Poetry Forms & Language PDF

FORM & LANGUAGE By learning about and experimenting with different poetic forms, students will understand better how the art of sound and the uses of sound, the figures of speech, and the extension of English grammar and syntax create the essential world of poetry. The "forms" of poetry...

FORM & LANGUAGE By learning about and experimenting with different poetic forms, students will understand better how the art of sound and the uses of sound, the figures of speech, and the extension of English grammar and syntax create the essential world of poetry. The "forms" of poetry can be both fixed and traditional, or radical and new. Using a specific form can help emphasize a poet's message / meaning.  Poem or Prose? This is just to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold. This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold.  Concrete or shape forms This is a thoroughly modern poetic form where words are arranged in a pattern or shape that suits the subject. In this form, words are mainly to be looked at for visual appeal, rather than aural. By e. e. cummings l (a le af fa ll s) one l iness  Exploring FORM Stanzaic forms: Couplet (two-line stanza) Triplet (three-line stanza) Quatrain (four-line stanza) Sestet (six-line stanza / the last six lines of a sonnet) Octet (eight-line stanza) Free verse  Exploring FORM Couplet (two-line stanza) Twinkle twinkle little star How I wonder what you are The bird sang in the tree It sang tooroo, tooree  Exploring FORM Triplet (three-line stanza) I saw a frog going for a jog beside a fat dog (aaa, aba)  Exploring FORM Quatrain (four-line stanza) The rushing ocean waves Beat harshly on the sand. They roar and crash and foam. As they break upon the land. (aabb, abab, abba, abcb, aaba)  Exploring FORM Free verse ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and traditions; Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met there, who detain'd me for love of me; …  Exploring FORM Popular poetic forms: Ballad – a song with a plot and 1-2 characters; dramatic conclusion; quatrains Sonnet – 14 lines, 10 syllables Haiku (Japanese) Free verse Haiku How reluctantly the bee emerges from deep within the peony. ~ Basho  Sonnet 14 lines usually an octave (a b b a a b b a) and, a sestet (c d c d c d, c d e c d e, etc.) Sometimes ends with a rhyming couplet (e.g. c d c d e e) 10 syllables in each line Iambic pentameter 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 oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd: But thy eternal Summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.