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Posted by: Cleo_Serapis Aug 8 03, 18:29

Figurative Language


Similes explicitly compare items from different classes using a connective such as “like”, “as”, or “than”, or by a verb such as “appears” or “seems”. The catch here is in the object being compared. If the objects are in the same class, as in this phrase, “New York is like London” there is no simile.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.
~Anonymous

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.
The holy time is quiet as a nun,
Breathless with adoration.
~Wordsworth

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
to have a thankless child.
~Shakespeare

Metaphor asserts the identity (an implied comparison), without a connective such as “like” or a verb such as “appears”, of the terms that are literally incomparable. Metaphor uses mechanisms outside the realm of everyday conventional language.

She is the rose, the glory of the day.
~Spenser

O western orb sailing the heaven.
~Whitman

‘Orb’ is the stated word above, when matched with ‘sailing’ however, a ‘ship’ is implied in ‘sailing’.

Personification asserts an attribution of human characteristics or feelings to an inanimate object (something nonhuman) or abstraction; a subtype of metaphor in which the figurative term is always a human being.

But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
by noon most cunningly did steal away.
~Herbert

Hope, thou bold taster of delight.
~Crashaw

Apostrophe addresses someone absent or something nonhuman as if it were alive or present and could respond.

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
~Blake

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
~Shelley

Imagery is a representation in words of a sensory experience; words which appeal to one or more of the senses; a visual image or mental picture.

The goat-footed balloonMan whistles"
~Cummings

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
~Frost

Symbolism is a specific idea or object that may stand for ideas, values, persons or ways of life; something that means more than what it is.

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
that flies in the night
in the howling storm

has found out thy bed
of crimson joy,
and his dark secret love
does thy life destroy.
~Blake

Verbal Irony is when one says the opposite of what is actually meant.

The grave’s a fine and private place,
but none, I think, do there embrace.
~Marvell

Paradox is an apparent contradiction, which is actually true.

The child is father of the man.
~Wordsworth

The saviors come not home tonight;
themselves they could not save.
~Housman

Alliteration is the deliberate repetition of consonant sounds, i.e. the Weeping willow whispered....

Assonance is the deliberate repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, i.e. Boo flew to a new pool.

Diction is the poet's distinctive choices in vocabulary.

Echo is the repetition of a key word or idea for effect.

Hyperbole is an exaggeration for dramatic effect.

Onomatopoeia is "sound echoing sense"; the use of words resembling the sounds they mean. For example, in “Song of the Lotus-Eaters” Tennyson indicates the slow, sensuous, and langorous life of the Lotus-Eaters by the sound of the words he uses to describe the land in which they live:
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

Oxymoron is a seeming contradiction in two words put together, i.e. Jumbo Shrimp, Thunderous Silence.

Rhyme a repetition of the same sounds, i.e. fog, dog.

Rhythm is the internal 'feel' of a beat and meter perceived when poetry is read aloud.

Tone, Mood are feelings or meanings conveyed in the poem.

Posted by: Cleo_Serapis Aug 20 03, 19:46

WRITING POETRY:

• Write of an experience of your own, or one that you know well. Keep it fresh in your mind, and describe it honestly.
• Be inventive with words. This may not be carried to the extent of inventing new words, which might be out of place in a traditional kind of poem. But an ear to the sound and an eye to the significance of your words will give the poem freshness.
• Make your language imitate the effects and experiences you are describing. If there is a sea, make your words wash like the ocean; if there is a horse race, have your language gallop.

CHARACTERISTICS OF POETIC LITERATURE:

• Poetry communicates feeling.
• Poetry conveys these feelings in a concentrated form.
• Poetry uses language in a special way: to create sound effects and word pictures, to set up associations in the reader’s mind, and to make striking comparisons through figures of speech.

POETIC CLASSES:

• Narrative tells a story.
  Tales
  Epic
  Ballads
  Metrical Romance
• Dramatic Poetry tells a story by means of speech and action.
  Comedy = happy outcome.
  Tragedy = disasterous outcome.
• Lyric Poetry expresses the feelings and emotions of the poet.
  Simple lyrics
  Songs of love, patriotism, or religion
  Sonnet
  Elegy concerns someone who has died or death itself.
  Ode is written in honor of a person, place, or thing.

TERMS:

• Rhythm: the regular recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables. Any wave-like recurrence (pattern) of sound.
• Rhyme: a similarity of sound between words, especially those at the end of the line.
• Foot: a unit if measure in poetry, a group of syllables.  
• Verse: a single line of poetry.
• Stanza: two or more verses.
• Scansion: the dividing of a line of poetry into syllables and feet.
• Meter: the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables established in a line of poetry.

POETIC FEET:

• Iambic (Iamb): the most common foot. A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable or a short syllable followed by a long syllable, as in delay.  
• Trochaic (Trochee): Consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, as in season, or of a long syllable followed by a short syllable.
• Anapestic (Anapest): Consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable, as in the word seventeen.
• Dactyl: Consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in dinosaur.
• Spondee: Consists of two stressed syllables, as in spice rack.
• Pyrric: Consists of two unstressed syllables, as in and a.
• Amphimacer: Consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable, as in amazon.
• Amphibrachys: Consists of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable, followed by an unstressed syllable, as in amoeba.

METER:

• Monometer = one foot
• Diameter = two feet
• Trimeter = three feet
• Tetrameter = four feet
• Pentameter = five feet
• Hexameter = six feet
• Heptameter = seven feet
• Octameter = eight feet

STANZAS:

• Couplet = two lines
• Triplet = three lines
• Quatrain = four lines
• Quintet = five lines
• Sestet = six lines
• Septet = seven lines

DEVICES OF SOUND:

• Rhyme - To have rhyme, the final syllables of line-ending words in two or more verses must end in both consonance and assonance, as in spleen, tureen, and obscene (SPLEEN, tuh-REEN, uhb-SEEN).
• Alliteration - is the repetition of the initial sounds or sound clusters of two or more words, as in pretty Polly, invisible ink, or the splendid splinter. Alliterated words are usually placed very close together, but they need not be immediately contiguous. Alliteration may often be catchy in advertisements and in certain kinds of oratory, but its overuse in expository prose can strike some readers as sophomoric.
• Assonance - to have assonance, words must have identical vowel sounds in their final syllables, as in set, intend, and fresh (SET, in-TEND, FRESH).
• Consonance - to have consonance, words must have identical consonant sounds ending their final syllables, as in balloon, marine, and tan (buh-LOON, muh-REEN, and TAN).
• Refrain - in some pieces of verse, a set of words repeated at the end of each stanza.
  Oh! Susanna, oh don’t you cry for me;
  For I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee.
• Repetition - the act or process or an instance of repeating or being repeated.
• Onomatopoeia - the formation of words in imitation of sounds. In language, the representation of a sound by an imitation thereof; e.g., the cat mews. Poets often convey the meaning of a verse through its very sound. For example, in “Song of the Lotus-Eaters” Tennyson indicates the slow, sensuous, and langorous life of the Lotus-Eaters by the sound of the words he uses to describe the land in which they live:Here are cool mosses deep,
  And through the moss the ivies creep,
  And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
  And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
  Onomatopoeia can also represent harsh and unpleasant sounds, as in Browning’s “Meeting at Night”:A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
  And blue spurt of a lighted match.

Posted by: Martinus Julius Caesura Aug 31 03, 21:31

Rhythm goes well beyond accented and unaccented syllables. Rhythm is any wave-like recurrence (pattern) of sound.  

The definition of “foot” depends on the metrical system chosen. And just saying “a group of syllables” doesn’t define any kind of foot.

The word “meter” derives from the Greek term metron, which means “measure,” and metrical systems are distinguished by what is being “measured” (i.e., counted) in each line. There are four major kinds of “meter” in English poetry:

(1) Stress-Syllabic meter (also called Syllable-Stress meter, or Accentual-Syllabic meter) is defined in terms of both the number and the arrangement of accented (stressed) and unaccented (unstressed) syllables (measured by “accentual feet”) in a line.

(2) Stress-meter (also called Strong-Stress meter, Accentual-Stress meter, or Alliterative-Stress meter) is defined in terms of only the number of stressed syllables in a line.

(3) Syllabic meter  is defined in terms of only the number of syllables per line, without regard to stresses.

(4) Quantitative meter is defined in terms of durational rather than accentual feet—i.e., each foot consists of “long” and “short,” rather than “stressed” and “unstressed,” syllables.

Most of the metered poems written today are in stress-syllabic meter (#1, above).

The definition you gave for “anapest” applies only to quantitative meter. Substitute “unstressed” for “short,” and “stressed” for “long,” and it’ll be correct for stress-syllabic meter.
 
With that change, all of the above apply to stress-syllabic meter. And there are many more kinds of feet in such meter, but there are only eight that seem to be commonly used—the above three, plus the following five:

Dactyl - Consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in dinosaur.
Spondee - Consists of two stressed syllables, as in spice rack.            
Pyrric - Consists of two unstressed syllables, as in and a.  
Amphimacer - Consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable, as in amazon.
Amphibrachys - Consists of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable, followed by an unstressed syllable, as in amoeba.  
 
-Martin

Posted by: Don Nov 28 03, 10:08

I wish to thank Lori for starting critical thought regarding what defines poetry and to thank Martin for more definitive description and definitions.

We, more often than not, ride along enjoying passing scenery without attention to geography we are traversing.

Despite all the crisp or less crisp characteristics--compare letter of the law and intent of the law--I find a terse list or statement of what poetry is to be a fine division with characteristics possible in prose.

Geographic rules are my best guide.  When one says, "sonnet," they refer to a traditional set of rules that is clearly not something else.  Though we all know of significant subsets under this one term, each are minor modifications of the main ruling characteristics.

To picture different genders within a species is easier to grasp than say difference between a cow and a horse without experience with either or both.

I am reminded of the poem, "A Maze is a Maze."  Many similes are provided, but the maze can only be itself.

Definitions are imperative so that we know when we are walking on castle walls and when swimming in the moat.

Thanks again Lori and Martin.

Don