1. Poetry!

2. What IS poetry anyway?
DEFINITION: Writing in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.

3. Debunking Some Myths About Poetry
It doesn’t need to rhyme.
It doesn’t need to be a set length.
You don’t have to be depressed to write it.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be serious.
It doesn’t really need to have correct grammar (although usually that helps).
Writing poetry is not “emo”.

4. Why read poetry? Why write it?
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.
THANKS, ROBIN WILLIAMS (OR WHOEVER WROTE THE SCREENPLAY)!

5. 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.
Is This A Poem?
- “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

6. Is this a poem?

7. Is this a poem?

8. Is this a poem?

9. Is this a poem?

10. Is this a poem?

11. Is this a poem? Rural Juror
The Irma Luhrmer-Merman murder Turned the bird’s world lurid The whir and the purr of a twirler girl She would the world were demurer The insurer’s allure for valor were pure Kari Wuhrer One fervid whirl over her turgid error Rural Juror Rural Juror

12. Is this a poem?

13. Is this a poem? “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.

14. Spoiler: These are poems. But can you tell me what type they are?
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 whole oboe part Of Mozart's quartet in F-major.

15. Is this a poem?

16. SO WERE THEY POEMS?! All of those are poems! Is that a hoot or what?!
Essentially, 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.
All of the previous poems fulfill that criteria, ergo, they’re poems. Q.E.D.
Q.E.D. is an initialism of the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum, meaning "which is what had to be proven". The phrase is traditionally placed in its abbreviated form at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument when what was specified in the enunciation—and in the setting-out—has been exactly restated as the conclusion of the demonstration.

17. How do you write a poem?
One way is to follow a specific formula and plan everything out.
Another way is to just write.
Whatever you do, don’t just stare at the screen or a blank piece of paper. It won’t get you anywhere.
No one will ever hold a draft or a work in progress against you.
If they do, they’re a jerk. You don’t need them. Besides, we’ve got each other, right guys?!

18. Figures of Speech

19. Metaphor What is a metaphor? For example: All the world's a stage,
A metaphor is a comparison between two things that replaces the word or name for one object with that of another
For example:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
—William Shakespeare

20. Simile
A simile works in almost the exact same way as a metaphor except….
You use the words “like” or “as” before the comparison.
So, if we wanted to tweak Shakespeare’s metaphor from one slide back so that it changes from a metaphor to a simile we’d write…

21. Simile
All the world is LIKE a stage, And all the men and women LIKE players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
—William Shakespeare (Sort of.)

22. Onomatopoeia

23. Onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia Awno- Matto- Pee Ah Awno-Matto-Pee Ah
“Mr. McIlvaney, how do you even pronounce that?”
Great question! You pronounce it like this:
Awno-
Matto-
Pee Ah
Now all together!
Awno-Matto-Pee Ah
Onomatopoeia

24. Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes.
This happens A LOT in comic books or graphic novels that require sound effects to be written with words.

25. Onomatopoeia
It is also commonly used to imitate animal noises, although these vary from language to language. BUT WHO’S RIGHT?
A dog barking in English is generally written as “Woof woof!” In Japanese, it’s “Wan wan!”
In English, a rooster crowing is “COCK A DOODLE DOO!” In Spanish, it’s “quiquiriquí!”

26. Onomatopoeia
“Wan wan!”
“Woof woof!”

27. Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia also comes up a lot when describing voices (giggle, belch, blurt), collisions (bam, thud, click), and the air (swish, whiff, gasp).

28. Onomatopoeia
This poem written by Lee Emmett uses A LOT of onomatopoeia to describe nature:
Water plops into pond
Splish-splash downhill
Warbling magpies in tree
Trilling, melodic thrill
Whoosh, passing breeze
Flags flutter and flap
Frog croaks, bird whistles
Babbling bubbles from tap

29. Onomatopoeia
This poem by Todd Rundgreen entitled “Onomatopoeia” is another strong example:
It's sort of whack, whir, wheeze, whine
Sputter, splat, squirt, scrape
Clink, clank, clunk, clatter
Crash, bang, beep, buzz
Ring, rip, roar, retch
Twang, toot, tinkle, thud
Pop, plop, plunk, pow
Snort, snuck, sniff, smack
Screech, splash, squish, squeak
Jingle, rattle, squeal, boing
Honk, hoot, hack, belch
Onomatopoeia every time I see ya
My senses tell me hubba
And I just can't disagree.
I get a feeling in my heart that I can't describe. . .

30. “The flowers danced in the gentle breeze.”
Personification
Personification is when you assign a human quality to something that isn’t living.
“The flowers danced in the gentle breeze.”
Flowers do not dance. Humans do. But because we understand what dancing is, we have a pretty good sense of what the flowers in the breeze look like.

31. Personification The tornado ran through town without a care.
Where is the personification in the following examples?
The tornado ran through town without a care.
The funeral raced by me in a blur.
Time marches to the beat of its own drum.
Her life passed her by.
The run down house appeared depressed.

32. Alliteration
Alliteration occurs when a series of words in a row (or CLOSE to being in a row) all begin with the same consonant sound.
FOR AN EXAMPLE: The snake sneakily slithered…
Alliteration is often used as the basis for tongue twisters…

33. Alliteration
ROUND 1!
There was a fisherman named Fisher who fished for some fish in a fissure. Till a fish with a grin, pulled the fisherman in. Now they're fishing the fissure for Fisher.

34. Alliteration
ROUND 2!
Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew. While these fleas flew, freezy breeze blew. Freezy breeze made these three trees freeze. Freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze. That's what made these three free fleas sneeze.

35. Alliteration
Here we go… ROUND 3!
Something in a thirty-acre thermal thicket of thorns and thistles thumped and thundered threatening the three-D thoughts of Matthew the thug - although, theatrically, it was only the thirteen-thousand thistles and thorns through the underneath of his thigh that the thirty year old thug thought of that morning.

36. And finally, ROUND 4! AN INDONESIAN TONGUE TWISTER!
Alliteration
And finally, ROUND 4! AN INDONESIAN TONGUE TWISTER!
Saya sebal sama situ sebab situ suka senyum-senyum sama suami saya sehingga sekarang suami saya suka senyum-senyum sendiri sembari sama saya.
Translation: I hate you because you used to smile at my husband; now he likes to smile for no obvious reason when he is with me.

37. Alliteration
Fun fact! The sign language equivalent to a TONGUE TWISTER is called a FINGER FUMBLE! Apparently the phrase “Good blood, bad blood” is extremely hard in sign language!

38. Alliteration
Alliteration also comes up a lot in Donkey Kong Country games. I don’t know why I felt like I should include that fact but there you go.

39. Alliteration
Alliteration is, for a lot of people, pretty fun to say, which may be way so many businesses use it in their names…

40. Repitition
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

41. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. -Winston Churchill

42. I am vengeance! I am the night! -- Batman

43. "But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening twilight, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer."

44. Imagery
A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

45. Oxymoron Hell’s angels Living dead Act naturally For example:
What is oxymoronic about the following images?...

49. There are many, many examples of oxymoron, and sometimes it comes down to an opinion. Here, for instance, are examples that just start with the letter A:

52. Assonance vs. Consonance vs. Alliteration

53. Symbolism! Again! Briefly!
Symbolism: an ordinary object, event, person, or animal to which we have attached extraordinary meaning and significance. It allows us to communicate beyond the limits of language.
It subtly reinforces ideas and makes a text a lot deeper and meaningful.

54. “YEAAAHHH! POETRY!”

55. Review: Identify the literary device.
Mount Everest sat brooding on the horizon.
Personification
Alliteration
The beautiful brunette boldly stepped forward
The blade swished through the air.
Onomatopoeia
That lady is seriously funny.
Oxymoron
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
Assonance
Actually writing the novel that’s in your head is like playing darts with spaghetti.
Simile