POETRY

 uses 5 senses
 beyond what we see
 not just the surface, it is what beneath
 finds the thought and the thought finds words. – Robert Frost
 Most distilled and most powerful – Rita Dove
 Communicate before it is understood – T.S. Eliot
 Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn –Thomas Gray
 Teaches us music, metaphor, condensation and specify –Walter Mosley
 Lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world – Perey Bysshe shelley
 Most emotionally charged means of written expression and it consists of
words arranged in patterns of sound and imagery to spare an emotional, and
intelectual, response from us.
 Paintings of language
 Prose explains, but poetry sings.
 Language in poetry is musical, precise, memorable, and magical.

Language of poetry: Imagery

Imagery- mental pictures created by words.
Literal Images – describing directly; Touch, taste, auditory..
1. Visual Images – they consist of things we can see.
2. Tactile Image – they appeal to our sense of touch.
3. Auditory Images – Sound if things
- onomatopoeia ex: bam! Boom!
4. Olfactory Images – smells of things
5. Kinestetic Images – actions or motions
6. Gustatory Images – taste of things

Figurative Images
- words are used to describe one thing by comparing it to something use with which
we are more familiar.
Simile: “Like” or “as”
Metaphor: comaprison but no “like” and “as”
Personification
Sound Patterns
Two elements:
1. Rhythym: pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.
2. Rhyme: repitition of similar sounds in the two or more words
Rhythm: pattern in poetry called meter.
Ex. “Mary had a little lamb”

Things to Remember
 Poetry derives from an oral speaking and singing tradition.
 Poetry is written to be read orally.
  A poem’s movement and core building block comes from the rhythmic
measure of its line, or meter.
 Measured in stressed and unstressed syllables, the meter is very similar to
musical time signatures.
 A reader can deduce pace, emotion, and the spirit of a poem from its meter.
Meter is important
 A poetic line is written in metrical feet – a unit between oral pauses.
 It is important to know and understand two sets of measures when analyzing
and interpreting poetry.
 The most common meter of classic English poetic forms, iambic pentameter,
constitutes five metrical feet per line, with each metrical foot combining an
unstressed and stressed syllable:
Deciphering Poetry
 Depending on your perspective, a line of poetry can be enlightening,
entertaining or confusing.
 What does the poet mean?
 Every line of good poetry contains its music and its treasures
 As readers and interpreters of the work, we have to use the proper reading
and speaking tools to uncover the diamonds hiding within the words.
 To start, its best to ask a perfunctory question: “From what within the poet
or the poet’s life did the poem originate?”
Soul
 When a poem arises, it feels like the bosom of the poet lifts up and births the
spoken or written moment.
 The point of origin lies at the furthest depyhs of the poet, often calling into
play ancestral memories, divine or universal inspiration, and insights or
truths that “magically” resonate with the reader.
Mind
 The intellect plays a ital part in the creation of a poem, bringing perspective,
structure, and word choice to the experience conveyed on each line.
 Worldviews, social and cultural attitudes, depth of thought, comparison and
contrast, and conclusions all inform the poet as he or she writes.
Heart
 Nothing moves a poem like expressed emotion
 The vast majority of poems spring from seven emotions: anger, jot, sadness,
fear, courage, lust, and excitement.
 Word choice, pace, punctuation (or lack thereof), and meter convey the
poet’s state of emotion.
 If transferred purely to the poem, they will likely provoke the same feeling in
the reader.
Experience and observation
 A poem is a sinle experience or observetion, distilled to a fine spirit by the
poet’s life experiece and refined by his or her intellect and choice of words.
 Every poem conveys an experience or observation of some kind.
Types of Poetry
Vocabulary words
Fixed Verse
 A from of poetry for which there are prescribed and established rules for the
number of line, meter, line length, and ryhme pattern.
Foot/feet vs. Syllable
 A metrical foot consists of two or more accented and/or unaccented syllables
that convey a rhythm. The five most common metrical feet in English-
language poetry include:
Dimeter: Two feet per line
Trimeter: Three feet per line
Tetrameter: Four feet per line
Pentameter: Five feet per line
Hexameter: Six feet per line
Meter
 The rhythmic measyre of a line of spoken or written poetry, measured in
stressed and unstressed syllables, very similar in origin and intent to a
musical time siganture. Among the most common types of metrical feet used
in poetry are:
 Iamb: Unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable (“He took”)
 Trochee: Stressed syllable, followed by an unstressed syllable (“Money”)
 Spondee: Two stressed syllabes (“Stop him!”)
 Anapest: two unstressed syllables, followed by a stressed syllable (“You must call”)
 Daetyl: a stressed syllable, followed by two unstressed syllables (“Superman”)
 These metters are used to define the metrical feet in a poetic line.
 For example, an iambic pentameter is five (penta) metrical feet written in iambs
(each foot consisting of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable).
Narrative Poetry
 Narrative poems tell stories in verse.
 A number of them are very old and were originally intended to be recited to
audiences, such as Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”.
 For children, perhaps the most accessible narrative poems are ballads.
 Traditionally, a ballad contains four lines, each with eaight syllables and with the
secondand fourth lines rhyming.
 Not all ballads follow this scheme, but all include a setting, character, and events
with a climax.
 The stories are often tragic and plaintive.
Examples: “The Broken-legg’d Man” by John Mackey Shaw,
“The Ballad of a Bachelor” by Ellis Parker Butler
Lyric Poetry
 Lyric poetry typically describes the poet’s innermost feelings or candid observations
and evokes a musical quality in its sounds and rhythms.
 Lyric poems exhibit an endless variety of forms.
Haiku
 A lyric, unrhymed poem of Japanese origin with seventeen syllables divided into
three lines.
  It is usually on the subject of nature and humans’ relationship to nature.
 Successful haiku uses metaphor to give us a fresh and imaginative look at something
we may view as quite ordinary.
Cinquain
 A five-line stanza apparently of medieval origin, often with two, four, six, eight, and
two syllables respectively in the five lines.
Free Verse
 Adhering to no predetermined rules, but usually with its own intricte patterns of
rhyme and rhythm.
 It requires the same thoughtful choice of words and rhythmical patterns as the more
rigid stanza forms.
Concrete Poetry
 The words of a poem are arranged to form a pictorial representation of the poem’s
subject.
Limerick
 The limerick is Ireland’s most famous poetic export, a catchy light verse consisting
of a series of five-line stanzas with a aabba rhyme scheme.
 The limerick will never be labeled a literary classic, nor does it stand up to Ireland’s
other rich and complex lyrical poetic forms, but it has enjoyed great popularity for
more than two centuries.
 The five-line structure lives within the jokes, puns, pranks, and wisecracks of
countries immortal and ordinary poets, making it one of the most famous English-
language fixed verse forms.
 From pub to campus to nursery rhymes, the limerick lives on.
Writing a Limerick
 The key to writing a limerick is to devise an opening line, and then let the verse
tumble out – crazy though it may seem.
 The faster you roll with the verse, the more natural and flashy the limerick.
 That’s the goal.
Establish the subject
 The first line of limerick needs to establish the subject without giving the story’s
intensions away:
 ~ x ~ ~ x ~ ~ x
 There once was a man on the run
 This line sets up a fast journey (he’s running, not walking).
 It also leads to a few quick question: Why? Where to? Who is he? Questions like
these should spring from the first line of a limerick, opening the floodgates to the
poem.
 When crafting this first line, don’t forget to fit your words into typical rhythm of the
opener.
 You’ll need an eight syllable line containing one iamb (an unstressed syllable
followed by a stressed syllable) and two anapests (two unstressed syllables
followed by one stressed syllable).
Set up the action
 The second line defines the subject, or the consequences of a past action the subject
took.
 Again, it is important to give the reader (or listener) this information to set up the
action of the poem.
  The relationship between the first and second line is made even stronger by the
rhyme scheme.
 ~ x ~ x ~ ~ x
 Who lost his mind in the sun
 Here you have two iambs and an anapet.
 This second line’s anapest matches the eniding anapest in the first line.
 Not only do these two pairs of rhyming anapets help keep a conistent rhythm, but
the rhythm also helps the rhyme ring true.
Make the switch
 The next two lines explain the action taken by the subject, which are the guts of the
limerick.
 You’re now switching from trimeter (three metrical feet) to dimeter (two metrical
feet), so make your two beats per line count.
 ~ x ~ ~ x
 He ran down the street
 ~ x ~ ~ x
 No brains lead his feet
The close.
 Next comes the punch line.
 You can use wordplay, a surprise twist or a tongue twister.
 If you follow Edward Lear’s model of nonsense verse, his term for a limerick, the last
line can be anything you’d like.
 ~ x ~ x ~ ~ x
 And never had so much fun
OVERALL
 The key to writing a limerick is to let your ideas fly through the poem while also
bending and contorting the language into the proscribed rhythm and rhyme.
 This will make your suprising and humorous content slip right into joyous sound of
the limerick.
 Open up your thesaurus and find the best word that’ll fit to match your rhythm.

Sonnets
Basic understanding
 Originated by Giacomo de Lentino in te 13th century, the sonnet is the most
universally known poetic form in the English language.
 Although it was already well-practiced in Italy and England, the sonnet
vaulted into the literary stratosphere when it became the vehicle of choice
for William Shakespeare in his plays and poetic works.
 Perhaps Shakespeare was not the best sonnet writer, nor the most creative,
but he was to poetry what Walt Disney was to animation.
 Shakespeare’s sonnets (154 of which have survived to this day) expanded
opportunities for poets, academics, and students to bring poetry and drama
more deeply into their lives.
Definition
 No fewer than 20 variations of the 14-line form have been published since
Salvatore di Giacomo first banded together two quatrains and two teroets.
  Some crtail to 10 lines (Curtal Sonnets), others expand to 16 lines, and still
others close with half-lines
 Many people find that the most enjoyable way to read the form is the Crown
of Sonnets, consisting of seven sonnets in which the last line of one serves as
the opening line of the next.
 John Donne’s Holy Sonnets is a prime example of this type of construction.
 While there is a wide variety of sonnet adaptations, six variations are the
most prominent: Petrarchan, Curtal, Spenserian, Shakespearean, Miltonic,
and Terza rima.
Use the Shakespearean rhyme scheme
 The shakespearean sonnet is a good place to start if you’re a novice
sonneteer because it has the most regular and straightforward rhyme
scheme and structure.
 The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet always follows this pattern:
 ABABCDCDEFEFGG
 These letters represent the sound that appears at the end of each line.
 So, following this pattern of alternating rhymes, we find that the last words of
the first and third lines must rhyme; the second and fourth; the fifth and
seventh; the sixth and eighth; and so on, ending in a final rhyming couplet.
Write your lines in iambic pentameter
 Iambic pentameter is a type of poetic maeter, meaning that it’s a way of
measuring out the rhythm of a line.
 Iambic pentameter is a very regular meter and is one f the most common
meters in English-language poetry
 “Pentameter” derrives from the greek word pente (meaningfive), and thus
has five poetic “feet”.
 Each foot is a unit of two syllables; thus, there are ten syllables in a line of
pentameter.
 “iambic” means that each foot is an “iamb”. Iambs are comprised of an
unstressed, followed by a stressed syllable, resulting in a “ta-TUM” rhythm.
The word “helLO” is an example of an Iambic foot.
 So a line of iambic pentameter is a line of five iambic feet, resulting in a 10-
syllable rhythm of ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM.
 An example of a line of iambic oentameter is “Shall I/ comPARE thee TO/ a
SUM/ mer’s DAY?”
 Iambs are comprised of an unstressed, followed by a stressed syllable,
resulting in a “ta-TUM” rhythm.
 Line of Iambic pentameter contains:
 Five iambic feet
 Resulting in a 10-syllable rhythm of
 Ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-TUM ta-Tum ta-TUM
Vary your meter from time to time
 Although the majority of the lines in a Shakespearean sonnet should be
written in iambic pentameter, the rhythm can get plodding and predictible if
you use it exclusively.
  By varying the stress pattern slighlty at key moments, you can break up the
pattern and make the poem more aurally interesting for the reader, and also
use the variation to draw attention to key phrases in your poem.
 For exampe, the third line of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” begins with a
spondee, meaning two stressed syllables in a row: TUM-TUM
 After two lines of perfect iambic pentameter, he wrote: “ROUGH WINDS/ do
SHAKE/ the DAR/ ling BUDS/ of MAY”
 This both breaks up the rhythm for little variation and draws attention to the
roughness of the rough winds being described.

Follow the Shakespearean sonnet’s stanzaic structure.

 A Shakespearean sonnet is compose of three heroic quatrains and a heroic
couplet.
 A heroic quatrain is a group of four lines of iambic pentameter in an ABAB
ryhme scheme; a heroic couplet is a group of two lines of iambic pentameter
in an AA rhyme scheme.
 In a Shakespearean sonnet, the three heroic quatrains are the “ABAB CDCD
EFEF” portion of the ryhme scheme
 The heroic couplet is the “GG” closing.
 You can separate these stanzas with blank lines, or leave them all together in
an unbroken poem, but the sonnet should move as a function of these
discrete stanzas.

Develop your stanzas thoughtfully

 Although your poem should have a single focus, each stanza of the sonnet
should develop the idea further.
 Think of each quatrain as a little thought bubble, like a paragraph, in which
you explore an element of the subject of your poem.
 Each quatrain should build toward the final couplet, where you will have a
turn, or a volta.
 The turn, which occurs in the 13th line of the Shakespearean sonnet, offers a
resolution or insight into to the problem developed in the first three
quatrains.
 It may help to examine an example, such as Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 30”.
Quatrain 1 introduces the situation:
When…
Quatrain 2 begins with the transition word:
Then…
Quatrain 3 begins again with the transition word:
Then…
The closing couplet marks a new thought:
But…
Choose your subject matter carefully
 Although you can write a Shakespearean sonnet about anything, they are
traditionally love poems; you might keep this in mind if you want to write a
purely traditional sonnet.
 Note too that because of the top-heavy stanzaic structure of the
Shakespearean sonnet, the form does not lend itself well to higly complex or
abstract subjects.
 The turn and resolution must come quickly, in the final two lines, so choose a
subject that can be easily reolved with a witty closing couplet.
Last Tips
 As you begin writing your own sonnet, remember to use your first twelve
lines to express your motive for the poem, with the closing two lines
providing a resolution of that intent.
 Many sonneteers use this initial twelve lines to display a problem, and then
they use the closing two lines to resolve this issue.
 Whether yoou choose to write about love, religion, politics, or philosophy,
the loical form of the sonnet will help fuel your emotions.

One-act plays
- similar to a short story in its limitations
- there is a complete drama wihin one act.
- it is brief, condensed, and single in effect
- One situation or episode is presented, permitting no minor plots or side actions
that may distract attention for te single purpose and effect being developed.
- Characters are few in number, quickly introduced, and very limited in character
development.
- Dialogue and plot must carry the action forward smoothly and quickly.

Definition
- a one-act play is play that has only one act, as distinct from plays that occur over
several acts.
- One-act plays may consists of one or more scenes.
- In recent years the 10-minute play known as "flash drama" has emerged as a
popular sub-genre of the one-act play, especially in writing competitions.
- The origin of the one-act play may be traced to the very beginning of drama: in
ancient Greece, Cyclops, a satire play by Euripides, is an early example.

Elements of One-act play

- Theme
- Plot
- Character
- Dialogue

Theme
- necessary
- Ask yourself: What is the play about?
- Revenge? Self-discovery?
- Mind needs to be clear about the theme
- Characters, plots, and sub-plots need to point to support the theme
- Sub-plots might be missing in one-act plays

Plot
- Different in one act play from a full length play
- In a one act play, there is only time for one significant event
- Determining place for hero, where all can be won or lost
- Events leading to this, can be included without being shown to audience
- The events that follow must be inferred or understood by the audience

Character
- there is not much are to develop all the characters
- The hero or the protagonist's character needs to be more developed and focused
on
- The antagonist can be developed to show conflict
- Some other characters can also be a little bit developed to move the story forward

Dialogue
- most important
- Economy is the key aspect here
- Each line must be crafted carefully to focus on the theme, the incident and the
character of the protagonist
- The dialogues need not be terse, but concise and full of meaning
- Dialogues irrelevant to the plot, must be altered or omitted immediately

HOW TO WRITE ONE ACT PLAY

Story Development
- create a world that's true to real life or fantastical or that mixes the mundane with
the magical.
- But whatever set of rules you create for that world, make sure you follow them.
- Write a conflict that builds as the play progresses. As you structure the conflict,
think in terms of your play having a beginning, a middle and an end.
- Write characters that want something (which puts them in conflict with other
characters) and try to get what they want at every moment.
- Make sure that each character has something at stake, a consequence if he doesn't
get what he wants.
- Create a "ticking clock" that puts the characters under pressure to get what they
want right away.
- Make sure there is a good reason, an "event", for your play.
- It's not enough for two characters to sit around and talk for a while and then leave.
- There needs to be some important reason why we're watching them now, at this
particular moment.
- Write dialogue that illuminates your characters and advances the plot at the same
time.
- Make each character speak in distinctive voice.
- If you have trouble with that, try imagining a specific actor you know - even if it's
someone who will never play the part-in the role.
- Do not have a character tell us something she can show us instead.
- For Example, it's much more effective to hide under the bed than to say "I'm
afraid."
- Give each character a "moment", something that justifies the character's existence
in your play and that makes him attractive for an actor to play.

The Rules
* use 8.5" by 11" paper
* Top and bottom margins are about 1"
* Right margin is also 1". Left margin, 1"
* Page numbering starts on page 2, place a page number in the upper right hand
corner (in the header)
* Do not number the Cast Page

Cast Page
* Detail your characters' age, gender and anything else that is essential to casting
* If necessary include a little spin on "who" your characters are
* Do not write exhaustive descriptions of the characters' behavior; you have to show
this in the play.
(example notes)

Description Element
* typically, the setting description is left indented at approximately 3.25" (a little
more than half across the page,) running to the right margin
* When your play begins, the reader wants to know the setting and who and what is
seen on stage
(Example notes)

Characther Name
* Characters' names may appear in two ways: before dialogue and contained in the
stage directions.
* Character names that precede dialogue are always capitalized aligned at 2.5" tab
stop.
(Example notes)

Dialogue Element
* dialogue, which is always mixed case, single-spaced, typically runs margin to
margin and follows the character name on the next line.
* A blank line follows between the dialogue and the next character's name.
* Sometimes stage directions interrupt dialogue, but each adheres to its own
formatting rules.
(Example notes)

What is monologue?
* is a speech presented by a single character
* Most often to express their mental thoughts aloud
* Dierectly addresses another character or the audience.