Poetry: Rhythm, Stanza & Meter

• Poetry is a form of literature using the interplay of words and rhythm.
• It often features rhyme and meter and strings words together to form sounds, images, and ideas that are complex or abstract.
• Poetry is concerned with emotions and attempts to achieve beauty by using particular forms and conventions
• Poetic devices such as assonance and alliteration can achieve musical or incantatory effects.

Poetic Elements

• Rhythm: The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in lines of a set length.
• Stanza: Equivalent to a paragraph in prose, usually no more than twelve lines; its pattern is determined by the number of feet in each line and by its metrical or rhyme scheme.
• Meter: The basic rhythmic structure of a line, consisting of the number of syllables and the pattern of emphasis on those syllables.
• Foot: The basic unit of verse meter, consisting of combinations/groups of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Rhyme and Other Sound Devices: Regular recurrence of similar sounds within the line (internal rhyme) or usually the end of the lines (end rhyme); the pattern or sequence is called the rhyme scheme.
• Literary Devices/Diction
• Persona: The speaker or "I" of the poem, a fictional entity not equal to the poet.
• Symbols: Concrete references that stand for something else in reality and suggest another level of meaning.
• Irony: Used to suggest the difference between appearance and reality, between expectation and fulfillment, to evaluate the material indirectly, and to achieve compression.
• Imagery: Expressions evocative of sensuous appeal, may be direct description or figurative (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory) and is the use of words to create pictures.
• Tone: The attitude of the speaker or persona in the poem towards another character or towards his subject matter (e.g., angry, hopeful, bitter, nostalgic). Mood: Overall feeling for the audience that an author creates in the writing.

Stanza Types

• 2 lines: Heroic Couplet
• 3 lines: Tercet, Terza Rima
• 4 lines: Quatrain
• 5 lines: Quintet
• 6 lines: Sestet
• 7 lines: Septet, Heptastich
• 8 lines: Octet, Octava Rima
• 9 lines: Nonet, Spenserian Stanza
• 10 lines: Decastich

Basic Meter Patterns

• Iamb: Unstressed, stressed (ta-TUM)
• Trochee: Stressed, unstressed (TUM-ta)
• Dactyl: (1) stressed, (2) unstressed (TUM-ta-ta)
• Anapest: (2) stressed, (1) unstressed (ta-ta-TUM)
• Spondee: (2) stressed (TUM-TUM)
• Phyrrus: (2) unstressed (ta-ta)

Number of Syllables

• 1 syllable: Monometer
• 2 syllables: Dimeter
• 3 syllables: Trimeter
• 4 syllables: Tetrameter
• 5 syllables: Pentameter
• 6 syllables: Hexameter
• 7 syllables: Heptameter
• 8 syllables: Octameter
• 9 syllables: Nonameter

Rhyme

• End Rhyme: Regular recurrence of similar sounds usually at the end of the lines
• Internal Rhyme:Regular recurrence of similar sounds within the line.
• Perfect Rhyme:
• The stress is on the final syllable (e.g., mind-behind).
• Double Rhyme: the stress is penultimate or second-to-last syllable (e.g., toasting-roasting).
• Dactylic Rhyme: the stress is on the antepenultimate or third-from-last (e.g., terrible-wearable).
• Imperfect Rhyme:
• Imperfect/Near Rhyme: the same sounds occur in two words but in unstressed syllable (e.g., thing-missing).
• Identical Rhyme: homonyms in English don't satisfy the rules of perfect rhymes; vowels match, but the preceding consonants also match, making the rhyme considered inferior (e.g., way-whey-weigh).
• Eye Rhyme: words are spelled the same but have different pronunciations (e.g., good-food).

Other Sound Devices

• Alliteration: Repetition of identical consonant sounds.
• Onomatopoeia: The sound of the words suggests the thing itself.
• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds.
• Consonance: Repetition of final consonant sounds that are preceded by different vowel sounds.

Three Types of Irony

• Verbal Irony: A narrator or character says one thing but means the opposite.
• Dramatic Irony: A reader perceives something that a character or narrator does not know; contrast between what a character says and what a reader knows to be true.
• Situational Irony: The discrepancy between appearance and reality, between expectation and fulfillment, or between what is and what would seem appropriate.

Imagery Types

• It is the creation of pictures or images in the mind of the reader by using words that appeal to the senses.
• Visual Imagery: Appeals to the sense of sight.
• Auditory Imagery: Relates to sounds, noises, and music, using words with sounds imitating real sounds (onomatopoeia).
• Olfactory Imagery: Concerns aromas, smells, odors, and scents.
• Gustatory Imagery: Pertains to tastes and flavors.
• Tactile Imagery: Concerns physical touches and textures.
• Kinesthetic Imagery: Deals with the movement/action of objects or people. Organic Imagery: Concerns feeling or emotion within the reader, pertains to personal experiences of a character's body, including emotion and the senses of hunger, thirst, fatigue, and pain.

Theme

• Theme is the central message or meaning of the poem or the truth about life that the poem reveals.
• It can be stated directly or indirectly.
• Theme relates to the human condition and the system of values that the topic of the literature deals with.
  • Subject is a topic that acts as a foundation for a literary work.
  • Theme is an opinion expressed on the subject.

How to Analyze a Poem

• Title
  • Ask what does the title tell? and how does the title help one understand the poem?
• Word Meaning
  • List unfamiliar words, and consider connotations of various parts of speech.
• Imagery
  • Determine what particular sense the images appeal to and what each image suggests. Symbols
  • List any words thought to be symbols and determine what the symbols may stand for.
• Figures of Speech
  • Point out the figures of speech and explain the figures that convey ideas most clearly and forcefully.
• Theme
  • Decide what purpose the poem serves and how imagery and tone connect with the theme.