1. Poetry
Tone, Form, Techniques

2. Tone
The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work
Determined by diction and syntax

3. Identify Tone
"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.“ - Robert Frost Tone: reflective, regretful Proof: “with a sigh”, repetition of “I”, “somewhere ages and ages hence”

4. Identify Tone
Turning and turning in the widening gyre     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;     Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;     The best lack all conviction, while the worst     Are full of passionate intensity.
William Butler Yeats
Tone: anxious, chaotic
Proof: “things fall apart”, “anarchy”, “innocence is drowned”

5. With a partner (in your RJ)
Read “Siren Song” on page in Sound and Sense
Identify the tone
Find examples within the poem that prove the tone
Some answers: ironic; sad then devilish; desperate then conniving
Tone shift happens in the last stanza “Alas it is a boring song…”
Side note: poem is an allusion to The Odyssey

6. Maya Angelou Health Food Diner
Read and annotate, looking specifically for tone.

7. Poetry
Form

8. Form
Elegy
Ode
Ballad
Sonnet
Sestina

9. Elegy
The elegy began as an ancient Greek metrical form and is traditionally written in response to the death of a person or group.
The elements of a traditional elegy mirror three stages of loss. First, there is a lament, where the speaker expresses grief and sorrow, then praise and admiration of the idealized dead, and finally consolation and solace.

10. O Captain! My Captain! – Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths- for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
Expressing Grief and Sorrow
Praise and Admiration
Consolation and Solace

11. Ode
elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally.

12. Ode to My Socks – Pablo Neruda
Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder’s hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin, Violent socks, my feet were two fish made of wool, two long sharks sea blue, shot through by one golden thread, two immense blackbirds, two cannons, my feet were honored in this way by these heavenly socks. They were so handsome for the first time my feet seemed to me unacceptable like two decrepit firemen, firemen unworthy of that woven fire, of those glowing socks.
Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation to save them somewhere as schoolboys keep fireflies, as learned men collect sacred texts, I resisted the mad impulse to put them in a golden cage and each day give them birdseed and pieces of pink melon. Like explorers in the jungle who hand over the very rare green deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stretched out my feet and pulled on the magnificent socks and then my shoes.
The moral of my ode is this: beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter.

13. Ballad
A fairly short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form.

14. “Ballad of Birmingham” – Dudley Randall
“Mother dear, may I go downtown Instead of out to play, And march the streets of Birmingham In a Freedom March today?” “No, baby, no, you may not go, For the dogs are fierce and wild, And clubs and hoses, guns and jails Aren’t good for a little child.” “But, mother, I won’t be alone. Other children will go with me, To make our country free.” For I fear those guns will fire. But you may go to church instead And sing in the children’s choir.” She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, And bathed rose petal sweet, And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, And white shoes on her feet. The mother smiled to know her child Was in the sacred place, But that smile was the last smile To come upon her face. For when she heard the explosion, Her eyes grew wet and wild. She raced through the streets of Birmingham Calling for her child. She clawed through bits of glass and brick, Then lifted out a shoe. “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore, But, baby, where are you?”

15. Sonnet
A fixed form of 14 lines, normally iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme conforming to or approximating one of two main types – the Italian (Petrarchan) or the English (Shakespearean)

16. Italian Sonnet 8 lines (octave) of abbaabba
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” – John Keats
8 lines (octave) of abbaabba
6 lines (sestet) of either two or three rhymes
Division between the octave and sestet usually corresponds to a division in thought

17. Sestina
structured 39 line poem consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by an envoi of three lines

18. Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop
September rain falls on the house.
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
In the failing light, the old grandmother
hovers half open above the child,
sits in the kitchen with the child
hovers above the old grandmother
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
reading the jokes from the almanac,
She shivers and says she thinks the house
laughing and talking to hide her tears.
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
I know what I know, says the almanac.
were both foretold by the almanac,
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
but only known to a grandmother.
and a winding pathway. Then the child
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
puts in a man with buttons like tears
She cuts some bread and says to the child,
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
It's time for tea now; but the child
But secretly, while the grandmother
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
busies herself about the stove,
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
the way the rain must dance on the house.
from between the pages of the almanac
Tidying up, the old grandmother
into the flower bed the child
hangs up the clever almanac
has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

19. Line groups Couplet – two lines Tercet – three line stanza/pattern
Quatrain – four line stanza/pattern
Cinquain – five line stanza/pattern
Sestet – six line stanza/pattern
Septet – seven line stanza/pattern
Octave – eight line stanza/pattern

20. Poetry
Techniques

21. Terms to Know
Assonance
Consonance
Cacophony
Euphony
Enjambment

22. Assonance/Consonance
Assonance – the repetition at close intervals of the vowel sounds of accented syllables or important words
Hat – ran – amber; vein-made
Consonance – the repetition at close intervals of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words
Book – plaque - thicker

23. Euphony/Cacophony
Euphony – a pleasant-sounding choice and arrangement of sounds
“Swift Camilla skims”
Cacophony – a harsh, discordant, unpleasant-sounding choice and arrangement of sounds
“Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw”

24. Enjambment
The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped.
the back wings        of the        hospital where        nothing        will grow lie        cinders        in which shine        the broken        pieces of a green        bottle
“Between Walls”
-William Carlos Williams