Language condensed to artistic affect.
Poetry is a wilderness and you can explore it but can't conquer all of it
-teacher usually takes you on an easy "guided nature walk"
no real answers
If it takes longer to tell of text than to read it → poetry
America: Love it or Leave it Bumper Sticker- NOT a poem
(takes longer to explain than read but no artistic affect)
Chapter 1: What is Poetry
- not always a main message or noble truth
- not everything in poetry is beautiful
- experience
- convey broad spectrum of human life
- evoke emotional and intellectual responses
- multi-dimensional- 4 dimensions- intelligence, sense, emotions, and imagination
Chapter 2: Reading the Poem
- Ways to develop understanding and appreciation:
- read it more than once
- keep and use a dictionary (mythology book and Bible also good reference)
- read aloud of lip-read
- pay careful attention to what poem is saying
- read slowly and don't exaggerate rhythmical pattern
- paraphrase poem to understand theme
- Ask yourself: "what is central purpose of poem?" (tell story, reveal human character, express mood, etc.)
- *When poet uses "I' or "me"- not necessarily talking about themselves
"Hidden Meanings" Poem
- male-female struggle
- full of sexual innuendos
- women have power- men are powerless- mothers abuse sons in poem and father are too weak to stop them.
- poem highlights the boys of fairy tales instead of the typical women that are always mentioned.
Chapter 3: Denotation and Connotation
- denotation- exact definition in dictionary
- connotation- cultural baggage for word
<-----------------[]--------------------->
gaunt skinny thin slender svelte
"pejorative" "honorific"
- used to get right words for character, setting, or events
- consciously shapes text
- http://classweb.gmu.edu/bhawk/101/semiotics/decon.html
- example: childlike and childish means a "character of a child" but can also mean/suggest meekness or innocence
Chapter 4: Imagery
- seeing, hearing, smelling, fealing
- express experience to reader
- example: gives sense of love in poem without even saying that word
- reader virtually sees and feels what the lover felt and saw
Concreteness v. Abstraction
- how specific is naming in the language
- clothes, pants, jeans, Levis-----> more concrete
- abstraction of word- depends on effect desired
Precision
- Nice! Cool! Sweet! --> very vague
- not always appropriate to be extremely specific- depends on situation
Elevation v. Colloquialism
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slang colloquial language elevated diction epic diction
Dialect, jargon, regionalism, etc.
- relate directly to one region or profession or group of people (expressions, regional humor...)
- example: pop, soda, and coke- mean same thing in different regions
- http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/cumming/ling50/jargon.html
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