poetic-terms诗歌术语

Introductory poetic termsSound devicesAlliteration，Assonance, Consonance, Onomatopoeia, Rhyme, Rhyme schemeMeterBallad Meter, Iambic pentameterFormStanza, Couplet, Quatrain, Free Verse, Sonnet, BalladMeaning devicesImagery, Metaphor, Simile, Personification, Pun, Allusion, Paradox, Symbol, ApostropheTwo Linguistic Devices Inversion, ParallelismSound devices All sound devices are interesting because they brings together words that sound alike but do not necessarily have anything else in common. In Fire and Ice the two words in the title are opposite in meaning but have the same vowel sound (assonance). The poem, which at times suggests that the two are the same in a much as both can end the world, would be much less effective if the words lacked this assonance. This is why poetry is so difficult to translate. Alliteration: repetition of the initial sounds (usually consonants) of stressed syllables in nearby words or lines, usually at word beginnings. From Lord Tennysons Break, Break, Break: And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill. From Lord Byrons She Walks in Beauty: She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; Assonance: the relatively close succession of the same or similar vowel sounds, but with different consonants: a kind of vowel rhyme. From William Carol Williams The Red Wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickensConsonance: the relatively close succession of the same end consonants with different vowel sounds: a kind of consonant rhyme. Notice all the r sounds in the last six lines of Hyla Brook: Its bed is left a faded paper sheetOf dead leaves stuck together by the heat - A brook to none but who remember long.This as it will be seen is other farThan with brooks taken otherwhere in song.We love the things we love for what they are. Onomatopoeia: any word whose sound echoes its meaning. In The Oven Bird Robert Frost uses the word loud onomatopoetically. There is a singer everyone has heard,Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird. Frost emphasizes the loudness of loud by placing it alone at the beginning of the line the only line in the poem that starts with an accented (stressed) syllable. (See iambic pentameter)Rhyme occurs when the last vowel and consonant sounds of two words are identical. In Robert Frosts Fire and Ice fire rhymes with desire; ice with twice and suffice; hate with great. Generally speaking, Rhyme refers to rhymes at the end of the line. Other rhymes are called internal rhymes. Sometimes rhymes are only approximate. These are called near or slant rhymes. Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what Ive tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.Emily Dickinson often employs near rhyme as in the second stanza of When Night is almost Done. I never spoke with God,Nor visited in heaven;Yet certain am I of the spotAs if the chart were given.Rhyme scheme: The pattern established by the arrangement of rhymes in a stanza or poem, generally described by using letters of the alphabet to denote the recurrence of rhyming lines:Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what Ive tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would sufficeabaabcbcbMeter Meter is the beat of a poem. In English, meter was originally measured by stresses and a line ended after a specified number of accented syllables. Since the 1400s meter has tended to be measured by accented and unaccented syllables. The unit of meter is called the foot. The length of lines is described by the number of repeated meters in the line. (1), dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7) and octameter (8). The most common foot in English is the iamb, which consists of two syllables, the second one of which is accented. Another common foot is the trochee (also two syllables, but with the first accented); some metrical feet (dactyl and anapest) have three syllables. We will focus mainly on the iamb. Here are some iambic (tetrameter) lines from the beginning of William Wordsworths I wandered lonely as a cloud: I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high oer vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils,Beside the lake, beneath the trees. Notice that the next line breaks the rhythmic pattern and this stands out: Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. It is as if a picture is suddenly given motion, as if the breeze blew across the poem.Ballad meter is the source of much debate. The debate focuses on whether you should just count the number of accented syllables (stresses) in lines alternating between four stresses and three, or see these lines as containing four and three feet (usually iambic or trochaic) respectively. Ballad meter is also called hymn meter and you should be able to sing a ballad to the tune of Amazing Grace or, less elegantly, to The Yellow Rose of Texas. We see the classic pattern in Sir Patrick Spence. Notice that although the basic rhythm is iambic, there are trochees (words like Drinkin) that begin and end some of the lines. The king sits in Dunfermline toun,Drinkin the bluid red wine0 whaur will I get a skeely skipper,To sail this ship o mine?Then up and spak an eldern knicht,Sat at the kings richt knee,Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,That ever saild the sea. In the literary ballad La Belle Dames Sans Merci, John Keats tends to shorten the fourth line, but still includes three stresses. Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering; The sedge is witherd from the lake, And no birds sing. Emily Dickinson uses the basic cadence of ballad meter in most of her poems: Theres a certain Slant of light,Winter Afternoons-That oppresses, like the HeftOf Cathedral Tunes- Heavenly Hurt, it gives us-We can find no scar,But internal difference,Where the Meanings, are- Iambic pentameter (see also blank verse) is probably the most common non-ballad line in English poetry. These lines from Robert Frosts The Oven Bird are almost perfect iambic pentameter lines, especially if you pronounce flowers and showers as monosyllabic words. He says that leaves are old and that for flowersMid-summer is to spring as one to ten.5He says the early petal-fall is pastWhen pear and cherry bloom went down in showersOn sunny days a moment overcast;And comes that other fall we name the fall.He says the highway dust is over all.10The bird would cease and be as other birdsBut that he knows in singing not to sing.The question that he frames in all but wordsIs what to make of a diminished thing. FormStanza: the poetic version of a paragraph, a division of a poem made by arranging the lines into units separated by a space; traditionally poetic stanza are similar in length to one another and similar in rhyme scheme. Couplet: Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal length and similar meter, with end-words that rhyme. In Robert Frosts Hyla Brook there are numerous couplets within a single stanza Its bed is left a faded paper sheetOf dead leaves stuck together by the heat In Andrew Marvells Epitaph there are three couplets in the first stanza (a six line stanza is called a sestet.) ENOUGH; and leave the rest to Fame!Ties to commend her, but to name.Courtship which, living, she declined,When dead, to offer were unkind:Nor can the truest wit, or friend,Without detracting, her commend. In Archibald MacLeishs Ars Poetica the couplets are not of equal length but are each stanzas. A poem should be equal to:Not true. For all the history of griefAn empty doorway and a maple leaf.Quatrain: A poem, unit or stanza of four lines of verse, usually with a rhyme scheme of abab or its variant, abcb. It is the most common form of stanza in English.Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying.abab (Robert Herrick) Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.abab (Lord Tennyson) Free verse: a form of poetry that does not contain repeated rhythms or regular rhyme, but does use other sound devices like assonance, alliteration, imagery. Notice how these free verses from A.R. Ammons Eyesight are in stanzas of similar length. dont worry, said the mountain,try the later northern slopesor ifyou can climb, climbinto spring: butsaid the mountain its not that waywith all things, somethat go are goneIn Audens Musee de Beaux Arts there is only one stanza, but notice the organization of the lines with the use of various kinds of repetition, both phonetically and rhythmically. (Throughout the poem there is considerable end rhyme even though there is variation in the length of the lines; Auden was a poet of great discipline so it is probably misguided to label any of his verse as free) The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; Walt Whitman was probably the first significant poet who wrote primarily free verse. Here is a section of When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom that describes the journey of Lincolns funeral train: Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,Amid lanes, and through old woods, (where lately the violets peepd from the ground, spotting the gray debris ;)Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanespassing the endless grass;Passing the yellow-speard wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprising;Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards;Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,Night and day journeys a coffin. Though these lines are an excellent example of free verse, notice that Whitman provides structure by using extensive repetition and frequently employing figurative language. As is typical with Whitman, the sentence also features inversion. Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter, common in Shakespeares plays and many longer poems, such as John Miltons Paradise Lost, the beginning of which provides a famous example: Of Mans First Disobedience, and the FruitOf that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tasteBrought Death into the World, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful Seat,Sing Heavnly Muse. . .Ballad: a traditional and still popular form that is a vehicle for narrative (story) poems which were and still are often sung. Originally passed on orally, they have been a literary form since the 19th century when some of the Romantic poets used the form for old fashioned narratives. The ballad is typically written in quatrains of alternating eight and six syllable lines rhymed abcb (for more, see ballad meter). In the Renaissance these were sometimes printed as couplets called fourteeners because they had fourteen syllables. Traditional ballads were stories of love or adventure or both that almost always ended tragically.One of the most famous traditional ballads, Sir Patrick Spence, begins The king sits in Dunfermline toun,Drinkin the bluid red wine0 whaur will I get a skeely skipper,To sail this ship o mine? Then up and spak an eldern knicht,Sat at the kings richt knee, Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor,That ever saild the sea. Our king has written a braid letter,And seald it wi his han,And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence,Was walkin on the stran. To Noroway, to Noroway,To Noroway owre the faim;The kings dochter o Noroway,Its thou maun bring her hame. The first line that Sir Patrick read,Sae lond, loud laughed he;The neist line that Sir Patrick read,The tear blinded his ee. Edward is another traditional ballad. It is usually sung with a refrain at the end of each stanza. I have included the refrain to the last stanza; the others are formed in the same way). It is too red for your old grey mareMy son, now tell to meIt is the blood of my old coon dogWho chased the fox for me. It is too red for your old coon dogMy son, now tell to meIt is the blood of my brother JohnWho hoed the corn for me. What did you fall out about?My son, now tell to meBecause he cut yon holly bushWhich might have been a tree. What will you say when your father comes backWhen he comes home from town?Ill set my foot in yonder boatAnd sail the ocean round. When will you come back, my own dear son?My son, now tell to meWhen the sun it sets in yonder sycamore treeAnd that will never be, be, beAnd that will never be.top Sara Teasdale captures the feeling of a traditional ballad in The Look The Look Stephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall,But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Stephons kiss was lost in jest, Robins lost in play,But the kiss in Colins eyes Haunts me night and day. Sonnet: A fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of five-foot iambic verse. The Oven Bird by Robert Frost could be considered a stanza although the rhyme scheme is not one associated with sonnets. The most famous sonnet writer in English was Shakespeare, but the sonnet was also a popular form in the twentieth century. Originally a vehicle for love poems, it has come even to used in dramatically different ways. W.H. Auden wrote a series of sonnets related to war. Below is the 15th.As evening fell the days oppression lifted;Tall peaks came into focus; it had rained:Across wide lawns and cultured flowers driftedThe conversation of the highly trained.Thin gardeners watched them pass and priced their shoes;A chauffeur waited, reading in the drive,For them to finish their exchange of views:It looked a picture of the way to live.Far off, no matter what good they intended,Two armies waited for a verbal errorWith well-made implements for causing pain,And on the issue of their charm dependedA land laid waste with all its young men slain,Its women weeping, and its towns in terror.Meaning devices Imagery: the words a poet uses to evoke images that the reader sees (or hears, smells, tastes, touches) because they describe what the senses can sense. (Sights, sounds, smells, flavors, textures etc.) Notice how in the third stanza of Break, Break, Break Lord Tennyson uses three kinds of image: And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill;But O for the touch of a vanishd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! Figures of speech such as simile, metaphor, personification, and symbol are common in poetry. They always have both a narrow, literal meaning, and a broader, figurative meaning. When used, they ask the reader to think about the words being used in at least two ways. Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase describing one thing is transferred to something entirely different. Metaphors can be looked at as a kind of condensed simile, a comparison without the use of like or as. In the following example from Robert Frosts Hyla Brook the bed/sheet metaphor describes the brook as it looks to the poet when it has dried out. Its bed is left a faded paper sheetOf dead leaves stuck together by the heat. Part of the aptness of this metaphor is that bed in itself can have two meanings (stream bed - bed to sleep upon) and is a kind of pun. The second line is effective because faded paper sheet (the metaphor), which sounds as if it has a romantic-wistful potential, is brought to earth.Robert Herrick in To Virgins, Making Much of Time continues the metaphoric image of time flying in the second stanza of the poem: The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher hes a-getting,The sooner will his race be run, And nearer hes to setting. Calling the sun The glorious lamp of heaven is metaphoric; notice Herrick mixes his metaphor when he predicts the suns race will be run. This metaphor is an example of personification. In the second stanza of William Blakes The Poison Tree there are metaphors within metaphors.And I watered it in fearsNight and morning with my tears,And I sunned it with smilesAnd with soft deceitful wiles. It is his wrath (anger) from the previous stanza. From the poems title we know that the symbol for (and a metaphor of) his wrath is The Poison Tree. Watering wrath in fears is a metaphor; watering the tree (already a metaphor) with tears is a type of exaggeration or hyperbole. Sunning wrath both extends the tree metaphor, and introduces a new metaphor smiles before ending with soft deceitful wiles which parallels the fears of the first line. For a poem that looks on the surface to be almost childlike in its simplicity, The Poison Tree seems to have more than its share of intricacies. Some modern poets like William Carlos Williams seem to want to see things as they are detached, as it were, from extraneous meanings. Poems like The Red Wheelbarrow avoid meta