Good Day! November 16, 2012 Agenda: Turn in Chapter 15 Poetry Homework Introduce Inquiring Minds and The Renaissance Notes on Sounds in Poetry Peer Analysis of SRP Outlines Homework: 1.Poetry Sounds Test is next Monday, 11/19 2.Renaissance Presentations Due Tuesday, 11/20

Poets Play with Sounds

Today’s Lesson Rhythm Meter Scansion –stressed & unstressed syllables –enjambment and end-stopped lines Feet Free verse Structure

Rhythm is The alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language (not just poetry) Why is rhythm a big deal? There was this girl named Mary and she had this white lamb that kept following her

life is full of rhythms—rocking chairs, swings, marching, heartbeats a poem that has rhythm is memorable a poem with rhythm is like a song rhythm is made up of stressed (strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables and pauses

Meter is: the regular pattern of stressed (strong) and unstressed (weak) syllables found in some poetry the most obvious kind of rhythm Take me up, tenderly Double, double, toil and trouble

Scansion is marking the stressed and unstressed syllables (meter) in a poem using  for unstressed syllables and an accent mark / for stressed syllables rhythmic lines have a pattern that can be broken up into feet just like music has measures The best tool for scanning a poem is a dictionary

Mary had a little lamb Scansion: /  /  /  / Ma ry had a lit tle lamb Scansion with feet marked: /  /  /  / Mary  had a  little  lamb

Feet and Iambs Feet have different names according to their patterns. An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is called an iamb Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? The line of poetry above has five feet iambic pentameter—Shakespeare’s favorite!

Rhythm and Scansion           Shall I  compare  thee to  a sum  mer’s day? Why does rhythm matter? It reinforces the meaning of the poem. Two or more stressed syllables next to each other add power and force to the poem Two or more unstressed syllables next to each other seem uncertain or quiet

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies William Shakespeare Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange. Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them---Ding-dong, bell.

End-Stopped vs. Enjambment If a line of poetry ends with punctuation, we pause = end-stopped line If a line of poetry doesn’t end with punctuation, we don’t pause = enjambment End-stopped lines sound like definite statements and they emphasize the rhythm Enjambed lines sound hurried or like things are sweeping along

---from “At the Altar” Robert Lowell I sit at a gold table with my girl Whose eyelids burn with brandy. What a whirl Of Easter eggs is colored by the lights, As the Norwegian dancer’s crystalled tights Flash with her naked leg’s high-booted skate, Like Northern Lights upon my watching plate.

Feminine vs. Masculine Rhyme Feminine Rhyme: a rhyme with two or more syllables with a stress on a syllable other than the last. For Example:tur-tle and fur-tile pow-er and dow-er walk-ing and talk-ing Your Turn!

Feminine vs. Masculine Rhyme Masculine Rhyme: either a rhyme of one syllable words (as in fox and sox) or, in polysyllabic words, a rhyme on the stressed final syllables: For Example:con-trive and sur-vive de-fine and a-lign to-day and a-rray Your Turn!

Free Verse What if a poet chooses not to use rhythm? S/he writes in free verse sounds like natural conversation follows “curves of thought” or “shapes of speech” some readers like it, some don’t Robert Frost says writing a poem in free verse is “like playing tennis with the net down.”

This is Just to Say William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

So rhythm aligns with meaning....?

Structure: the form of the poem how the poem looks on the page lengths of lines lengths of words and syllables how and where the poem is/isn’t divided into stanzas where the poem rhymes or doesn’t rhyme repetition of words or phrases

Some famous poetic structures are sonnets haikus ballads Structure also aligns with meaning Not to change the subject, but what is a hook and eye?

you fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye --Margaret Atwood