Rhythm and Sound PDF
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This document provides a comprehensive overview of poetic devices and forms. It covers various aspects like rhyming schemes, meter (like iambic pentameter), and several other elements. It also touches upon different poetic forms including sonnets, odes, and blank verse.
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Rhyme And sound Rhymed Verse - verse with end rhyme and usually regular meter. Blank Verse - iambic pentameter without end rhyme. Free Verse - verse with no regular meter and no end rhyme Rhyme + a similarity of sound between two words. True rhyme is identical sounding stressed syllables in whic...
Rhyme And sound Rhymed Verse - verse with end rhyme and usually regular meter. Blank Verse - iambic pentameter without end rhyme. Free Verse - verse with no regular meter and no end rhyme Rhyme + a similarity of sound between two words. True rhyme is identical sounding stressed syllables in which the letters before the vowel sounds are different. End Rhyme - rhyme at the ends of the lines in a stanza. Internal Rhyme - rhyme within a line of poetry. Masculine Rhyme - one-syllable rhyme. Feminine or Double Rhyme - two-syllable rhyme. Leonine Rhyme + a scheme in which the word preceding a caesura rhymes with the last word of the line: I bring fresh showers // for the thirsting flowers. Rhyme Scheme - the pattern of end rhyme. Sounds are identified by letters, aabb, abab, abc abc, etc. Reversal - sense/madness, Emily Dickinson Alliteration - repetition of the initial letter or sound. Assonance - repetition of a vowel sound. Consonance - repetition of a consonant sound. Onomatopoeia - word imitation of natural sound. The words whippoorwill and bang are examples. Repetition - reiterating of a word or phrase in a poem. Incremental Repetition - the repetition of a line or lines, but with a variation each time that advances the narrative. Refrain - repetition of one or more phrases or lines at intervals Elision - running together of vowels in adjacent words in order to eliminate a syllable: th’eternal. Eye-Rhyme - words or syllables spelled alike but pronounced differently: some and home. Approximate Rime - near rime, imperfect rime, slant rime, oblique rime. Enjambment - running of one line into another. End-Stopped - lines not enjambed Caesura - a break in the middle of a line of five (5) or more feet. Represented by the syllable //. To err is human, // to forgive, divine. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29: Haply I think on thee—. Ideas Figure of Speech - nonliteral expression Simile - a like or as comparison. He swims like a fish. Epic Simile or Homeric Simile - a simile as found in Homer’s Iliad, in which the poet compares something in his poem to an elaborately described scene, such as hunters and dogs in pursuit of a lion or stag. Metaphor - an implied comparison. He is a fish. Whitman’s poem about the death of Lincoln refers to Lincoln as Captain. Extended Metaphor - an elaborate comparison; much longer than the typical one-phrase or one-clause metaphor. Personification - describing inhuman things in human terms. The sad fish. Synecdoche - letting a part represent the whole. All hands on deck. Metonymy - letting a related object represent something. payment to the crown. Hyperbole - exaggeration, also known as overstatement. Litotes - emphasis through opposite statements. Calling a fat boy Skinny. Antithesis - balancing or contrasting terms. Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Apostrophe - addressing someone absent as though present. O Captain! Symbol - a word or image that represents something else. The cross. Epithet - a descriptive name such as Catherine the Great, or the wine-dark sea. Oxymoron - a figure of speech that combines opposite ideas, such as living death or sweet sorrow. Allusion - a reference to something in literature or history. Yeats’s “No Second Troy,” or Keats’s “Chapman’s Homer” contain examples. Cacophony - bad-sounding sounds. Juxtaposition - stark side-by-side contrast of two different voices, elements, or phenomena, as in “After Taught Me.” Voice - the personality adopted by the poet for the speaking tone of the poem. Trope - a figure of speech, or figurative language. Acrostic - Any poem in which the first letter of each line forms a word or words. The words formed are often names—the poet’s or the dedicatee’s. Longer acrostic poems can create entire sentences from the first letter of each line. Acrostic poems are free to rhyme or not rhyme and can be metered or free verse. Blank verse - is poetry that has no set stanza or line length. It is a common form of poetry seen often in Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, Auden, Stevens, and Frost. In fact, a great deal of the greatest literature in English has been written in blank verse. Blank verse is unrhymed lines that follow a strict rhythm, usually iambic pentameter. Cinquain - Despite the French name, the cinquain is actually an American poem influenced by the Japanese haiku. Cinquains are usually light verse used to express the brief thoughts or moments. This form utilizes few adverbs and adjectives, working best with a profusion of nouns and verbs. Cinquains have a strict syllabic count that must be adhered to. The poem is five lines and 22 syllables long. It need not follow anymetric pattern, though an iambic cinquain is not unusual. The first line of the poem has 2 syllables, the second line 4, the third line 6, the fourth has 8, and the final line has 2. Epic - The epic is a long narrative poem that usually unfolds a history or mythology of a nation or race. The epic details the adventures and deeds of a hero and, in so doing, tells the story of a nation. Epic poetry is the oldest form of poetry dating back to classics like Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and Beowulf. Though too long to be excerpted here, any of these works would serve as fine examples of an epic. Epics often follow a recognizable pattern, but there is no set pattern. The form changes from culture to culture, language to language. Epistle - Poems written in the form of a letter are called epistles. Epistle - can adhere to form or can be free of meter and rhyme. The only requirement is that it is in letter for. One of the better-known epistles is Alexander Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.” Limerick - A short, humorous form known for off-color statements. The limerick is a five-line poem with meter and rhyme. The first, second, and fifth lines are all iambic tetrameter with end rhyme. The third and fourth lines are iambic trimeter and rhyme with each other but not the other three (3) lines. The following is an example of a limerick by Rudyard Kipling: Ode - Often written in praise of a person, an object, or an event, odes tend to be longer in form and generally, serious in nature. The patterns of the stanzas within an ode follow noprescribed pattern. A well-known example of an ode would be “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats. Sestina - One of the most popular forms, the sonnet has two (2) major styles, English (or Elizabethan or Shakespearean) and Italian (or Petrarchan). Both forms are 14 lines long and are renowned for focusing on love. Often, the first eight lines of the poem (the first two quatrains in an English sonnet) demonstrate the problem to be solved, and the final six lines (the last quatrain and a couplet in the English sonnet) resolve it. Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. The English sonnet adheres to this rhyme pattern: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, or a variation on it Villanelle - borrowed from the French, the villanelle is a poem of heavy repetition made famous by Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight.” In this poem, as in all villanelles, entire lines are repeated. Nineteen lines long, the villanelle not only repeats lines, it rhymes. The pattern is ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. The first and third lines of the poem repeat alternatively at the ends of every subsequent stanza. Usually completed in iambic tetrameter or pentameter, the poem has a clear cadence. The villanelle looks like this: DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT