The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre (Faber Poetry)

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One of Yeats’s short masterpieces, this poem is one of his most famous and widely anthologised lyrics: ‘Be careful because you tread on my dreams.’ It’s a beautifully lyrical exhortation to be treated kindly by one to whom one has pledged one’s life and heart. When you notice consonance in a poem, try to comment on what the specific sound that is repeated makes you think of, or how it might relate to the poem. A soft ‘sh’ sound or a repeated murmuring ‘m’ sound could be used to create a calm effect or make us think of the sea, for example. Poetry isn’t prose, as we explained above. And that’s what makes it feel like the wildcard of creative writing. Prose poetry: is a social kind of prose that exhibits some qualities of poetry. The imageryand sensory experience of the reader is more important than it would be otherwise but the lines are structured as they would be in a novel. Form and structure: the use of enjambment close enjambment When a sentence runs on from one line to another in a poem without punctuation at the end of the line. in several lines suggests that the character’s life is unchanging and that her isolation is relentless. The use of listing in the third stanza also adds to this impression. The stanzas are regular, with four lines in each stanza, which could reflect her routine life, added to by the repeated reference to the kettle in the first and then the fourth stanza.

Less can be more. While it’s perfectly acceptable to write long, flowery verse, using simple, concise language is also powerful. Word choice and poem length are up to you. Published in 1915, this poem is a classic example of imagism, that short-lived modernist movement in poetry that was active around the time of the First World War. Onomatopoeia – words based on the sound they are describing, such as “bang”, “buzz” or “hiss”. Onomatopoeic words are common in poems because sound is such an important element of poetry. These are dramatic and theatrical lines, setting up a fairly long poem filled with dark images and strange occurrences. It is a great representation of how poets achieve darker atmospheres in their work.In the first stanza, Atwood uses a simile, a type of figurative language , to create an initially pleasant image: a hook and eye closure, a small metal hook that neatly fits into an appropriately sized metal loop to fasten clothing. Then the second stanza juxtaposes this with a jarring image: a fish hook plunged into an eyeball. These images together, formatted as two stark sections separated by a break, express the poem’s uncomfortable, visceral theme. Types of poetic forms Shakespearean sonnets, for example, are 14 lines long and have a clear set structure. A Shakespearean sonnet follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. In contrast, prose is writing that follows the standard sentence and paragraph structure. Prose, while it takes many different forms and tones, largely mimics human speech patterns. The purpose of a poem There are five sections to the line, and five stresses, following that da-DUM pattern, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Look at the punctuation . Is there any? Are there questions? Exclamations? Lots of pauses or dashes or interruptions?

These syllables are grouped together to form feet , units that make up a line of poetry. A foot is generally two or three syllables, and each combination of two or three stressed and unstressed syllables has a unique name. Were you to write the biography of Rudyard Kipling as a graph, the first thing that would strike you would be the steep vertical zigzags. The chart would have to start on a high point: his birth in India to a loving set of parents. His childhood would continue for a short period along an upward slope in the wonderland where he was born, and then plunge dramatically at the age of six when he was sent to England for his education. His first five years in England were scarred by the terrible abuse he endured there from his foster mother. His only break during that period was the holiday month of December, when he would head to London to stay with his mother's family. After that period he was transferred to a school in Devon where he shone, becoming the editor of the school paper and embarking on his path as a writer, becoming a major success. I’m one of them. Yes, I see myself amongst the buffers, and reading Vallance’s notes is bitter fare. I don’t like my Covid inheritance: my mostly blind left eye and mostly deaf left ear. But then I remember that thanks to people who acted in ways diametrically opposed to this government’s necrophilia, I got to play again. They worked like crazy to make sure I didn’t die - and of course not just me, tens of thousands of us. In the here and now, reading the chilling stuff that this inquiry has brought to the surface, I see a boiling mix of Malthus and Calvin. That’s to say, not only have millions of people been treated as an unwanted surplus but Johnson thought it was pre-determined that they should be. That’s a sinister recipe.Heroic prose: includes legendsand tales. These are imagined stories that were once told only orally. Last summer, I saw a building burn down for the first time. And then I saw another. It taught me that everything that seems permanent and stable, is actually much more precarious than it appears to be. No matter the foundation, there is a chance that what you build will tumble down. In Minneapolis, the flames offered a message of hope. The instability of life, although jarring, allowed many community members to imagine what a new life could look like. Often, poets use literary devices in conjunction with other poetic elements. One famous example of a poem that layers multiple literary devices is Margaret Atwood’s “[you fit into me]”:

When will I be ready to grow? When will my time to flourish come? These are just a few questions that Levertov’s “Eye Mask” prompted me to ask. The poem, when taken literally, is very relatable. It’s a poem about not being ready for the light of day. It reminds of me of lying in bed each morning before work. I’ve never been one to jump out of bed, and confront the day. The challenge has made the poem feel like it was “for me.” It captures the sort of timidity I feel with each coming day. Ideas: the poem suggests that old age can be lonely and isolating because of the emphasis on negative descriptions and the way the poem starts with ‘Old and alone,’ as if this defines the woman in the poem. The woman is never named individually, just called ‘she’ so this character could represent many old women in a similar position.Elegy: a poem or song that is written in dedication to someone who has died. They often go into detail about the deceased person’s life, their attributes, what they accomplished, and who they left behind. There is usually an emphasis placed on what the world is going to be like now that they are gone. Examples include: ‘ The Truth the Dead Know‘ by Anne Sexton and ‘ On My First Daughter‘ by Ben Jonson. The imagery in this story-poem is particularly vivid, with bloody foam “whisking through the air,” and the endless implications of a woman with “sharp bright eyes, which always seemed the same.” But the poem is also brutally efficient: setting, twist, and moral, in four dense stanzas. Hunt makes it look easy, but those playful mid-line rhymes take some craft, and so does the overall light tone in a story that’s life-or-death for one of the participants, and the death of love for two of them. Its macabre vision of an older world where people watched animals slaughter each other for fun was gripping to me as a kid, but even today, the message still resonates, about not playing selfish games with people you supposedly care about. —TR “ To Nature ” (1836)

The poem’s author also serves as an object lesson on the limits of this approach, as Cummings used racial slurs in a few of his poems that defenders (including Roger Ebert) argue are not racist works. Perhaps that is true, but the words are there, and difficult to defend — few writers are thoughtless even in their rebellion, but they still must bear the responsibility that comes with their ambition to provoke the reader to feeling. My liberation must not come at the cost of another's pain.Iambic pentameter is thought to be the sound of natural conversation and so poets will often use it to create a conversational or natural feel to the poem.