Simple-ish but interesting poems about life on rural Ireland and the role of poetry in society in its most quotidian sense.
9/23/2019
{Poet Spotlight #1} William Wordsworth
Quaint and inconsistent, but oh, so good when good.
9/09/2019
Scansion 101
Scansion is when you scan (hah) a few lines of a poem and break each down to feet, according to stress patterns, which is supposedly possible because English is a stress-timed language. Never mind that the thing is a bit of a scam, unless the poet is really regular with their meter, and reads it like you'd read words... normally. Which a lot of times poets do not. But hey, it's on the exam, so we review it.
PS. A feminine ending is when you finish a line on an unfinished foot with an unstressed syllable (which is hard to do, because you tend to stress the last word even when it's). Not sexist at all.
PS2. Graphs taken from Mary Oliver's "The Line" (from A Poetry Handbook).
PS2. Graphs taken from Mary Oliver's "The Line" (from A Poetry Handbook).
Villanelles 101
It's a song, folks.
S1:
1
2
3
S2:
4
5
1
S3:
7
8
3
S4:
10
11
1
S5:
13
14
3
S6:
16
17
1
3
In a desperate attempt to remember the villanelle rhyme scheme, here is an intro with some suggestions for this apparently very common and pedestrian yet awfully complicated form.
It has 6 stanzas in total, 5 with three lines and a "resolutive" one of four at the end. Some lines are repeated, so I'll just number them because honestly it's complicated. Also, the rhyme scheme is aba.
S1:
1
2
3
S2:
4
5
1
S3:
7
8
3
S4:
10
11
1
S5:
13
14
3
S6:
16
17
1
3
The repetition is often subverted in contemporary villanelles, 'cause poetry, you know. More contemporary authors will usually change the repeated lines for effect, such as Wendy Cope's twisted and hilarious Reading Scheme, and Elizabeth Bishop's masterful One Art.
Figures 101
Literally just a list of all the figures that were mentioned in class or were included on the reviews (with a brief explanation for memory purposes).
1. Simile: comparison that uses like, as, than, appears, or seems
2. Metaphor: implicit comparison.
3. Explicit metaphor: obvious identification
4. Implied metaphor: more subtle
5. Extended or controlling metaphor: part or all of a poem consists of a series of related metaphors or similes
6.— Conceit: extended metaphor that is particularly clever, witty, and surprising. Used especially by John Donne ("the fly" guy) and Emily Dickinson.
7. Pun
8. Synecdoche: a form of metaphor where one part stands for the whole, or the whole is substituted for one part.
9. Metonymy: a play on words based on association. With metonymy, an object is referred to in terms of something closely related to it, yet not actually a part of it
10. Personification: attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things
11. Apostrophe: address to someone who is absent or to something nonhuman. (Is this actually an attitude?)
12. Hyperbole: exaggeration
13. Litote or understatement: opposite figure of speech that says less than intended, but still intensifies.
14. —Hyperbaton: departure from ordinary word order.
15. Anaphora: repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive sentences, clauses or lines
16.— Epiphora: repetition of closing word or words at the end of clauses, sentences or lines
17. Isocolon: the use of similar grammatical structures in two or more clauses or phrases
18. Paradox: statement that initially appears self-contradictory, but turns out to make sense.
19.— Oxymoron: condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used together
19.1. Catachresis: when the oxymoron is of the senses, E.g. “blind mouths”
20. Symbol: word that suggests more than its literal meaning, culturally-bound
20.1. Conventional symbol: rose, night, laurel, spring
20.2. Literary or contextual symbol: goes beyond traditional meanings and can have multiple interpretations
21. Allegory: Narration or description usually restricted to a single meaning, emphasis on meaning
22. Irony
23. Epithet: an adjective or adjectival phrase that serves to emphasize a distinctive quality of a person or thing
24. Onomatopeia: use of a word that resembles the sound it denotes—
25. Alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds. Based on sound rather than spelling—
26. Assonance: repetition of the same vowel sound in nearby words
27. Euphony: agreeable sound 28. Cacophony: unpleasant sound
29. Aphaeresis and Apocope: Omitting the beginning or last syllable or letter of a word, respectively.
30. Aposiopesis: stopping suddenly in midcourse, leaving a statement unfinished
31. Chiasmus: figure where the sense of a line or clause is inverted, as in a mirror
32. Climax: mounting by degrees through linked words or phrases, usually in increasing weight and in parallel construction
33. Enallage: an effective grammatical mistake
34. Asyndeton: the omission of an expected conjunction
35. Metalepsis: metonymy twice removed from the original
36. Tmesis: rhetorical device in which a word or a phrase is divided into two parts, or another word is inserted in between the two parts of the word already separated
37. Parenthesis: explanatory or qualifying clause or sentence which is inserted into a paragraph or stanza, generally presented between parenthesis, square brackets, commas and lines
38. Ellipses:the umbrella term for the figure of omission
39. Syllepses: one verb used for two or more clauses
40. Praecisio: all words are omitted, the refusal to speak at all (why is there even a name for this?)
41. Metaplasmus: misspelling words on purpose (by adding or subtracting)
42. Prosthesis: addition to the beginning
43. Epenthesis: addition to the middle
44. Proparalepsis: addition to the end
45. Aphaeresis: subtraction from the beginning
46. Syncope: subtraction from the middle
47. Apocope: subtraction from the conclusion
48. Synaloepha: elimination of a vowel/contraction of two words
49. Antisthecons: substitutions
50. Metatheses: rearrangements
51. Hendiadys: adding a conjunction between adjective-plus-noun/verb+verb and invert the order, usually creating a noun-and-noun construction
Odes 101
Originated in Greece, odes used to be performed as songs in religious and other notable ceremonies, accompanied by the lyre.
Simply put, it's a celebratory poem, usually exulting a specific person or, later on, object.
The form evolved through the centuries, so for clarity (and to be helpful as a review for my midterm) I will use the divisions shown in class.
(1) Pindar
Theban lyric poet, greatest exponent of the genre, with a great focus on the choral aspect.
Used regular metrical and stanzaic limits (triads): strophe, antistrophe, epode.
Pindaric (duh)
Solemn and hyperbolical, employed to celebrate gods and victories.
Epinician
Written on commission, to celebrate specific athletes and their victories.
(2) Horace
A moderate practitioner of Epicureanism, Horace was much less on board with grand celebrations than his predecesor, so his odes express a gentle irony.
Horatian (again, duh)
Usually two or four line stanza pattern and much more personal, though his later ones become more solemn.
(3) 19th Century
With the advent of Romanticism and its nostalgic fondness for Classical forms (while at the same time achieving independence from them and their authors), the ode became synonym with gravity and nobility. Romantic odes are usually long, address the subject or evoke some particular occasion. They go beyond the merely personal and become reflexive of grander themes, even philosophical.
(4) 20th Century
Are odes even possible by this point? They feel too grandiose, promise too much. Still, we might find some that either playful or nostalgic/bitter.
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