Poetry
Poetry Whereas prose is a form of language that exhibits a grammatical structure and a natural flow of speech rather than a rhythmic and specialized structure, poetry is rhythmical, metered and specialized in structure. Furthermore, it pays close attention to sound and often the “concrete” use of language. Another way critics distinguish poetry from prose genres is in terms of content. According to such critics, one can easily paraphrase what is going on in a prose passage whereas it is more difficult to do so with poetry. This is often due to references and the use of metaphor or allegory.
Types of Poetry Lyric poetry: speaker speaks in the 1st person; personal thoughts and emotions; rhyme and is metered; does not tell a story Narrative poetry: tells a story, rhymed and metered Blank verse: unrhymed but metered, usually iambic pentameter Free verse: lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular line lengths. Writers of free verse disregard traditional poetic conventions of rhyme and meter, relying instead on parallelism, repetition, and the ordinary cadences and stresses of everyday discourse. Free verse was not really recognized as an important new form until Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855). Thereafter, it has been a popular style of poetry.
Some Elements of Poetry Meter, Rhyme, Conrete Language, Sound Imagery: language used to convey a sensory experience (visual picture, sound, taste, touch, smell) Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds in a sequence of words; often at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables Assonance: the repetition of identical vowel sounds, usually in stressed syllables Diction: Diction is the distinctive tone or tenor of an author’s writings as illustrated through word choice (vocabulary) and syntax (word order). Diction is not just a writer's choice of words but has to do with the mood, attitude, dialect and style. Denotation and connation: A word’s literal meaning or dictionary meaning is known as denotation. Connotation has to do with the associations evoked by the word. Handicapped versus crippled (cripple connotes something negative) Drug addict versus druggie Together they created a home.
Poetry and Theme Poetry can often be said to have a theme as well. Theme isn’t simply the main topic of a work. We can think of theme as a statement that the text makes about the main topic in question. Explaining theme: http://www.odessa.edu/dept/english/mjordan/1302the me.htm http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178058