What is Poetry?

"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason." -Samuel Johnson-

“Poetry is the best words in the best order.” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge-

“I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence—this may look like affectation—but it is my real opinion—it is the lava of the imagination, whose eruption prevents an earthquake.” -Lord Byron-

“All that is worth remembering in life is the poetry of it.” -William Hazlitt-

“The poem... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the ​ poem is not a thing we see—it is, rather, a light by which we may see—and what we see is life.” -Robert Penn Warren-

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.” -T.S. Eliot-

“With the farming of a verse/ Make a vineyard of the curse.” -W.H. Auden-

List of Terms:

1.Meter-The dominant pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry (verse) ​ 2.Rhyme-Correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words. ​ Variety 1: Visual rhyme-Occurs when two words are spelled with similar endings but have ​ ​ different sounds, e.g., “plough” and “rough”, “love” and “move”. Variety 2: Slant rhyme-Occurs when words end with similar, but not identical sounds, e.g., ​ ​ “faces” and “houses” or “rejoin” and “refine”. William Butler Yeats’ poetry is full of these. 3.Alliteration-The repetition of consonant sounds within a group of words placed closely ​ together (e.g., “The wolf that follows the fawn that flies” or “Behemoth, biggest born of earth upheaved”) 4.Assonance-The repetition of vowel sounds within a group of words placed closely together ​ (e.g., “On either side the river lie” or “When I have fears that I may cease to be”) 5.Caesura-A pause in the middle of a line of poetry (e.g., “My name is Ozymandias, King of ​ Kings” or “To err is human; to forgive, divine”) 6.Apostrophe-A literary device when an absent person, or thing, or abstraction is addressed as ​ though in fact present. (e.g., “Death, be not proud” or “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon”) 7.Blank verse-Unrhymed iambic pentameter. This is the meter of most of Shakespeare’s plays, ​ John Milton’ Paradise Lost, and many other great works. 8.Imagery-Use of figurative or descriptive language that appeals to any of the five senses ​ (e.g., “The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/ And murmuring of innumerable bees”) 9.Simile-A figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another by means of the words ​ “like” or “as” (e.g., “She sat like patience on a monument,/ Smiling at grief.” or “Beauty, like ice, our footing does betray:/ Who can tread sure in the smooth slippery way?”) 10.Epigram-A very short poem, usually witty and often mocking. (“God bless our good and ​ gracious king,/ Whose promise none relies on;/ Who never said a foolish thing,/ Nor ever did a wise one.” or “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?/ Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”) 11.Metaphor-A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to ​ which it is not literally applicable. (“When I have fears that I may cease to be/ Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain” or “Flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust/ That measures all our time.” Or “All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.” “Death hath ten thousand several doors/ For men to take their exits.”) 12.Sonnet-A poem of fourteen lines, typically written in iambic pentameter. There are two major ​ categories of sonnet: the Italian, also called the Petrarchan sonnet, and the English, which is often called the Shakespearean sonnet. The difference between the two is in their respective patterns of rhyme: an Italian sonnet is usually divided into an octave (group of eight lines) rhyming abba abba and a sestet (group of six lines) rhyming cdc cdc, or alternatively cde cde. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ The English sonnet is divided into three quatrains (groups of four lines) rhyming abab cdcd efef ​ and a concluding couplet rhyming gg. A famous example of the Italian sonnet form is John ​ ​ Donne’s “Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God. An equally well-known example of the English sonnet is William Shakespeare’s “That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold.” 13.Ballad-A type of narrative poem, medieval in origin, that tells a story of short to moderate ​ length. Usually written in rhymed quatrains. Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” and John Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” are famous examples. 14.Epic-A long poem written in an elevated style in which are told the exploits and adventures ​ of ancient heroes and other mythical characters. Epics typically begin with an invocation of the muse, and nearly always involve the interactions of God or gods and men. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Milton’s Paradise Lost are all great examples of epic. 15.Lyric poem-Generally a short poem descriptive of a wide range of subjects, from love to ​ nature to joy to dejection to goldfish. Lyric is normally understood as a category separate from narrative poetry. 16.Narrative poem-Any poem which tells a complete story. “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, ​ “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred Lord Tennyson and “Venus and Adonis” by William Shakespeare are well-known examples. 17.Elegy-A serious, normally melancholy reflective poem that frequently takes the form of a ​ lament for a deceased friend or loved one. John Milton’s “Lycidas”, Percy Shelley’s “Adonais” and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” are among the most read examples in English. 18.Allusion-Indirect reference to a person, place, or event; in English literature, allusions are ​ frequently Biblical and classical, and can have either a comic or serious intention: e.g., “Death as the Psalmist sayeth, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair?” or “It out herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.” or “See what a grade was seated on this brow,/ Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,/ An eye like Mars’ to threaten and command…”. Pastoral-A subgenre of love poetry in which the lives and romances of shepherds and ​ shepherdesses are idealized; very popular in the 18th century.

Major Periods of English Poetry (From Sixteenth Century Onwards)

Renaissance/ Elizabethan Era Roughly 1550-1600 Major poets include: Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, and Ben Jonson.

Representative Works: Shakespeare’s Plays and Sonnets, Spenser’s Amoretti, Epithalamion and Fairie Queene, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella

Metaphysical and Cavalier Period 1600-1675 Major poets include: John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Robert Herrick, and John Milton.

Representative Works: Donne’s Holy Sonnets, Herbert’s The Temple, Herrick’s love poems, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Il Pensoroso, L’Allegro, and Lycidas

Restoration and Neoclassical Period 1675-1789 Major Poets include: John Dryden, Samuel Butler, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Oliver Goldsmith.

Representative Works: Butler’s Hudibras, Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe, Pope’s Dunciad and Essay on Criticism, Swift’s Description of a City Shower

Romantic Period 1789-1840 Major Poets include: William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats

Representative Works: Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan, Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, Keats’ Sonnets, Ode to a Grecian Urn, and Ode to Autumn

Sonnet XXXIX (from Astrophel and Stella) (Renaissance) By Sir Philip Sidney

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, (A) The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, (B) The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, (A) Th' indifferent judge between the high and low. (B) With shield of proof shield me from out the prease (A) Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw: (B) O make in me those civil wars to cease; (A) I will good tribute pay, if thou do so. (B) Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, (C) A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, (D) A rosy garland and a weary head: (C) And if these things, as being thine by right, (D) Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, (E) Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. (E)

Easter Wings (Metaphysical) By George Herbert

Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store, Though foolishly he lost the same, Decaying more and more, Till he became Most poor:

With Thee O let me rise, As larks, harmoniously, And sing this day Thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne; And still with sicknesses and shame Thou didst so punish sinne, That I became Most thin.

With Thee Let me combine, And feel this day Thy victory; For, if I imp my wing on Thine, Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Selection from An Essay on Man: Epistle II (Neoclassical) By Alexander Pope

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much: Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd; Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal (Romantic) By William Wordsworth

A slumber did my spirit seal; (A) I had no human fears: (B) She seemed a thing that could not feel (A) The touch of earthly years. (B)

No motion has she now, no force; (C) She neither hears nor sees; (D) Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, (C) With rocks, and stones, and trees. (D)

My Last Duchess (Victorian) By Robert Browning

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said “Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not Her husband’s presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace—all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech—which I have not—to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master’s known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! The Unknown Citizen (Modernist)

By W.H. Auden

(To JS/07 M 378

This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.