

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Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool

• How does the rhythm of the poem contribute to the characterization of the speaker(s)?

• What does it mean to “[s]trike straight”? To “[t]hin gin”? To “[j]azz June”? How do these phrases help characterize the speaker(s)?

• Are the speaker’s idea of what is “cool” and the poet’s idea of what is “cool” the same? (Are the poet’s perspective and the speaker’s perspective the same?) Does Gwendolyn Brooks’s discussion of what she was doing in that poem confirm your impression, or is it surprising in some way?

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Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska”

• dramatic monologue is a poem spoken entirely by one fictional speaker in a specific time, place, and situation.

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“Nebraska”

• Who is the speaker in this poem? What do we know about him?

• Who is the speaker addressing? How do we know?

• To what degree is the speaker a reliable narrator? Should he be believed?

• What is it that the speaker is asking of the sheriff in lines 19– 20? Is this his final request? What does it mean?

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Setting, Situation

• Sometimes identifying the poem’s setting is important to understanding the speaker, as when a speaker reflects on events that are long past.

• The setting is the time and place in which a poem is situated. Sometimes the setting of a poem is vague or unspecified.

• spatial setting, temporal setting• situation

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Allusion, Occasional Poem, Referential Poem

• An allusion is a reference to something outside the poem that carries a history of meaning and strong emotional associations.

• A poem written about a specific occasion is called an occasional poem, and such a poem is referential; that is, it refers to a certain historical time or event.

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Sensory Elements

• Instead of depending on abstract ideas, the language of poetry is most often concretely visual and pictorial.

• Words are not simply sounds; they represent or signify things, actions, ideas, or feelings. Poets provide vivid verbal representations to convey what they have seen or imagined to readers.

• Description can involve narrowing terms by category, expanding through detail, or comparing two things or ideas.

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Figurative Speech, Language

• A figure of speech pictures something in terms of something else familiar to us, asking us to think of the one thing as if it were the other.

• Poets frequently rely on figures of speech, or figurative language, to clarify and make their ideas precise as well as to suggest a range of feelings.

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Metaphor, Simile• In a metaphor, something is implicitly

compared to something else, or represented as if it is that thing.

• When metaphors extend over long sections of a poem, they are called extended metaphors.

• A controlling metaphor extends over an entire poem.

• In a simile, one thing is directly compared to something else, usually with the word like or as. Similes usually make quick comparisons that are not elaborated.

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Analogy, Symbol, Personification

• When a simile develops a very elaborate comparison and extends through long sections of a poem, it is called an analogy.

• A symbol, defined at the most basic level, is something that stands for something else. Symbols in poetry are words and phrases that have a range of reference beyond their literal signification or denotation.

• Personification involves treating an abstraction, such as death or justice or beauty, or an inanimate object, as if it were a person.

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Sounds of Poetry

• Poets choose words for their sounds as well as for their meanings, using sound effects to create a mood or establish a tone. Sometimes the sounds in poems provide special effects, but often sound is intertwined with meaning.

• To get the full effect of a poem, it is important to read it aloud and attend to its vocal rhythms and sounds.

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Sounds of Poetry

• When a word captures or approximates the sound of what it describes (such as “splash” or “squish”), it is called onomatopoeia.

• Poets can use pacing, rhythm, and pauses as well as sounds to imitate the subject being described.

• Meter is the basic rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem.

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Meter• A foot is a unit of measure of poetry. Meter is

determined by the kind of foot, or the regular pattern of accents and number of syllables per line. Line lengths are usually described in terms of the number of feet: pentameter uses five feet per line, octameter uses eight, tetrameter uses four, etc.

• In English, the most common metrical pattern is iambic, in which each foot contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable; iambic pentameter, one of the most common meters used in poetry written in English, consists of lines containing five iambic feet.

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Meter• A trochee is a stressed syllable followed

by an unstressed syllable.• An anapest is made up of two unstressed

syllables followed by a stressed syllable.• A dactyl is a stressed syllable followed by

two unstressed syllables.• A spondee is a pair of unstressed

syllables.• A caesura is a short pause within a line,

often (though not always) signaled by a mark of punctuation such as a comma.

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Meter cont’d

• Poets may adhere to traditional metrical forms or experiment with new patterns. Poetry that has no governing pattern of stresses or line lengths is called free verse.

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Rhyme

•Rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes in a poem, usually at the end of the lines. Rhymes are indicated by using a different letter of the alphabet to represent each distinct rhyme sound, e.g., abab.

• Old English poetry (such as the epic poem Beowulf) used alliteration, the repetition of sounds, instead of rhyme.

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Rhyme cont’d

•Blank verse is poetry that does not rhyme but that adheres to strict metrical requirements.

•Consonance is the repetition of initial consonant sounds through a sequence of words. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds through a sequence of words.

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Stanzas

• Most poems of more than a few lines are divided into stanzas, groups of lines divided from other groups by white space on the page.

• Stanza breaks often mark turns of thought, changes of scene or image, or other shifts in structure or direction.

• terza rima, Spenserian stanza

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Stanzas cont’d

• The ballad stanza alternates unrhymed lines of iambic tetrameter with rhymed lines of iambic trimeter.

• A sestina, written in blank verse, relies on an elaborate structure of repeated words at the ends of the lines.

• A villanelle depends on the patterned repetition of whole lines.

• Other stanza or verse forms you might encounter include the heroic couplet, the tetrameter couplet, the limerick, and free verse.

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Scansion

•Scansion is the process of scanning a poem—tracking its meter line by line to chart its metrical pattern. Scansion involves reading aloud, listening carefully, marking the stressed and unstressed syllables, counting the syllables and feet, and tracking the rhyme patterns.

• Scanning is an imprecise craft, so readers may plausibly disagree about whether to stress certain syllables.

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Types of Structures

• The term lyric, as it is used in poetry, usually refers to a short poem in which the speaker expresses personal emotion. Lyric poetry is often harmonious or romantic.

• A poem has a narrative structure if it tells a story—that is, if its organization involves the passing of time as well as action moving forward.

• A poem has a dramatic structure when it consists of a series of scenes, presented vividly, as if on stage.

• A poem has a discursive structure if it is organized like a treatise, an argument, or an essay.

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Structure cont’d

• Poems with descriptive structures strive to be almost purely descriptive of someone or something.

• Some poems use imitative structures, mirroring as closely as possible the structure of something that already exists as an object and can be seen.

• Poems with reflective or meditative structures ponder a subject, theme, or event, moving (logically or not) from one sound to another or to related thoughts or objects.

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Sonnet

• A sonnet consists of fourteen lines, usually written in iambic pentameter and printed as if it were a single stanza.

• The Shakespearean sonnet, or English sonnet, is divided into three quatrains (units of four lines each) and a final couplet (unit of two lines), for a pattern of 4-4-4-2. Its traditional rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg, but there are variations. Shakespearean sonnets lend themselves to three-step arguments or to setting up brief, cumulative images.

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Sonnet cont’d

• The Petrarchan sonnet, or Italian sonnet, is divided into two parts: an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). Its traditional rhyme scheme is abbaabbacdecde, but there are variations. Petrarchan sonnets work well for poems that make two points or for poems that make one point and then illustrate it.

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Visual Formatting

• Technopaegnia is the construction of poems with visual appeal.

• Poems composed in a specific shape to resemble physical objects are called concrete poems or shaped verse.

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Documents

© 2013 W. W. Norton Co., Inc. Introduction to Poetry Speaker: Whose Voice do We Hear? 1