Elements of Poetry

POETRY ASSUMPTIONS
Readers of poetry often bring with them many
related assumptions:
 That a poem is to be read for its "message,"
 That this message is "hidden" in the poem,
 The message is to be found by treating the
words as symbols which naturally do not
mean what they say but stand for something
else,
 You have to decipher every single word to
appreciate and enjoy the poem.

Traditional poetry used to follow very strict
forms. People who still follow these forms
nowadays are following the traditional manner
and style. But nowadays we know that there is a
strong tendency to break from the traditional and
to become even very unorthodox,
unconventional or even unusual. This kind of
poetry is called FREE VERSE. The poet uses
free form to make the poem fit the contents and
to express the mood or feeling of his work.

A poem may or may not have a specific number
of lines, rhyme scheme and/or metrical pattern,
but it can still be labeled according to its form or
style.

1. Lyric Poetry: It is any poem with one
speaker (not necessarily the poet) who
expresses strong thoughts and feelings. Most
poems, especially modern ones, are lyric
poems.

2. Narrative Poem: It is a poem that tells a
story; its structure resembles the plot line of a
story [i.e. the introduction of conflict and
characters, rising action, climax and the
denouement].

3. Descriptive Poem: It is a poem
that describes the world that surrounds the
speaker. It uses elaborate imagery and
adjectives. While emotional, it is more "outward-
focused" than lyric poetry, which is more
personal and introspective.

In a sense, almost all poems, whether
they have consistent patterns of sound
and/or structure, or are free verse, are in
one of the three categories stated. Or, of
course, they may be a combination of 2 or
3 of the above styles!

Here are some types of poems that are subtypes
of the three styles above:
Ode: It is usually a lyric poem of moderate
length, with a serious subject, an elevated
style, and an elaborate stanza pattern.

Elegy: It is a lyric poem that mourns the dead. It
has no set metric or stanzaic pattern, but it
usually begins by reminiscing about the dead
person, then laments the reason for the death,
and then resolves the grief by concluding that
death leads to immortality. It often uses
"apostrophe" as a literary technique. It can have
a fairly formal style, and sound similar to an ode.

Sonnet: It is a lyric poem consisting of 14
lines and, in the English version, is usually
written in iambic pentameter.

There are two basic kinds of sonnets:
the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet and the
Shakespearean (or Elizabethan/English) sonnet.
The Italian/Petrarchan sonnet is named after
Petrarch, an Italian Renaissance poet. The
Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave (eight
lines) and a sestet (six lines).

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of
three quatrains (four lines each) and a
concluding couplet (two lines). The
Petrarchan sonnet tends to divide the
thought into two parts (argument and
conclusion); the Shakespearean, into four
(the final couplet is the summary).

Ballad: It is a narrative poem that has
a musical rhythm and can be sung. A
ballad is usually organized into
quatrains or cinquains, has a simple
rhythm structure, and tells the tales of
ordinary people.

Epic: It is a long narrative poem in
elevated style recounting the deeds of a
legendary or historical hero.

Other types of poems include:
Haiku: It has an unrhymed verse form
having three lines (a tercet) and usually
5,7,5 syllables, respectively. It's usually
considered a lyric poem.

Limerick: It has a very structured poem, usually
humorous & composed of five lines (a cinquain),
in an aabba rhyming pattern; beat must
be anapestic (weak, weak, strong) with 3 feet in
lines 1, 2, & 5 and 2 feet in lines 3 & 4. It's
usually a narrative poem based upon a short and
often ribald anecdote.

Poetry generally is divided into lines of
verse. A grouping of lines, equivalent to a
paragraph in prose, is called a stanza. On
the printed page, line breaks normally are
used to separate stanzas from one
another.

A stanza is to a poem what a paragraph is
to a piece of prosaic writing – a fixed
number of lines of verse forming a single
unit of a poem. A poem is usually
composed of multiple stanzas that are
separated from each other with an empty
line in between.

Based on the number of lines present in a stanza,
they are assigned different names. They are:
• A couplet is a stanza that has only 2 lines.
• A tercet is composed of 3 lines.
• A quatrain consists of 4 lines.
• A cinquain has 5 lines.
• A sestet comprises 6 lines.
• A sonnet is as entire poem with exactly 4 lines

Example:
• A Couplet
True wit is nature to advantage dress’d;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.
-From Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism”

Example:
• A Tercet
Furu ike ya
Kawazu tobikomu
Mizu no oto
-Haiku by Matsuo Basho

Example:
• A Cinquain
Listen…
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost crisp’d break from the trees
And fall.
-From Craspey’s “November Night”

Example:
• A Sestat
It was many and many a year ago,
In kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
-From Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
- From John Milton's "On His Blindness"
Example:
• A Sonnet

Three other elements of poetry are rhyme
scheme, meter (ie. regular rhythm)
and word sounds (like alliteration). These
are sometimes collectively called sound
play because they take advantage of the
performative, spoken nature of poetry.

Rhyming in poetry is one convention that
makes this form of literature recognizably
different from prose and drama.

RHYME
Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds. In
poetry, the most common kind of rhyme is
the end rhyme, which occurs at the end of two
or more lines. It is usually identified with lower
case letters, and a new letter is used to identify
each new end sound. Take a look at the rhyme
scheme for the following poem :

Example:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Example:
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;

Types of Rhyme
One common way of creating a sense of musicality
between lines of verse is to make them rhyme.
End rhyme: A rhyme that comes at the end
of a line of verse. Most rhyming poetry uses
end rhymes.

Internal rhyme occurs in the middle of a
line, as in these lines from Coleridge, "In
mist or cloud, on mast or shroud" or "Whiles
all the night through fog-smoke white" ("The
Ancient Mariner"). Remember that most
modern poems do not have rhyme.

Masculine rhyme: A rhyme consisting of a
single stressed syllable, as in the rhyme
between “car” and “far.”
Feminine rhyme: A rhyme consisting of a
stressed syllable followed by an unstressed
syllable, as in the rhyme between “mother”
and “brother.”

Perfect rhyme: An exact match of sounds in a
rhyme.
Slant rhyme: An imperfect rhyme, also
called oblique rhyme or off rhyme, in which the
sounds are similar but not exactly the same, as
between “port” and “heart.” Modern poets often
use slant rhyme as a subtler alternative to perfect
rhyme.

The primary thing to keep in mind here is
that 'rhyme' and 'rhythm' are not the same at
all. Rhythm is basically the pattern in which
a poet chooses to sequence the stressed
and unstressed syllables in every line of a
poem, for the creation of oral patterns.

The three factors that help determine the
rhythm in a poem are:
1.The total number of syllables present in each
line.
2. The total count of accented (stressed)
syllables in each line.
3. The tally of recurring patterns of two or three
syllables - stressed and unstressed - clubbed in
every line.

Each recurring pattern is individually called a
foot. And a number of feet, on identification,
can tell us the systematic rhythm or the
meter that a poem follows.
In poetry, a stressed syllable is tagged with a
"/" and an unstressed one is marked with a
"U".

Meter: the systematic regularity in rhythm;
this systematic rhythm (or sound pattern) is
usually identified by examining the type of
"foot" and the number of feet.

1. Poetic Foot: The traditional line of
metered poetry contains a number of
rhythmical units, which are called feet. The
feet in a line are distinguished as a recurring
pattern of two or three syllables("apple" has
2 syllables, "banana" has 3 syllables, etc.).
The pattern, or foot, is designated according
to the number of syllables contained, and
the relationship in each foot between the
strong and weak syllables.

And there are five different types of constant beat patterns
that the feet can occur in:
Iamb (Iambic) - One weak syllable followed by one
accented syllable.
Trochee (Trochaic) - One accented syllable followed by
one weak syllable.
Anapæst (Anapæstic) - Two weak syllables followed by
one accented syllable.
Dactyl (Dactylic) - One accented syllable followed by two
weak syllables.
Spondee (Spondaic) - Two consecutive accented
syllables. This can usually be found at the end of a line.

2. The Number of Feet: The second part of
meter is the number of feet contained in a
line.

There are various types of foot and they are named
accordingly.
One foot: Monometer
Two feet: Dimeter
Three feet: Trimeter
Four feet: Tetrameter
Five feet: Pentameter
Six feet: Hexameter

3. Irregularity: Many metered poems in English avoid
perfectly regular rhythm because it is monotonous.
Irregularities in rhythm add interest and emphasis to the
lines. In this line:
The first foot substitutes a trochee for an iamb. Thus, the
basic iambic pentameter is varied with the opening trochee.

4. Blank Verse: Any poetry that does have a set
metrical pattern (usually iambic pentameter), but
does not have rhyme, is blank verse.
Shakespeare frequently used unrhymed iambic
pentameter in his plays; his works are an early
example of blank verse.

5. Free Verse: Most modern poetry no longer
follows strict rules of meter or rhyme, especially
throughout an entire poem. Free verse, frankly,
has no rules about meter or rhyme whatsoever!
effect. Free verse can also apply to a lack of a
formal verse structure.

Alliteration: the repetition of initial sounds on
the same line or stanza -
ex.Big bad Bob bounced bravely.
Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds
(anywhere in the middle or end of a line or
stanza) - Tilting at windmills
Consonance: the repetition of consonant
sounds (anywhere in the middle or end of a line
or stanza) - And all the air a solemn stillness
holds. (T. Gray)

Onomatopoeia: words that sound like that which
they describe
Ex. Boom! Crash! Pow! Quack! Moo! Caress...
Repetition: the repetition of entire lines or phrases
to emphasize key thematic ideas.
Parallel Structure: a form of repetition where the
order of verbs and nouns is repeated; it may involve
exact words, but it more importantly repeats
sentence structure
Ex. "I came, I saw, I conquered".

References:
• http://www.buzzle.com/articles/basic-elements-of-
poetry.html
• https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbi
d=205340712894005&id=205339616227448
• http://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsofpoetry.htm
• http://www.meister-z.com/meister_z/POETRY.htm
• http://sparkcharts.sparknotes.com/lit/literaryterms/s
ection3.php

Elements of Poetry

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