Introduction

 to  Poetry
Based  on  the  
Broadview  Introduction  to  Literature,  Concise  Edition,
With  material  from  Jack  Lynch’s  
Glossary  of  Literary  and  Rhetorical  Terms

Oct.  2,  2015  

 Meter

• When  rhythm is  regular,   it  is  often  called  meter.  Each  line  is  made  up  of  a  
number  of  metrical  feet.  A pair  of  terms  is  used  to  describe  a  line  of  verse:  
first  the  type  of  foot,  then  the  number  of  feet  per  line.
• Typical  feet  include  iambs (the  most  common  in  English  poetry),  trochees,  
and  spondees.  Less  common  are  dactyls,  anapests,  and  amphibrachs.  
• The  second  term  numbers  the  feet  in  each  line.  The  most  common  in  
English  are  pentameter (five  beats  per  verse)  and  tetrameter (four  beats  
per  verse);  other  possibilities  are  monometer,   dimeter,  trimeter,  and  
hexameter.
 Meter,  cont’d

• No  meter is  perfectly  regular.  

• Apart  from  the  theoretical  problem  that  no  two  syllables  will  receive  
precisely  the  same  stress,  most  poets  (even  the  most  apparently  
regular)  try  to  vary  their  verse  by  introducing  occasional  metrical  
substitutions.  
 Foot
• A  foot is  the  basis  of  meter:  that  is,  the  regular  unit  of  rhythm which,  
when  repeated,  makes  up  a  verse.  
• Although  the  basis  of  meter  in  the  classical  languages  was  
"quantitative"  — i.e.,  "long"  and  "short"  syllables  were  based  on  the  
actual  amount  of  time  it  took  to  speak  the  syllables  — virtually  all  
English  feet  are  based  on  a  pattern  of  stressed and  unstressed
syllables.  
• Each  common  foot comprises  two  or  three  syllables:  either  one  or  
two  stressed  syllables,  and  zero,  one,  or  two  unstressed  syllables.  

• *  Terms  are  often  imported  from  Greek  and  Latin  versification,  and  you  may  
hear  "long"  and  "short"  where  "stressed"  and  "unstressed"  are  meant.
Interruption:

Syllable:   Def’ns on  this  slide  from  Wikipedia.org

• A  syllable is  a   unit  of  organization  for  a  sequence  of  speech  sounds.  For  
example,  the  word  water is  composed  of  two  syllables:  wa and  ter.  A  
syllable  is  typically  made  up  of  a  syllable  nucleus  (most  often  a  vowel)  with  
optional  initial  and  final  margins  (typically,  consonants).
• Syllables  are  often  considered  the  phonological  "building  blocks"  of  words.  
They  can  influence  the  rhythm  of  a   language,   its  prosody,  its  poetic  meter  
and  its  stress  patterns.
• Syllabic  writing  began  several  hundred  years  before  the  first  letters.  The  
earliest  recorded  syllables  are  on  tablets  written  around  2800   BC  in  the  
Sumerian  city  of  Ur.  This  shift  from  pictograms  to  syllables  has  been  called  
"the  most  important  advance  in  the  history  of  writing”.  ()
• A  word  that  consists  of  a  single  syllable  (like  English  dog)  is  called  a  
monosyllable (and  is  said  to  be  monosyllabic).  Similar  terms  include  
disyllable (and  disyllabic)  for  a  word  of  two  syllables;  trisyllable (and  
trisyllabic)  for  a  word  of  three  syllables;  and  polysyllable (and  polysyllabic),  
which  may  refer  either  to  a  word  of  more  than  three  syllables  or  to  any  
word  of  more  than  one  syllable.
 Foot,  cont’d
• The  common  feet  in  English:  
• Disyllables:  
• Unstressed,  stressed:  iamb  
• E.g.  New  York
• Stressed,  unstressed:  trochee  
• E.g.  Newark
• Stressed,  stressed:  spondee  
• E.g.  Pittsburgh

• Triyllables:  
• Stressed,  unstressed,  unstressed:  dactyl
• E.g.  mannequin  
• Unstressed,  unstressed,  stressed:  anapest  
• E.g.  interrupt
• Unstressed,  stressed,  unstressed:  amphibrach
• E.g.  Nantucket  
 Meter  and  Foot  
• Meter is  usually  described  by  giving  the  dominant  kind  of  feet and  
number  in  each  verse.  The  basic  meters  are:  
• One  foot:  monometer
• Two  feet:  dimeter
• Three  feet:  trimeter
• Four  feet:  tetrameter
• Five  feet:  pentameter
• Six  feet:  hexameter
• Although  in  most  kinds  of  English  verse  one  type  of  foot  
predominates  in  each  line,  substitutions  are  possible.
More,  useful  concepts:

• Blank  verse:  lines  in  iambic  pentameter  that  do  not  rhyme
• End  stopped:  a  line  or  lines  that  end  with  punctuation,  thereby  
inducing  a  pause
• Enjambment:  when  sense  and  grammatical  construction  are  carried  
past  the  end  of  the  line
• Caesura:  a  pause  in  the  middle  of  a  line  of  poetry
 Rhyme

• Rhyme  is  the  similarity  in  sound  of  (typically)  the  ends  of  words:  the  
last  stressed  syllable  and  the  following  unstressed  syllables  (if  any).  
• Rhyme  is  usually  a  structuring  device  in  verse.  
• Not  all  poetry  rhymes.  
• When  rhyming  lines  are  arranged  into  stanzas,  we  can  identify  the  
rhyme  scheme by  assigning  letters  to  each  rhyme,  beginning  with  a
and  proceeding  through  the  alphabet.
 Rhyme,  cont’d
• Couplets,   for  instance  — such  as  Pope's
'Tis hard  to  say,  if  greater  want  of  skill (a)
Appear  in  writing,  or  in  judging  ill; (a)
But  of  the  two,  much  greater  is  th'  offence (b)
To  tire  the  patience,  than  mislead  the  sense   (b)
—rhyme  aa   bb,   and  so  on  -­‐-­‐ a represents  the  ill sound,  b represents  the  ence
sound.  
• A  quatrain such  as  
Far   from  the  madding  crowd's  ignoble  strife,     (a)
Their  sober  wishes  never  learned  to  stray; (b)
Along  the  cool  sequestered  vale  of  life (a)
They  kept  the  noiseless  tenor  of  their  way   (b)
is  said  to  rhyme  abab,  where  a represents  ife,  and  b represents  ay.  
 Rhyme,  cont’d
• More  complicated  patterns  can  be  described  the  same  way:  the  
sonnet,  for  instance,  can  be  abab cdcd efef gg or  abba abba cdecde;  
• The  Spenserian  stanza  rhymes  ababbcbcc.  
• Most  rhymes  appear  at  the  end  of  lines,  but  internal  rhyme is  the  
appearance  of  similar  sounds  somewhere  in  the  middle  of  a  verse.  
Words  in  the  middle  can  rhyme  with  other  words  in  the  middle  or  
words  at  the  end  of  lines.  
• [Such  an  arrangement  is  referred  to  as  slant  rhymes in  the  BIL (470).]
 Image
• A  representation  of  a  sensory  experience  or  of  an  object  that  can  be  
known  via  the  senses.
Imagery

• The  range  of  images  in  a  given  work

• E.g.  when  images  form  a  pattern  in  a  literary  work  (E.g.  the  following  
images  budding  trees,  singing  birds,  rain,  fresh  grass  come  together  to  
form  imagery  of  spring.)
 Simile
Up  in  the  morning,  work  like  a   dog
It’s  better  than  sitting  like  a   bump  on  a   log.
Mind  all   your  manners;  be  as   quiet  as   a  mouse
Someday  you’ll  own  a  home  that’s  as   big  as  a  house.

Well,  I  know  a   fella,   he  eats  like  a  horse

Knocks  his  old  balls  round  the  old  golf  course.
You  oughta see  his  wife;  she’s  a  cute  little  dish
She  smokes  like  a  chimney  and  drinks  like  a  fish.

• Lyrics  to  John  Prine’s “It’s  a  Big  Old  Goofy   World”

Metaphor
• An  implicit,  implied  or  hidden  comparison  between  two  things

• E.g.  Love  is  a  drug

• Life  is  pain
• “All  the  world’s  a  stage,  and  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players  upon  it.”  –
William  Shakespeare
• “Advertising  is  the  rattling  of  a  stick  inside  a  swill  bucket.”  –George  Orwell

• An  elaborate  or  sustained  metaphor  is  called  a  conceit

 Symbol

• Something  that  represents  itself  but  goes  beyond  this  in  suggesting  
other  meanings
• E.g.  a  forest  can  represent  nature  while  also  representing  itself
• A  tiger  can  represent  itself  and  the  idea  of  being  wild,  untamed,  
dangerous,  and  /  or  beautiful  all  at  the  same  time
• A  rose  can  represent  love,  affection,  transience,  softness  or  
thorniness  while  still  being  seen  as  a  rose
Metonymy  and  synecdoche
• Metonymy is  the  rhetorical  or  metaphorical  substitution  of  a  one  
thing  for  another  based  on  their  association  or  proximity.
• E.g.  “Ottawa”  for  the  federal  government
• “the  crown”  for  the  British  monarchy
• Synecdoche is  the  rhetorical  or  metaphorical  substitution  of  a  part for  
the  whole,  or  vice  versa.
• E.g.  How  many  head are  in  the  field?  [of  cattle]
• All  hands  on  deck.
 Meaning
• “In  the  medieval  period  and  through  the  Renaissance  the  accepted  
view  was  that  poetry  should  have  a  clear  meaning  and  a  clear  moral  
purpose”  (BIL 478).
• About  the  middle  of  the  c19th  that  idea  was  challenged  (notably  by  
Rimbaud,  LaForgue,  and  Mallarmé)
• In  the  early  c20th,  notable  Modernist  poets  had  rejected  that  idea,  to  
focus  more  on  the  sounds  of  poetry  or  the  creation  of  specific  images
 Point  of  View
• Do  NOT assume  the  poet  and  the  speaking  voice  of  the  poem  are  the  
same  thing
• Look  for  – especially  personal  – pronouns
• Look  for  evidence  of  gender,  but  remember  that  women  can  love  
women  and  men  can  love  men
• Consider  the  possibility  that  you,  as  reader,  are  expected  to  share  the  
speaker’s  point  of  view
• Consider  the  possibility  that  you,  as  reader,  are  expected  to  find  
yourself  outside  the  speaker’s  point  of  view
Form
• Stanza:  lines  of  verse  grouped  together  in  a  poem,  usually  separated  
by  space  from  the  rest  of  the  poem
• Couplet:  two  lines  that  rhyme;  aa,  bb,  etc.
• Tercet:  group,  or  stanza,  of  three  lines,  often  rhyming;  aaa,  bbb,  or  
abc,  abc.
• Quatrain:  a  four  line  stanza

• Sonnet  (see  next  slide)

• Syntax:  the  set  of  rules,  principles,  and  processes  that  govern  the  structure  
of  sentences  in  a  given  language.

• Semantics:  the  study  of  meaning.

• Hermeneutics:  is  the  theory  and  methodology  of  text  interpretation,

• Poetics:  the  theory  of  literary  forms  and  literary  discourse.

• Poetics:  is  distinguished  from  hermeneutics  by  its  focus  not  on  the  
meaning  of  a  text,  but  rather  its  understanding  of  how  a  text's  different  
elements  come  together  and  produce  certain  effects  on  the  reader

• Def’ns on  this  slide   from

Wikipedia.org