LESSON 3: POETRY AS IMAGERY, VOICE, AND EXPERIENCE

Key Concepts
Poetry is the language of the soul. It is a literary work written in verse of high quality, beauty, and
intensity of emotions and feelings in its most artistic and forceful way. Poetry evokes response from the
reader through its elements namely: shape and structure, imagery, voice, and experience.

The Shape and Structure of Poetry

The two basic shapes or structures of poetry: The formal structure is the arrangement of lines or stanzas
that forms the poem. There is relation between the parts (for instance the first stanza may give the problem
and the second, the solution). The thematic structure (equivalent to the plot in a story) is the way the argument
or presentation that builds or develops the material.
Study Psalm 113 below. Can you tell its shape and structure?
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
And day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
And my enemy will say, I have overcome him,
And my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
My heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lords praise,
For he has been good to me.

Aside from its structure, poetry artistically expresses an idea in a rhythmical pattern. The poet
expresses feelings and ideas with profound insight in a heightened or imaginative form, usually (but not
necessarily) containing rhyme, rhythm, and a specific meter. The unit structures for a poem are the lines (the
sentences) and stanzas (the paragraphs) which give the poem a definite and distinct pattern.
Different types of poetry have distinctive shape and structure.
Divisions of Poetry
1. Narrative Poetry. This form tells a story describing important events in life either real or
imaginary. It has several types:
a. Epic Poem. This is a long poem about national or legendary heroes. Examples are the
Ilad, Odyssey, Biag ni Lam-ang.
b. Ballad. This is a poem in short stanzas (often rhymed and in quatrains) sometime set to
music. Subjects are love, jealousy, revenge, death, adventure, mystery, and war and
focuses on dramatic or tragic incidents and contains dialogue of characters. It uses a
refrain for emphasis or suspense.
c. Metrical Romance. The subject is of chivalrous adventures of love or other personal
devotion, sometimes of heroism. Examples are The Eve of St. Agnes and Ibong
Adarna.
d. Tale. Iit is connected account of an actual, legendary, or fictitious event or series of
events. Principal characters may be genuinely heroic, utterly unconscious of the fact. An
example is the Canterbury Tales.
2. Lyric Poetry. This form expresses the personal thoughts and feelings of a speaker (a single
emotional event). It may or may not contain definite stanza forms and patterns of rhyme and
rhythm and may be open or closed form (rhyme verse, blank verse, or free verse). It may be
classified into the following:
a. Folksong. This is a short poem intended to be sung.
b. Sonnets. It is composed of 14 iambic pentameter lines dealing with an emotion, a feeling
or an idea with a conventional scheme of movement, properly expressing two successive
phases of a single thought. Examples are Shakespeares, Spensers, and Petrarchs
sonnets.

c. Elegy. It is funeral song, a meditative poem with melancholy, grief, and sorrow, and
death as a theme. An example is The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
d. Ode. A rhymed or unrhymed poem of a noble, exalted emotion and of dignified or lofty
tune, treating progressively a theme in the form of en address. Examples are Ode to the
West Wind and Ode to the Nightingale.
e. Psalms. It is a song containing a philosophy of life. The Psalms in the Bible are examples.
3. Dramatic Poetry. This is a form of poetry intended to be performed on stage. The subcategories are:
a. Comedy. It is usually light and written with the purpose of entertainment, and usually has
happy ending.
b. Melodrama. It arouses intense emotion and is usually sad but there is a happy ending for
the principal character
c. Tragedy. It involves the hero struggling mightily against dynamic forces. The main
character meets death or ruin without success and satisfaction obtained by the
protagonist in the comedy.
d. Farce. This is an exaggerated comedy. It seeks to arouse mirth by laughable lines;
situations are too ridiculous to be true; the characters seem to be caricatures and the
motives are undignified and absurd.
e. Social Poems. This is either purely comic or tragic that pictures the life of today. It may
aim to bring about changes in the social conditions.
Ornaments of Poetry
Poetry becomes more enjoyable to read with its ornaments that makes poetry different and unusual
from the other forms of reading materials. The ornaments such as the poetic devices, imagery, and figurative
language employed help a reader appreciate poetry.
1. Rhythm and Rhyme
Rhythm is sense of movement communicated by the arrangement of stressed syllables and by the
duration of the syllables. It usually depends on the metrical pattern. The essence of rhythm is the
repetition of words, syllables, or beats; a rise and fall; or a rise and pause. Rhyme is the pattern that
repeats sounds between words. Rhymes may be classified as follows:
a. Masculine Rhyme. The rhyme of one-syllable words with a final stressed syllable.
(e.g. light/sight, defeat/retreat)
b. Feminine Rhyme. It occurs in words of two or more syllables; stress is placed on the
syllable other than the last (e.g. better/setter, Cindy/windy)
c. Internal Rhyme. It is the repetition of similar sounds within lines. In the line You must
never go down to the end of the town, the rhyming sound are the words down and town.
d. End rhyme. It is the repetition of similar sounds at the end of the lines.
e. Perfect/exact/true Rhyme. Different initial consonant sounds ae followed by similar vowel
sounds.
e.g. tie/lie, meet/feet
f. Approximate/Slant/Off Rhyme. Only the final consonant sounds are identical
e.g. comb/tomb, cat/cot, and hope/cup
2. Alliteration. It is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stress syllables.
e.g. When I count the clock that tells the time
I see Connie crossing along the crossroad
3. Assonance. It is the repetition of the same vowel sound within the line of adjoining lines of poetry;
it is the repetition of the internal vowels
e.g. Tiger, lighting bright the binding sight
Oh in mind like signing light overnight
4. Consonance. It is the repetition of consonant sounds found at the ends of words.
e.g. knick-knack, paddy-wack, bric-a-brac
5. Tone. It reveals the attitude of the author towards the subject and in some cases, the attitude of the
persona or implied speaker of a poem. A poem may have a lively, solemn, grand, haunting, sweet,
slow, or mournful tone color.
6. Meter. It is the pattern in which rhythm is systematized in verse through the arrangement of
unaccented ( ) and accented ( ) syllables in a line. A line may be called iambic pentameter if there
are five feet in a line.

a.
b.
c.
d.

Kinds of Meter
Monometer - 1 foot
Dimeter
- 2 feet
Trimester - 3 feet
Tetrameter - 4 feet

e.
f.
g.
h.

Pentameter
Hexameter
Heptameter
Octameter

- 5 feet
- 6 feet
- 7 feet
- 8 feet

7. Foot. It is the metrical unit in a line or a verse. It is composed of two or more stressed (accented) or
unstressed (unaccented) syllables arranged in one of several orders as follows:
a. Iambic. It consists of two syllables-unstressed plus stressed syllables.
(e.g. pro-CED, b-LW)
b. Trochaic. It consist of two syllables and it is the opposite of iambic. It has stressed and unstressed
syllables.
(e.g. FF-t, NV-r, n-tr)
c. Anapestic. It consist of three syllables two unstressed and one stressed syllables.
(e.g. -vr-CME, n-s-NUTE)
d. Dactylic. It also consist of three syllables which is the opposite of anapest. It has one stressed and
two unstressed syllables. (e.g. PR--grph)
e. Spondaic. It consist of two stressed syllables often used to show the rhythm of line.
f. Pyrrhic. It consist of two unstressed syllables.
To scan a line is to determine its metrical pattern. Take Shelleys line from stanzas Written in
Dejection, Near Naples.
Begin scanning a line by marking the natural stresses on the
/
/
polysyllabic words
And walked with inward glory crowned
Then mark the monosyllabic nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
/
/
/
/
adverbs that are normally stressed.
And walked with inward glory crowned
Then fill the rest.

And walked with inward glory crowned

Then divide the line into feet.
Then note the sequence.

And walked|with in|ward glo|ry crowned

iamb|iamb|iamb|iamb

The line consist of four iambus; therefore, we identify the line as iambic tetrameter.
Imagery and Figure Language
Poetry appeals to our senses through imagery, the representation to the imagination of some
experience. Critical reading of a poem requires the ability to understand the connotations and denotations of
words including the imagery and figure of speech used.
Imagery pertains to poets way of giving his readers a sensory image. The images conjured by the poet
give the reader the experience and let him feel the emotion conveyed in the poem.
There are two basic kinds of imagery: imagery of the physical setting and images as figure of
speech.
An image may suggest a mental picture (visual imagery); a sound (auditory imagery); an odor (olfactory
imagery) ; a flavour (gustatory imagery); and internal sensation such as hunger, thirst, fatigue or nausea
(organic imagery); or movements or tension in the muscles or joints (kinaesthetic imagery) (in Patron 2002).
Moreover, in reading poetry one should look at words as having two kinds of meaning. Denotation is
the literal and dictionary meaning; connotation refers to associations and implications that go beyond a word.
The reader should look at the poem as a whole and try to figure out which implications make the most sense
within that poem.
Figure of Speech

The use of figures of speech is an intentional deviation from the usual forms of expression (rules of
grammar) to make the ideas concrete, vivid, beautiful, forceful, or amusing. For students to understand
poetry, they should be familiar with the different figures of speech enumerated below:
1. Simile. It is an expressed comparison of unlike objects or things with the use of the word like, as,
similar and resembles.
2. Metaphor. It is an amplified comparison of two unlike entities but having some common quality.
3. Personification. It is the transfer of human characteristics to inanimate objects or abstract ideas.
4. Synecdoche. A part represents the whole or vice versa.
5. Metonymy. It is the substitution of a word that relates to the thing or person to be named for the
name itself; or the use of closely related thing to represent what is literally meant.
6. Hyperbole. It is the use of exaggeration not to deceive but to produce laughter.
7. Climax. The intensity of the thought and emotion gradually increases with each successive group
of words or phrases.
8. Apostrophe. It is a direct address to someone absent, long dead, or even to an inanimate object.
9. Antithesis. It is the use of contrasting words and ideas in a line.
e.g. An easy writing makes a hard reading.
10. Irony. It is saying the opposite of what is meant in a manner or in a tone that shows what the
speaker thinks.
11. Allusion. It is a reference to any literary, biblical, historical, mythological, scientific event,
character or place.
e.g. The time has come to cross the Rubicon.
12. Paradox. It is phrase or statement that on surface seems contradictory, but makes some kind of
emotional sense.
e.g. The first should be the last.
13. Litotes. It is a deliberate understatement used to affirm by negating its opposite.
e.g. Even in her plain dress, I find her not at all displeasing.
14. Oxymoron. It is putting together two contractor terms in one statement.
e.g. Such cruel kindness is your love for me.
15. Onomatopoeia. It is the use of words whose sound resembles the thing or action denoted by the
word; or the imitation of the sound of words either directly or suggestively.
16. Pun. It is a play with words for humorous or comic effect.
e.g. Tis an eggciting dat for the eggheads of the world!
17. Sarcasm. It is a bitter or cutting speech, intended to hurt feelings.
e.g. Dont touch the ring! Thats beyond your pocket.
18. Symbol. A symbol means what it is, but at the same time it represents something else, too. A thing
(could be an object, person, situation or action) which stands for something else more abstract.
e.g. The straw that broke the camels back.
19. Satire. It is intended to ridicule human folly or vice, with the purpose of bringing about reform or
at least of keeping other people from falling into similar folly or vice.
20.
The Poetic Voice and the Readers Experience
Poetry allows one to enrich ones experiences and explore the inner need to live more fully, have
greater awareness of the experience of others, and understand ones own better. The poet expresses feelings
through a speaker or the voice that talks to the reader. The speaker may or may not express the poets own
feeling but that of the persona-a person speaking in the poem (Patron 2002 and Cabanilla, et al. 2009).
Thus, in writing, refer to the speaking voice in the poem as the speaker or the poet. For
example, In this poem, Wordsworth presents a speaker who
In identifying the voice in the poem and delving into the experience offered by the writer, the
following steps and questions can guide the reader (in Uychoco 2007):
1. READ the poem silently, then read it aloud (if not in a testing situation). Repeat as necessary.
2. Consider the poem as a dramatic situation in which a speaker addresses an audience or another
character. In this way, begin your analysis by identifying and describing the speaking voice or
voices, the conflicts or ideas, and the language used in the poem.
3. Determine the basic design of the poem by considering the who, what, when, whre, and why of the
dramatic situation.
a. What is being dramatized? What conflicts or themes does the poem present, address, or
question?

b. Who is the speaker? Define and describe the speaker and his/her voice. What does the
speaker say? Who is the audience? Are other characters involve?
c. What happens in the poem? Consider the plot or basic design of the action. How are the
dramatized conflicts or themes introduced, sustained, resolved, ect. ?
d. When does the action occur? What is the date and/or time?
e. Where is the speaker? Describe the physical location of the dramatic moment.
f. Why does the speaker feel compelled to speak at this moment? What is his/her motivation?
g. What sort of experience would the good reader of the poem have?
h. What can this tell you about what the poem means?
Other questions regarding the content, structure, and style are given in the box:
I.

Content
What is the theme of
the poem?
Who is the speaker?
What is its attitude?
Who is the point of
view of the speaker?
Is there an addressee?
Who __ is he/she?
What is the tone and
mood of the poem?
__

II.

Structure
What is the form of
the poem?
Map
its
rhyme
scheme (abba)
Read aloud the poem
to find its rhythm and
meter

III.

Style
Is
the
language
primarily literal?
Decipher
the
figurative language
Read the poem aloud
to determine its sound
effect
Is there an evident
visual effects?
How do the observed
devices contribute in
conveying meaning?

Writing the Analysis

The Writing Center of the University of North Carolina (1998) suggests the following steps in
analysing poetry:
The first paragraph should present the large issues; it should inform the reader which conflict are
dramatized and should describe the dramatic situation of the speaker. Start explicating immediately (e.g. This
poem dramatizes the conflict between).
The next paragraphs should expand the discussion of the conflict by focussing on details of form,
rhetoric, syntax, and vocabulary. In these paragraphs, explain the poem line by line in terms of these details,
and should incorporate important elements of rhyme, rhythm, and meter during this discussion.
The analysis has no formal concluding paragraph. The end of the analysis should focus on sound effects
or visual patterns as the final element of asserting an explanation.
Lastly, use the present tense when writing the explication. The following list suggests some verbs
you can use:
Dramatizes
Asserts
Juxtaposes
Emphasizes
Portrays

Presents
Posits
Suggests
Stresses
Enables

Illustrates
Enacts
Underlines
Accentuates
Shows

Characterizes
Connects
Addresses
Implies
Contrasts