Introduction to the Aspects of Poetry Ms Klanderman

Introduction to the Aspects of Poetry Ms. Klanderman

How to use this Power. Point This Power. Point is designed to help you understand what makes poetry such a creative and wonderful form of selfexpression. It will prepare you to write your own poetry. Anything typed in red is something you need to write down in your journal and/or do in your journal. If you are absent, go to my website to make up what you missed. (google “Klanderman and Creative Writing I”)

Poetic expression is hard to define and even harder to label since in itself it can comprise so many styles, ideas, lengths and forms. In this class we will focus on these poetic aspects: Idea and Emotion Type and Form Style of the Line Concise Word Choice

When students tell me they write for their own enjoyment, most students tell me they like to write poetry. Answer in your journal: Why is this so? Why do some teens write and/or read poems?

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for. ” Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the movie Dead Poet’s Society

Idea and Emotion Poetry is the one type of writing that truly comes from an emotional response to an image, an event or experience, or a memory. Most poets say they are inspired to write a poem. "A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words. ”-Robert Frost “If you know what you are going to write when you’re writing a poem, it’s going to be average. ” –Derek Walcott

Emotion- Some poets begin writing a poem for an emotional release. Idea- Some poets begin writing a poem because they are inspired by something they’ve experienced.

Answer the following questions in your journal: What are typical emotions and topics shown in poetry? Are there bad poetry topics?

Answer in your journal: What does a poem need to look like and contain to be a poem? Things to think about in your answer: Do most poems rhyme? Are poems about emotions? Are poems a certain length? What is the goal of a poem? Can poets ignore grammar rules like capital letters and punctuation? Can poems be funny? What types of word choice or language do you see in poems?

IS THIS A POEM? A Supermarket In California by Allan Ginsberg What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? http: //www. poets. org/viewmedia. php/prm. MID/15306

Is this a poem? l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness

Is this a poem?

Coming Up by Ani Di. Franco Our father who art in a penthouse Sits in his 37 th floor suite And swivels to gaze down At the city he made me in He allows me to stand Solicit graffiti until He needs the land I stand on I in my darkened threshold http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=j. Y 2 VYg. Am pawing through my pockets q. KWU The receipts, the bus schedules The urgent napkin poems The matchbook phone numbers All of which laundering has rendered Pulpy and strange Loose change and a key Ask me Go ahead, ask me if I care I got the answer here I wrote it down somewhere I just gotta find it Is This A Poem? ?

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I -I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. http: //www. youtube. com /watch? v=y. G 24 ohpac. Dk Is This A Poem? The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends. Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends

The answer ? They are all poems. When you write a poem, it should have a subject, a goal, a tone, and a flow. It should contain specific, condensed word choice and literary devices like metaphor, simile and imagery.

If I asked you to write a poem right now, how would you write a poem?

One way is to follow a specific formula. Another way is to just write. On the next five slides pick one or more pictures and write what comes to mind. Try to write it as a poem.

Type and Form There are MANY different types or forms of poems. Some fit a specific format and some fit a specific theme. Some examples of format poems: Acrostic: a word or set of words is written down the page and each line starts with that letter. Sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter, with a specific rhyme scheme and intro/conclusion style. Sestina: Each stanza must use the same end words as the first stanza, but in a different pattern each time.

More Formats Haiku- A three line poem with specific syllable lengths of 5 -7 -5. Limerick- Usually a funny poem with a AABBA rhyme scheme and specific syllable length. Villanelle- A poem where certain lines are repeated to make more of a refrain Pantoum: Each stanza reuses different lines in a specific pattern from the previous stanzas.

“Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Haiku: Falling to the ground, I watch a leaf settle down In a bed of brown. Limerick: There once was a lady named Cager, Who as the result of a wager, Consented to fart The entire oboe part Of Mozart's quartet in F-major.

Types of poems written based on themes: Elegy: A poem about something lost Ode: A poem celebrating something Road: A poem about a time of travel Metaphor: The whole poem is a metaphor Object Obsession: A poem written about an object Narrative: A poem that tells a story Ballad: A narrative poem with a refrain, usually about love Prose: A poem written more like a paragraph

ELEGY (SONG) "My Immortal“ by Evanescence I'm so tired of being here Suppressed by all my childish fears And if you have to leave I wish that you would just leave 'Cause your presence still lingers here And it won't leave me alone These wounds won't seem to heal This pain is just too real There's just too much that time cannot erase [Chorus: ] When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears And I held your hand through all of these years But you still have All of me You used to captivate me By your resonating light Now I'm bound by the life you left behind Your face it haunts My once pleasant dreams Your voice it chased away All the sanity in me These wounds won't seem to heal This pain is just too real There's just too much that time cannot erase [Chorus]

Elegy to My Summer Writing Spot by Ms. K It’s nights like these like friends forever leaving that are so hard to say goodbye to, let go of. So many things I’ve written from this stoop of cool cement, rough as a craftsman’s hands. My light bulb toes curl upon it for the last night write of fall. The words come like raindrops in spring, quickly covering this page and the next until my body feels clean. Even the cat stays out tonight. Body a rectangle of charcoal fleece, green eyes encircling dying spirea, his pupils the size of dimes, tail curled in a J until his cheek finds my outstretched hand the rectangle becomes an ellipse poised for a rubdown. His hind leg sticks out, white paw pointing like a compass needle. In the distance, a motorcycle revs its engine. The winds swings on the chimes’ pendulum, whooshing through an evening I’d like to keep in a jar on the counter, a clear glass delight to open some clotted January night when it hurts to keep your eyes open.

“ODE to Guitar Hero” by Josh Lefeber A video game none the less. But an addiction at the most. Oh Guitar hero, you are my escape. When the world is just too much. Depending on my mood. I can play many different levels. Easy, Medium, Hard, or Even Expert. Just getting lost in the songs. Easy Mode has become just like breathing. Medium like riding a bike. Hard can be like taking a calc test. Expert almost like a chance of winning the lottery. Green, Red, Yellow, Blue and Orange. The colors of the frets on your neck. The boring black guitar oh so plain. The whammy bar at the base.

I can personalize you anyway I want. I can paint you, put stickers you. Even change your face plate. To make our time together a blast. I also can be reliving the Legends of Rock. “Hit Me with Your Best Shot, ” What life would be like without you? Maybe I would actually get something done. “Paint it Black” or “Barracuda. ” Are just a few of the songs I am We have spent many countless hours jamming too. together I wouldn't trade them for a thing. Oh Guitar Hero, The greatest part about you is being able to play along with friends. Enjoying every minute together. Guitar hero is starting to rule my life. Late at night my friends become Slash and Tommy. Were jamming out like were best friends. Whether I am Rocking the 80's With songs like “What I Like About You, ” “Nothing but a Good Time, ” or “I Wanna Rock. ” Either a strap around my neck, or sitting down with you in my lap. I manage to play with such ease, praying that I don't mess up. Playing you instead of doing homework, and sleeping less and less. You are my nicotine, in a plastic guitar. Oh Guitar Hero.

An Ode to Anticipating Autobiographical Incident Essays by Ms. K It’s Friday morning and twenty-five futures type in neat rows atop a scuffed hardwood floor that’s seen 2000 times as many futures pass in and out of its paneled doors. They type their lives in clicks and taps, the sound of percolating thoughts steady and constant like the in/out breath of someone sleeping a dream. Their ideas tick along as the second hand sweeps its sixty second circle behind me on the wall. On white rectangular screens, one black Times New Roman letter at a time, words appear faster than raindrops on dry pavement. Their ideas flow like the colors in woven rag rugs, and branch out like the streets they traveled to get here. I say, “Record a memory with a lesson learned, ” and walk around to see screens filled with first boyfriends, prank stalker calls, stolen garden gnomes. One vandalized picnic tables with swear words, another placed 100 orange caution flags in a friend’s front yard. They show me the hiding spots parents never catch, where only silent voices play tag and this time I get to be “it” and chase them all down.

A Metaphor Song: “TIME” by Pink Floyd Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then the one day you find ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking And racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older And shorter of breath and one day closer to death Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desparation is the English way The time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Style of the Line As a poet you want to think about how you will write your lines: Are you following a formula? If not do you want it have a “beat” or more natural flow? When will you make a new line? How will you divide your poem?

Some poems, and especially songs will have a specific rhythm. You can feel it (like the beat in music). Many rhyming poems have a rhythm or beat. “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe is an example of a poem that relies heavily on a specific rhythm and rhyme. It is also a narrative poem (one that tells a story). http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=s. XU 3 Rf. B 7308 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor, ' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more. ‘ Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore Nameless here for evermore.

Poems without a specific rhythm or beat are called Free Verse. • Invented in the 1800 s by Walt Whitman • Usually Non-rhyming • Line breaks and line lengths are up to the poet. • It is the most popular form used by contemporary poets today.

From “Song of Myself” from the book Leaves of Grass http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=cm-n 9 w. FZMi. E I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

The ideas in a poem are organized by line breaks and stanzas. Stanza- is like a poetry paragraph. The next slide will show you examples of stanzas (and me really happy because I met one of my favorite poets at 2008’s Fox Cities Book Festival )

“Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide. http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Vd. AOj. ATm usc or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, Or walk inside the poems’ room And feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to water-ski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Concise Word Choice “Poets must seek “complex” thoughts and feelings and compress such complexity into a single moment. ” –Ezra Pound Some people write out their feelings when they are having a hard time. Pretend you can take all of those words and feelings into your hand. Squeeze them as hard as you can. What leaks through your fingers is the essence; that is what you use to write a poem. -Ms. K

Sensory Language and Visual Imagery Since most poems express emotions and ideas, a writer must SHOW what is being written about. Poets and song writers use visual imagery and sensory language to show ideas. Sensory language is using words that appeal to the five senses. Showing what something sounds, smells, tastes, looks, and feels like. Visual imagery is “painting a picture with words. ” Visual imagery uses aspects of sensory language, specifically sight, to recreate images, ideas and emotions. Strong verbs and specific adjectives/ adverbs are used.

Example of Sensory Language and Visual Imagery “The Round” by Stanley Kunitz Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked Veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloomers flushed with their brandy. A curious gladness shook me… Blue- personification Green- visual imagery

The Student by Ted Kooser The green shell of his back pack makes him lean visual imagery Green- into wave after wave or responsibility, Red- simile and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands, paddling ahead. He has extended his neck to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak, breaks the cold surf. He’s got his baseball cap on backward as up he crawls, out of the froth of a hangover and onto the sand of the future, and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. http: //www. poets. org/viewmedia. php/prm. MID/18045

Pick one picture and describe it using the five senses:

One of the hardest things about writing poetry is making a topic that has already been written about seem new. Derek Walcott helps answer this question. “Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. ” Salvatore Quasimodo Therefore, poetry must come alive in a way that makes readers feel as if they are experiencing events and emotions for the first time. Everyone has had relationship troubles, mourned the death of a loved one, or witnessed injustice. How do you write about your experience so the reader sees it as your own?

Showing VS. Telling If your emotion is sadness, how do you show us? If your emotion is happiness, how do you show us?

Girlfriend My girlfriend broke my heart. She crushed my soul. She destroyed my being. Is this a good poem? She is with another. She has betrayed me. I wish she could see, How miserable she has made me. How can it be made better? She will never know, What I can show, She will be lost someday Knowing that we had will not stay. I want her back But understand our relationship would lack. Someday, She will know.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines By Pablo Neruda Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, 'The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance. ' The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture. What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me. http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=z. X HPk-cto. YY Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche. Escribir, por ejemplo : 'La noche está estrellada, y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos'. El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta. Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her. My sight searches for her as though to go to her. My heart looks for her, and she is not with me. The same night whitening the same trees. We, of that time, are no longer the same. I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her. My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing. Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before. Her void. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes. I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her. Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.

Lonely I wish I wasn’t lonely. I wish I could escape my loneliness. I would run fast. I would leave And my loneliness wouldn’t be able to find me. IS THIS A GOOD POEM? What would you add or change to make it better?

“The Rider” by Naomi Shihab Nye A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.

I feel pain. I wish to sleep forever. I wish I could go on. I want to be strong, but can’t. I will tell myself to keep going. My heart has been crushed. It is in little pieces. All I feel is darkness. My life is empty. Can you show me the way? Is this a good poem? How can it be made better?

http: //www. pbs. org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere/strand. html Lines for Winter by Mark Strand for Ros Krauss Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.

Figurative Language Poetry and songs frequently use figurative language. Figurative language uses comparisons, description, and explanation to help the reader understand. There are many types of figurative language. The most common forms found in poetry and songs are: Simile Metaphor Personification

Simile Using like or as to compare two different things. Examples: Her hair was as orange as a carrot Life is like a box of chocolates… He would stride off, sending patterns of frosty air before him like the smoke of a cigar.

Apply Yourself! by Kathy Appelt “Apply yourself!” was all he ever heard, as if he could wrap himself around his homework like a Band-Aid around a cut as if he could glue his fingers to his Spanish vocabulary words, paper feathers on his fingertips as if he could nail his palms to Economics as if he could plug his whole being into the good grade machinery as if he could tape his head to the linoleum as if he could paste his butt to the desk as if he could spread his gray matter onto the test sheet like peanut butter on toast as if algorithms and battles and presidents and theorems and scales and pep rallies and maps and cosines and Bunsen burners and hurricane charts and bills of rights and dangling participles and dress codes and all that filled his notebook could stick to his thin body like flies to flypaper, his fragile wings pinned to the poisonous strip as if all that matters and will matter is to add it all up and fill out the application… as if that mattered at all, as if that mattered at all…or all at once… as if that was all that mattered.

The Derelict by Sharon Olds Orange- simile He passes me on the street, his hair matted, skin polished with grime, muttering, suit stained and stiffened— and yet he is so young, his blond beard like a sign of beauty and power. But his hands, strangely flat, as if nerveless, hands that flap slightly as he walks, like hands of someone who has had polio, hands, that cannot be used. I smell the waste of his piss, I see the ingot of his beard, and think of my younger brother, his beauty, coinage and voltage of his beard, his life he is not using, like a violinist whose hands have been crushed so he cannot play— I who was there at the crushing of his hands and helped to crush them.

HELLO, I MUST BE GOING by Ms. Klanderman When we finally took her cigarettes away Nana tried to smoke chicken bones, lighting each gnarled end with matches we forgot to check her pocket for. “You’re a sweetie” was her mantra, repeated like her old blue parakeet she forgot to feed, and it died slowly, like the smile from her face as she sat in the blue velour chair, staring out the front window like she was watching a Garbo movie. When we came to bring her groceries, those bags like birthday presents, she would hike up her sweat pants like an umpire contemplating a play and wander to the kitchen, her fingers playing with the edge of her t-shirt, and peer through blue eyes, as clean as a slate, as we pulled cans of fruit cocktail and snack cakes magic-like from brown paper sacks. She had the looks of Marilyn, never left the house in any shoes but heels, even ironed Boompa’s boxers until her mind moved on and forgot to leave a note. When we came over today she looked through me like I was a pane of glass. My face like one she saw once in a magazine ad, or in the crowd at St. John’s Sunday mass. She asked me who I was, her voice like the hello you speak into the phone, distant and hollow like she was across a lake. The glimmer of recognition in her face like a dying ember stoked for the last time before burning out altogether. She put her hands up to her ashen face, devoid of the makeup she caked on like Tammy Faye, and felt for her once pretty eyes, that broke a hundred hearts, as they betrayed her with tears, splashing down her face, surprising her like rain on someone else’s cheeks. Orange- simile

Now practice your own similes: The dog wagged his tail like… The tree swayed in the wind like… The night was as dark as… The music from the fifth grade band concert sounded like… The girl’s face was red as a…. His legs moved as fast as…

Metaphor A direct comparison between two things. A is B. Examples: The stars are eye candy. Freedom is a breakfast food. Their love is the slap of a baseball in a mitt.

http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=cdr. Cal. O 5 BDs “All I Need” By Radiohead This song uses metaphors. I'm the next act Waiting in the wings I'm just an insect Trying to get out of the night I'm an animal Trapped in your hot car I only stick with you Because there are no others I am all the days That you choose to ignore You are all I need You're all I need I'm in the middle of your picture Lying in the reeds You are all I need I'm in the middle of your picture Lying in the reeds I'm a moth Who just wants to share your light It's all wrong It's all right It's all wrong

Sometimes they are written directly. Life is a rollercoaster Life= A is Rollercoaster= B Sometimes the form of “is” is left out. Her face, a picture of bliss, gazed at the ocean. Face=A Picture of bliss=B

Night Letter to the Reader by Billy Collins I get up from the tangled bed and go outside, a bird leaving its nest, a snail taking a holiday from its shell, but only to stand on the lawn, an ordinary insomniac amid the growth systems of gardens and woods. If I were younger, I might be thinking about something I heard at a party, about an unusual car, or the press of Saturday night, but as it is, I am simply conscious, an animal in pajamas, sensing only the pale humidity of the night and the slight zephyrs that stir the tops of trees. The dog has followed me out and stands a little ahead, her nose lifted as if she were inhaling Pink - metaphor

the tall white flowers, visible tonight in the darkened garden, and there was something else I wanted to tell you, something about the warm orange light in the windows of the house, but now I am wondering if you are even listening and why I bother to tell you these things that will never make a difference, flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice. But this is all I want to do— tell you that up in the woods a few night birds were calling, the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet, and that at one point, the moon, looking like the top of Shakespeare’s famous forehead, appeared, quite unexpectedly, illuminating a band of moving clouds. Orange- Simile

Poems for Blok, 1 by Marina Tsvetaeva Your name is a—bird in my hand, a piece of ice on my tongue. The lips' quick opening. Your name—five letters. A ball caught in flight, a silver bell in my mouth. A stone thrown into a silent lake is—the sound of your name. The light click of hooves at night —your name. Your name at my temple —shrill click of a cocked gun. Your name—impossible— kiss on my eyes, the chill of closed eyelids. Your name—a kiss of snow. Blue gulp of icy spring water. With your name—sleep deepens.

Now try writing a metaphor sequence: Complete the following in your journal. Pick a noun: Your name is…. Your face is… Your car is… Your dog is… Your mom is… Your friend is… Now try to write FIVE metaphors that directly compare your noun to another noun.

Personification Comparing the action/idea/emotion etc. of something non-human to something human. Examples: The podium proudly stood in front of the class room. The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes that hung there.

Under the Harvest Moon by Carl Sandburg Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. Blue = personification

Apple Pies by Ms. Klanderman I like how she could peel the skin of each apple so it came off in one long crimson strand like Christmas ribbon, and the way the kitchen walls clung to the cinnamon smell three days later, and the way the oven sighed the breath of the baking crust I’d see her roll out to the thickness of the old silver dollars she kept in the jewelry box next to her bed. She’d scoop the sliced apples each shaped in a fruity grin wet with sugar into the tin bed of the pan and cover it with a blanket of dough, then tuck it in slowly turning and pinching until it was sealed, her tongue stuck into the corner of her mouth, flour like a line of latitude printed across the front of her red sweatshirt. I like how she’d bend her knees, those knobby bumps poking from cut-offs, as she watched her creation born through the thick glass of the oven door. Orange= simile Blue= personification Green= sensory detail and/or visual imagery

http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=Rj-4 t 9 dr. Ul. M “ACROSS THE UNIVERSE” by THE BEATLES Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind Possessing and caressing me Jai Guru Deva OM Nothing's gonna change my world x 4 Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes They call me on and on across the universe Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe Jai Guru Deva OM Nothing's gonna change my world x 4 Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing through my open ears Inciting and inviting me Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns It calls me on and on, across the universe Jai Guru Deva OM

“Fog” by Carl Sandburg The fog comes out on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

The easiest way to add personification is: 1. To give the non-human thing an emotion, state of being or quality that humans have From “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury The clock screamed its morning alarm as if it were afraid nobody could hear it. From “The Victims” by Sharon Olds The black noses of your shoes with their large pores. From “How it Is” by Maxine Kumin The dog at the center of my life recognizes/ you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic. From “Feeding Time” by Maxine Kumin Horses are waiting. /Each enters his box/in the order they’ve all/agreed on, …cat supervises from the molding cove.

2. Make it do something it cannot (use an action verb) From “Apple Pies” by Ms. K the oven sighed the breath of the baking crust From “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, From “Lines for Winter” by Mark Strand tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play From “The Round” by Stanley Kunitz I saw light kiss the silk of the roses From “Across the Universe” by Lennon/Mc. Cartney Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing through my open ears Inciting and inviting me

3. Imbed it in a simile or metaphor From “Across the Universe” written by Lennon and Mc. Cartney Thoughts meander like a restless wind (simile) From “Under the Harvest Moon” by Carl Sandburg Death, the gray mocker, (metaphor) From “The Derelict” by Sharon Olds blond beard like a sign of beauty and power. (simile) From “Under a Harvest Moon” by Carl Sandburg Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. (metaphor)

Bermuda by Billy Collins When we walk down the bleached-out wooden stairs to the beach and lie on our backs on the blue and white chaises near the edge of the water on this dot in the atlas, this single button on the blazer of the sea, we come about as close as a man and woman can to doing nothing. All morning long we watch the clouds roll overhead or close our eyes and do the lazy back-and-forth talk, our voices flattened by the drone of surf, our words tumbling oddly in the wind…. …The white sand heats up as one of us points out the snout of a pig on the horizon, and higher up a gaping alligator poised to eat a smaller cloud. See how that one is a giant head, like the devil wearing glasses you say, but my eyes are shut against the sun and I only hear your words, softened and warped by the sea breeze…

Symbols as thematic word choice Symbols are words, ideas etc. used to represent something else or an idea. Symbols are used often in poetry. A word, a phrase or the whole poem could be a symbol.

The Challenge of the Earth Worm By Mrs. Klanderman Hard, heavy drops knocked on soggy earthen doors, beckoning them to come forth like ants toward a sticky chunk of candy. As I run on pavement wet with rain that finally got tired of graying my day, they sprawl themselves out, brown tubes of life slithering, until car tires squirt their essence out onto grey pave. When I was young I saved them, my hands thick with their milky slime, I’d cup slimy, brown bodies, writhing in protest and toss them lightly onto grass, only to see them crawl right back out. My toes are wet through my shoes, I can feel their shriveled, pale skin. I pound on, feet like giant stamps dodging worms stretching pale pinkish grey bodies, like stick straight varicose veins slowly crossing the road. I read that worms can live under water but the road is their Everest they need to traverse. Most will never make it, but I think that’s exactly why they try.

The Cure by Ginger Andrews Lying around all day with some strange new deep blue weekend funk, I'm not really asleep when my sister calls to say she's just hung up from talking with Aunt Bertha who is 89 and ill but managing to take care of Uncle Frank who is completely bed ridden. Aunt Bert says it's snowing there in Arkansas, on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been able to walk out to their mailbox. She's been suffering from a bad case of the mulleygrubs. The cure for the mulleygrubs, she tells my sister, is to get up and bake a cake. If that doesn't do it, put on a red dress. (mulleygrubs=depression)

Look at the similes in this poem. What do you think the similes represent about the symbolism in this poem?

“A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar overlike a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

Answer this question in your journal: “A Dream Deferred” symbolizes…

Look at the similes, imagery and metaphors in this poem. What do you think they represent about the symbolism in this poem?

The Guild by Sharon Olds Every night, as my grandfather sat in the darkened room in front of the fire, the liquor like fire in his hand, his eye glittering meaninglessly in the light from the flames, his glass eye baleful and stony, a young man sat with him in silence and darkness, a college boy with white skin, unlined, a narrow beautiful face, a broad domed forehead, and eyes amber as the resin from trees too young to be cut yet. This was his son, who sat, an apprentice, night after night, his glass of coals next to the old man’s glass of coals, and he drank when the old man drank, and he learned the craft of oblivion—the young man not yet cruel, his hair dark as the soil that feeds the tree’s roots, that son who would come to be in his turn better at this than the teacher, the apprentice who would pass his master in cruelty and oblivion, drinking steadily by the flames in the blackness, that young man my father.

Answer this question in your journal: “The Guild” symbolizes…

Click the link below to read “the lesson of the moth” by Don Marquis. After reading it, what do you think the poem symbolizes? http: //writersalmanac. publicradio. org/index. php? date=2003/07/29

Sounds of Poetry as word choice Poets can pick certain words to make their poetry sound a certain way. Alliteration- Repetitive consonant sounds at the beginnings of words Examples: Peter Piper picked a peck… Lazy living led Leonard to loath labor… Purpose: gives words “pep and pop” by emphasizing their sound

Assonance- Repetitive vowel sounds within words Examples: Avid fan in the grand stand… Tony dropped a bowling ball on his toe. Purpose: helps making your words flow in a musically pleasing way.

Onomatopoeia- Words that sound like what they are describing Examples: splash, splat, pop, woof, meow… Purpose: It realistically describes the sound using the real sound.

Rhyme-The repetition of the accented vowel sounds and all succeeding sounds Examples- mouse/house, basement/casement, June/spoon Purposes- Rhyme gives specific flow, can connect ideas together. Typically seen in children’s poetry, humor or light verse (Hallmark cards).

Rhyme Scheme: A way to label a pattern of rhyme occurring throughout a poem. The cat was really big. A He ate lots of mice. B He liked to wear a wig. A He chewed on some dice. B Some poems require a certain rhyme scheme (limericks and sonnets for example. ) Rhymezone. com is website for rhyming.

Examples of Rhyming Poems Ogden Nash-The King of funny rhyme “Celery” Celery, raw Develops the jaw, But celery, stewed, Is more quietly chewed. “The Wasp” The wasp and all his numerous family I look upon as a major calamity. He throws open his nest with prodigality, But I distrust his waspitality.

“Whatif” by Shel Silverstein Last night, while I lay thinking here, some Whatifs crawled inside my ear and pranced and partied all night long and sang their same old Whatif song: Whatif I'm dumb in school? Whatif they've closed the swimming pool? Whatif I get beat up? Whatif there's poison in my cup? Whatif I start to cry? Whatif I get sick and die? Whatif I flunk that test? Whatif green hair grows on my chest?

Whatif nobody likes me? Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me? Whatif I don't grow taller? Whatif my head starts getting smaller? Whatif the fish won't bite? Whatif the wind tears up my kite? Whatif they start a war? Whatif my parents get divorced? Whatif the bus is late? Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight? Whatif I tear my pants? Whatif I never learn to dance? Everything seems well, and then the nighttime Whatifs strike again!