Poetry Class Introduction

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Poetry ClassIntroduction

• Aiden Yeh, Ph.D.
• Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages

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Lesson Outline

• What Poetry is and what it is not An
  Introduction
• How to write poetry
• How to read poetry
• How to memorize poetry
• Workshop Creating individual blogs

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Becoming a poet
http//www.cartoonstock.com/directory/w/writing_po
etry.asp
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http//24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8d5tiNmDK1rt7wb
5o1_1280.jpg
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What is Poetry?

• 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

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Can everyone write poetry?

• Most people ignore most poetry because most
  poetry ignores most people. 
• Adrian Mitchell

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Can you force it on people?

• Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding
  a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed
  child. Carl Sandburg

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Whats the Catalyst?

• At the touch of love everyone becomes a
  poet. Plato

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Can you write it?

• Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with
  a dash of the dictionary. Kahlil Gibran

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Can you make a living out of poetry?

• There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry
  in money, either. Robert Graves

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Indeed

• Poetry is not a profession, it is a
  destiny. Mikhail Dudan
• Poetry isnt a profession, its a way of life.
  Its an empty basket you put your life into it
  and make something out of that. Mary Oliver

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So why write poetry?

• We don't read and write poetry because it's
  cute.  We read and write poetry because we are
  members of the human race.  And the human race is
  filled with passion.  And medicine, law,
  business, engineering, these are noble pursuits
  and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry,
  beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay
  alive for.  
• from Dead Poet's Society

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• Poetry is all that is worth remembering in
  life. William Hazlitt  

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How do you write poetry

• Poetry, unlike other literary forms, focuses most
  sharply on language itself. The music of words,
  how they sound, how their sounds flow and mix and
  form musical patterns are vital to poetry.  

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How do you write poetry

• Writer A.S. Rosenthal said, Far from being
  incidental, qualities of sound and rhythm give a
  poetic work its organic body.

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• A Silly Poem
• Said Hamlet to Ophelia,I'll draw a sketch of
  thee,What kind of pencil shall I use?2B or not
  2B? 
• Spike Milligan

http//www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-silly-poem/
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How do you write poetry

• Poets must use all the physical attributes of
  words their sound, size, shape, and rhythms.

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Imagery

• If the music of poetry is its life-blood, images
  give poetry its soul.

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• Although you can write a successive poem without
  imagery, the best poems come alive with simile,
  metaphor, symbolism, and use of personification.

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Imagery

• Keep in mind that imagery is the language of
  dreams.
• When you write with imagery you bring the magic
  and mystery of dreamscapes to your writing.
• As poet, William Greenway, said images can
  communicate the unsayable, so show dont tell. 

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http//b.vimeocdn.com/ts/275/710/275710786_640.jpg
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Rhythm

• Rhythm can be defined as the flow of stressed and
  unstressed syllables to create oral patterns. To
  achieve rhythm, English poets have traditionally
  counted three things 1. the number of
  syllables in a line 2. the number of stressed
  or accented syllables 3. the number of
  individual units of both stressed and unstressed
  syllables. 

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Rhyme

• According to Websters Dictionary, rhyme is a
  regular recurrence of corresponding sounds which
  occurs usually at the end of a line. There are
  three main types of end-rhymes 1. True rhyme
  (also called masculine) occurs exactly on one
  stressed syllable.EX. car, far 2. Feminine
  rhyme uses words of more than one syllable and
  occurs when the accented syllable rhymes.EX.
  buckle, knuckle 3. Off-rhyme or Slant Rhyme
  occurs when words sound very similar but do not
  correspond in sound exactlyEX. down, noon 

From http//www.bloomington.in.us/dory/creative/
class5.html Additional Reference
http//www.electpress.com/loveandromance/page100.h
tm 
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THE VEGGIE LION BY SPIKE MILLIGAN
Im a vegetarian Lion, Ive given up all
meat, Ive given up all roaring All I do is go
tweet-tweet. I never ever sink my claws Into
some animals skin, It only lets the blood run
out And lets the germs rush in.
I used to be ferocious, I even tried to kill! But
the sight of all the bloodmade me feel quite
ill. I once attacked an Elephant I sprang
straight at his head. I woke up three days
later In a Jungle hospital bed. Now I just eat
carrots, Theyre easy to kill, Cos when I pounce
upon them, They all remain quite still!
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6 Traits of Poetry Writing

• 1. The Idea the heart of your poem, point
  of your message 2. The Organization the
  internal structure3. The Voice evidence of
  the writer behind the message 4. The Word
  Choice the vocabulary or terminology used5.
  The Fluency the rhythm and flow - how it plays
  to the ear 6. The Form the mechanical
  structure and correctness there of 

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• 1. A poem should flow naturally - be flowing and
  easy reading2. It should have rhythmic symmetry
  there should be a correspondence rhythm with in
  the poem3. Effective rhyming add to overall
  beauty and quality of poem finding the correct
  corresponding rhyme makes for a better poem 

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http//amydot90.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/201203
18-173650.jpg
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Get down on it!
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The Subject
http//www.buzzle.com/articles/writing-poetry-how-
to-write-a-poem.html
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The Feeling
http//www.buzzle.com/articles/writing-poetry-how-
to-write-a-poem.html
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The Mood
http//www.buzzle.com/articles/writing-poetry-how-
to-write-a-poem.html
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The Style
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The Audience
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Helpful Tips
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Helpful Weblinks

• http//www.rhymezone.com/
• http//thesaurus.com/
• http//www.forvo.com/ (pronunciation of difficult
  words)

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Get down on it!Aiden Yeh

• Procrastinate!
• Thats what I do.
• When things get blurry
• I dont know what to do-
• Making me feel totally inadequate!
• How do I write poetry
• When words escape me,
• running off the mill
• Leaving me with nothing
• But a brain thats empty.
• To write or not to write,
• Perhaps, Id better stop and call it a night.
• Theres no point of feeling uptight.
• Tomorrow may be a better day to get down on it,
• And finally do it right!

1227 Kaohsiung
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Read it out loud

• Read the poem slowly. Most adolescents speak
  rapidly, and a nervous reader will tend to do the
  same in order to get the reading over with.
  Reading a poem slowly is the best way to ensure
  that the poem will be read clearly and understood
  by its listeners. Learning to read a poem slowly
  will not just make the poem easier to hear it
  will underscore the importance in poetry of each
  and every word. A poem cannot be read too slowly,
  and a good way for a reader to set an easy pace
  is to pause for a few seconds between the title
  and the poem's first line.

http//www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-howtoread.html
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• Read in a normal, relaxed tone of voice. It is
  not necessary to give any of these poems a
  dramatic reading as if from a stage. Read in a
  natural and colloquial style. Let the words of
  the poem do the work. Just speak clearly and
  slowly.

http//www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-howtoread.html
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• Use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words and
  hard-to-pronounce words. To read with conviction,
  a reader needs to know at least the dictionary
  sense of every word. In some cases, a reader
  might want to write out a word phonetically as a
  reminder of how it should sound. It should be
  emphasized that learning to read a poem out loud
  is a way of coming to a full understanding of
  that poem, perhaps a better way than writing a
  paper on the subject.

http//www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-howtoread.html
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• Read it more than once. Listen to your voice, to
  the sounds the words make. Do you notice any
  special effects? Do any of the words rhyme? Is
  there a cluster of sounds that seem the same or
  similar? Is there a section of the poem that
  seems to have a rhythm thats distinct from the
  rest of the poem? Dont worry about why the poem
  might use these effects. The first step is to
  hear whats going on. If you find your own voice
  distracting, have a friend read the poem to you.

http//www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19882
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What determines where a line stops in poetry?

• Lines are often determined by meaning, sound and
  rhythm, breath, or typography. 
• The relationship between meaning, sound, and
  movement intended by the poet is sometimes hard
  to recognize, but there is an interplay between
  the grammar of a line, the breath of a line, and
  the way lines are broken out in the poemthis is
  called lineation. 

http//www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19882
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• Lines that end with punctuation,
  called end-stopped lines, are fairly simple.
• In that case, the punctuation and the lineation,
  and perhaps even breathing, coincide to make the
  reading familiar and even predictable.

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• But lines that are not end-stopped present
  different challenges for readers because they
  either end with an incomplete phrase or sentence
  or they break before the first punctuation mark
  is reached.
• The most natural approach is to pay strict
  attention to the grammar and punctuation. Reading
  to the end of a phrase or sentence, even if it
  carries over one or several lines, is the best
  way to retain the grammatical sense of a poem.

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Talking back to a poem

• Who is the speaker?
• What circumstances gave rise to the poem?
• What situation is presented?
• Who or what is the audience?
• What is the tone?
• What form, if any, does the poem take?
• How is form related to content?
• Is sound an important, active element of the
  poem?
• Does the poem spring from an identifiable
  historical moment?
• Does the poem speak from a specific culture?
• Does the poem have its own vernacular?
• Does the poem use imagery to achieve a particular
  effect?
• What kind of figurative language, if any, does
  the poem use?
• If the poem is a question, what is the answer?
• If the poem is an answer, what is the question?
• What does the title suggest?
• Does the poem use unusual words or use words in
  an unusual way?

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http//www.englishcompanion.com/pdfDocs/howtoreadp
oem.pdf
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Shel Silverstein
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Reading Practice
http//www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19883 ht
tp//acerminaro.blogspot.tw/2012/01/red-wheelbarro
w.html
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1759-1796
http//www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173068
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vjggPFamB9Ok
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How to memorize poems

• Read and say the poem over, slowly, aloud.
• With an index card, cover everything but the
  first line of the poem. Read it. Look away, see
  the line in air, and say it. Look back. Repeat
  until youve got it.
• Uncover the second line. Learn it as you did the
  first line, but also add second line to first,
  until youve got the two.
• Then its on to three. Always repeat the first
  line on down, till the whole poem sings.
• With the poem now internalized, you are freed to
  perform it. This is to find the voice(s) of the
  poem, to find yourself there, and the poet, and
  to relate to the audience.

http//poetry.about.com/cs/textarchives/ht/howmemo
rizepoem.htm
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Task Try Memorizing Mask by Shel Silverstein
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Tasks

• Create a blog account blogger.com
• On your blog, try writing a short poem about the
  following themes
• Difficulty in writing
• Writing poetry
• Feelings toward this course
• Or on something relevant to what we discussed in
  class

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References

• Basic Elements of Poetry Rhythm, Rhyme and
  Imagery, http//www.poems-and-quotes.com/article.h
  tml?id398
• Quotes about poetry, http//www.educationoasis.com
  /curriculum/Lang_Arts/quotes/quotes_about_poetry.h
  tm
• 50 definitions of poetry, http//poetinthecity.wor
  dpress.com/2011/03/16/what-is-poetry-50-definition
  s-and-counting/
• http//www.buzzle.com/articles/writing-poetry-how-
  to-write-a-poem.html
• Literary Analysis http//writing.wisc.edu/Handboo
  k/ReadingPoetry.html
• http//www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/article/2
  45464
• http//www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19882
• http//www.englishcompanion.com/pdfDocs/howtoreadp
  oem.pdf
• (fun to read http//www.shmoop.com/poetry/how-to-
  read-poem/how-to-read.html )