1. There is no poetry code--no DHM.
2. How you say it says something--form is persuasive
3. Poetry is concrete.
4. Take words seriously.
5. Take images seriously.
6. Follow the logic and implications of the the image, metaphor, or symbol.
7. Reread.
8. Peel away the layers.
9. Context matters.
10. Tone
11. Shifts
12. Patterns and connections
13. Fundamentals: setting, occasion/plot, characters, point of view
Sophisticated Selma sat sipping sassafrass sodas while listening to Sally snore soundly.
Why use repeated sounds?
They are everywhere: idioms, cliches, advertisements and campaign slogans:
Repetition of (initial) consonant sounds in order to
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Welling water, winsome word,
Wind in warm wan weather.
Lie lightless, all the sparkles bleared and black and blind.
Alliteration creates melody, but for poets, this is not enough. Alexander Pope, an 18th-century English poet, said, "The sound must be an echo." Of what?
echo:
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
call attention to similar:
...dreadful was the din of hissing through the hall.
contrasts:
Depth of pain and height of passion.
link similar thoughts, images, or feelings:
...spikes of light
Find the alliterative sounds and determine their purposes in the following passages:
1. And hurled his glistening beams through the gloomy air.
2. Greedily they ingorged without restraint.
3. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read
With loads of learned lumber in his head.
4. Weaving the web of days that wove your doom.
The alliterated ds ensure that the reader understands the negative connotation of the weaving. Weaving in itself is a generally positive, relaxing pastime. However, the image and sound of weaving one’s doom is assuredly terrible.
5. He was haughty, she was humble,
He was loathed and she was loved.
The alliterated hs draw attention to “haughty” and “humble” in order to contrast the male and female. Similarly, “loathed” and “loved” also highlight the difference between these people.
Determine how they establish the mood in the following passages:
A pattern of images that appeal to the senses in order to suggest importance, establish mood, and develop theme.
Identify which senses are appealed to, and which is appealed to most strongly.
The hot July sun beat relentlessly down, casting an orange glare over the farm buildings, the fields, the pond. Even the usually cool green willows bordering the pond hung wilting and dry. The shimmering water seemed to hiss with rising steam. Our sun-baked backs ached for relief. We quickly pulled off our sweaty clothes and plunged into the pond, but the tepid water only stifled us and we soon climbed back onto the brown, dusty bank. Our parched throats longed for something cool -- a strawberry ice, a tall frosted glass of lemonade. We pulled on our clothes and headed through the dense, crackliing underbrush, the sharp briars pulling at our damp trousers, until we reached the field -- and the yellow-streaked green of the watermelon patch. Just the thought of the water-laden fruit made us run, and, as we began to cut open the nearest melon, we could smell the pungent skin mingling with the dusty odor of dry earth. The soft, over-ripe melon gave way with a crack, revealing the deep pink sugar-heavy and tender relief inside.
What emotion does the imagery (comprised of images) arouse?
From Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Lotus-Eaters":
To which senses appealed to?
Which sensory images are most vivid?
What dominant emotion does the imagery arouse?
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
A departure from literal language to explore ideas through images and implication.
When it's good:
Insightful
Forceful and efficient
Inventive
Fitting
The coffee was so strong you could stand a spoon in it.
The coffee was so strong you could trot a mouse on it.
An implied comparison between two unrelated things, indicating a similarity between some attributes found in both things.
It does not use "like" or "as." Thus, its communication is more powerful.
All the world's a stage.
Fred's a pig at the table.
The screaming headlines announced the crime.
Life's a short summer; man, a flower.
Tumbleweeds are the lost children of the desert
Death is a black camel, which kneels at the gates of all.
Fog
The fog comes
On little cat feet.
It sits looking
Over harbor and city
On silent haunches
And then moves on
- C. Sandburg
My love and My heart (refrain)
But my love she is a kitten
And my heart's a ball of string.
An explicit comparison between two unrelated things, indicating a similarity between some attributes found in both things.
Similes use "like" or "as."
John swims like a fish.
He sleeps like a log.
Marie eats like a bird.
The dawn came up like thunder.
(from) A Red, Red Rose
O my love's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June.
O my love's like a melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
- R. Burnes
Exercise
Venn diagram of "city" and "heart"
The Eagle
Alfred Lord Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
A kind of metaphor in which an animal, inanimate object, or idea is given a human quality.
Fear clutched at his throat.
Winter undresses the trees.
The hot sun snarled down at us.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain.
An exaggeration to heighten effect.
I could eat a horse.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till all the seas go dry.
There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
—Jane Kenyon
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
—Li-Young Lee
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.