Notes Oct 11-22

More Poetry
In-Class Group Poetry Analysis

• A Light Exists in Spring p1036
• growing feeling, spring, 
• human activity not good enough- spiritual
• feeling goes away unnoticed
• If thou must love me p1032
• love her for love not characteristics- people change over time
• uses rhetoric well
• "let it be," commands- uses a lot of imperatives
• Sirens from Odyssey p1027
• don't enjoy their life, cry for help
• archetypal character- seductress
• allusion of sirens- women who are seductresses are trapped in this role
• On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High p1028
• speaker thought he was disconnected with students- frozen fish students
• pun- "swimming with school of fish"
• surreal experience- him and students "swim" together as they delve deep into text.
• water leaks out door, everything is back to normal.

Chapter 8- Allusion

• a reference to something in history or previous literature 
• richly connotative word or symbol suggesting far more than it says.
• reinforce emotion or idea of one's own work with emotion or ideas or another work or occasion
• vary in the number of readers that will be familiar with it- danger of being misunderstood.

Chapter 9- Meaning and Idea

• meaning of poem- experience it expresses
• total meaning of a poem- the only way an experience is communicated
• prose meaning can be separated out in form of prose paraphrase 
• story, description, statement of emotion, presentation of human nature.

Chapter 10- Tone

• speaker's attitude toward the subject, reader, or himself
• emotional meaning 
• affects interpretation
• tone can vary or shift throughout poem- achieve poet's purpose to create dramatic structure
• to recognize tone must have...
• increasing familiarity with meaning and connotations of words
• alertness to irony and other figures
• careful reading

Chapter 11- Musical Devices

• Poetry uses "music" of language
• chooses words for sound as well as meaning 
• poet achieves musical quality by...
• choice and arrangement of sounds
• arrangement of accents
• repetition and variation are essential elements

Chapter 12- Rhythm and Meter

• Rhythm-wavelike recurrence of motion or sound
• natural rise and fall of language in speech
• alternating between accented and unaccented words
• some syllables accented or stressed- more prominence in pronunciation
• toDAY, toMORROW, YESterday
• certain words in a sentence are also given more prominence
• rhetorical stresses- the words that are stressed can completely change the meaning of the sentence
• poetry has lines that create pauses in flow of speech
• end-stopped line- end of line corresponds with a natural speech pause
• run-on line- sense of the line moves without pause into next line
• no punctuation at end is usually run on
• caesuras-pauses within lines, either grammatical or rhetoric
• Free Verse- poetic line is basic rhythmic unit
• line arrangement is only difference between rhythms of free verse and rhythms of prose
• Prose Poem- depends entirely on ordinary prose rhythms
• attention to many poetic elements
• Meter- identify characteristics of rhythm we can tap our feet to.
• Rhythm v. Meter- mean different things
• rhythm designates flow of actual pronounced sound while meter refers to patterns that sounds follow when arranged into metrical verse
• Units of Meter:
• foot- one accented syllable plus one or two unaccented syllables
• basic kinds of feet
• Duple meter
• Iambic
• Trochaic
• Triple meter
• Anapestic
• Sactylic
• Spondaic
• line- same as in free verse
• names of lines:
• monometer- one foot 
• dimeter- two feet
• trimeter- three feet
• tetrameter- four feet
• pentameter- five feet
• hexameter- six feet
• stanza- group of lines whose metrical pattern is repeated throughout the poem.
• Metrical Variations- calls attention to some of the sounds because they are different from what is regular in the poem
• substitution- replace regular foot with another one
• extra-metrical syllables- added at the beginnings or endings of lines
• truncation- omission of an unaccented syllable at either end of line.
• Scansion- process of defining the metrical form of a poem
1. identify prevailing foot
2. name number of feet in line (if it follows a pattern)
3. describe stanzaic pattern (if there is one)

Chapter 13- Sound and Meaning

• music has 2 general functions
• enjoyable
• reinforce meaning and intensity communication
• Poet reinforces meaning through sound
• onomatopoeia- words that sound like what they mean.
• phonetic intensives- sound connect with its meaning
• ex: fl- sound associated with moving light- flames, flare, flash, flicker
• group sounds so effect is smooth and pleasant sounding or rough and harsh sounding.
• consonants- noises, vowels more pleasing- musical tones
• euphony- lightness and speed expressed
• and cacophony- heavy labor expressed
• controlling speed and movement of lines by meter and grammatical and rhetorical pauses
• control sound and meter to emphasize important words
• highlight words through alliteration, assonance, consonance, or rhyme
• synesthesia- stimulation of 2 or more senses simultaneously

Chapter 14- Pattern 

• Structure- arrangement of ideas, thoughts, sentences
• external pattern
• Form- external shape
• 3 kinds of form:
• continuous form- element of design is slight 
• lines follow each other without formal grouping
• stanzaic form- poet writes in a series of stanzas- repeated units having the same number of lines, same metrical pattern and identical rhyme scheme
• shows degrees of formal pattern 
• designating 4 things:
• rhyme scheme
• position of refrain
• prevailing of metrical foot
• number of feet in a line
• fixed form- traditional pattern that applies to a whole poem
• more forms used in french poetry that English- only 3 used in english (limerick, sonnet, and villanelle)
• limerick- 
• anapestic pattern aa3bb2a3
• allows use of a substitute foot in first foot of any line strictly adhere to form after that
• for humorous and nonsense verse
• sonnet-
• less rigidly prescribed 
• 14 lines in length
• almost always iambic pentameter
• italian sonnet- divided between 8 lines (octave), 2 rhymes arranged abbaabba
• 6 lines (sestet), using 2 or 3 rhymes cdcdcd and cdecde
• octave=situation, sestet=comment  OR octave=idea, sestet=example
• English sonnet- 
• 3 quatrains and concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg
• 3 quatrains=3 examples, couplet= conclusion
• most effective for serious treatment of love
• villanelle
• complex pattern of repetition and rhyme
• requires only 2 rhyme sounds
• 19 lines divided into 5 3-line stanzas (tercets) and 4 line concluding quatrain
• difficult to compose effectively 
• haunting unforgettable effects

Chapter 15- Evalutating Poetry: Sentimental, Rhetorical, Didactic Verse

• understand poem before evaluation
• ask 3 questions
1. what is central purpose? - to understand poem
• make a few generalizations
• no excess words
• each word expresses total meaning
• word order
• diction, images, figures of speech are fresh
• good organization
2. How fully has this purpose been accomplished?- evaluate it, judges by scale of perfection.
3. How important is purpose? -judges on scale of significance
• sentimentality- indulgence in emotion, expression of more emotion than an occasion warrants
• "tear-jerking" literature: sentimental literature
• stimulates emotions directly rather than communicating experience
• Rhetoric Poetry- uses more glittering and high- flown language than necessary 
• has language without corresponding reality of emotion or thought underneath
• Didactic Poetry- teaches or preaches
• ranks high in excellence

Chapter 16- Evaluating Poetry: Poetic Excellence

• final standing of rating of poem depends on significance of purpose
• Great Poetry=
• engages whole person (senses, imagination, emotion, and intellect)
• brings us fresh insights into nature of human experience
• broader and deeper understanding of life
• it is knowledge