The Elements of Poetry: Poem Due Monday

Eating Poetry

BY MARK STRAND

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.

Her eyes are sad

and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.

The light is dim.

The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,

their blond legs burn like brush.

The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.

When I get on my knees and lick her hand,

she screams.

I am a new man.

I snarl at her and bark.

I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

Mark Strand, “Eating Poetry” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1979, 1980 by Mark Strand. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)

For Monday, as you know, I would like you to write a poem. You may take inspiration for your poem from the Day of Silence videos or you can focus on your lists of fears and/or desires.

You're familiar with different forms - the form you choose is up to you (the length is up to you. 

 In order to write a poem that has depth, you may want to review the elements of poetry (below) and incorporate some into your poem.

Bottomline: Write a thoughtful poem with thoughtful choices. 
Be sure to post to your blog - and print your poem for MONDAY.


Metaphor: one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two.

"she is a fen of stagnant waters"- London (Wordsworth)

Simile: an explicit comparison between 2 different things, actions, or feelings, using the words 'as' or 'like'

"Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay" 

- Do not go Gentle into that Good Night (Thomas)

Personification: a figure of speech by which animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate things are referred to as if they were human.

"Press close bare-bosom'd night"
 "cool- breath'd earth!" - Song of Myself (Whitman)

Oxymoron: a figure of speech that combines two contradicting terms in a compressed paradox

" O Death in Life..." - Tears, Idle Tears (Tennyson)

Paradox: a statement or expression so surprisingly self contradictory as to provoke use into seeking another sense or context in which it would be true

"a novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons" - Song of Myself (Whitman)

Juxtaposition: placing two contrasting ideas side by side

"... blinding sight" - Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night (Thomas)

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Pun: an expression that achieves emphasis or humour by contriving an ambiguity, two distinct meanings being suggested either by the same word or by 2 similar sounding words

"And every fair from fair sometimes declines" - Can I compare thee to a summer's Day (Shakespeare)

Theme: a salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work's treatment of its subject matter; a recurring topic in a number of literary work

If you follow what God tells you to do, you will go to heaven- The Chimney Sweeper (Song of Innocence)

Tone: a vague critical term usually designating the mood or atmosphere of a work. Adjectives: romantic, nostalgic, ironic, sardonic, etc. See blog for list.

The Chimney Sweeper- Song of Experience- Dark Tone

Irony: a subtly humorous perception of inconsistency, in which an apparently straightforward statement or event is undermined by its context so as to give it a very different significance.

My Papa's Waltz (Roethke)- title is ironic because the dad's "dance" is very rough, unlike the waltz

Metonymy: a figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it

"... altar, sword, and pen" [*stand for church, army, and other scholars*] - London (Wordsworth)

Apostrophe: a rhetorical figure in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or an abstraction or inanimate object

" 'Doth God exact day- labor, light denied?' I fondly asked" - When I considered how my light is spent (Milton)

Parallel structure/ parallelism: the arrangement of similarly constructed clauses, sentences, or verse lines in a pairing or other sequence suggesting some correspondence between them

"And their sun does never shine,
 And their fields are bleak & bare,
 And their ways are fill'd with thorns" 

- Holy Thursday, Songs of Experience (Blake) 

Rhetorical Shift/ volta: a change in tone, attitude, speaker, subject etc. in a poem

"Rage, rage, Rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I Pray." 

- Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" by Dylan
[ Shift between "the light" and "And you, my father"]

Inversion: the reversal of the normally expected order of words.

said she 

End- stopped: brought to a pause at which the end of a verse coincides with the completion of a sentence, clause, or other independent unit of syntax

I sat under the jacaranda, catching
the petals in my palm, enclosing them
until my fist was another lantern
hiding a small and bitter flame.- The Girl who loved the Sky by Anita Endrezze

Enjambment: the running over of the sense and grammatical structure from one verse line or couplet to the next without a punctuated pause.

Onomatopoeia the use of words that seem to imitate the sounds they refer to
(Whack, fizz)

alliteration the repetition of the same sounds- usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables

"Whiskey, waltzing, wrist" "battered, beat, bed" 

"My Papa's Waltz" Theodore Roethke

consonance the repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighbouring words whose vowel sounds are different

"Infant's tear... Marraige hearse" - London (blake)
[tear and hearse have the similar -ear spelling but are said in 2 different manners]

assonance repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds

"returning chide" and "light denied"- When I consider how my light is spent (Milton)
or
Hit or miss

half rhyme/ slant rhyme a rhyme that doesnt exactly rhyme

"Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
they rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind" (pronounced Wined) - The Chimney Sweeper, Song of Innocence (Blake

end rhyme rhyme occurring at the ends of verse lines

"Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead"  

"The Lamb" , Song of Innocence William Blake

Internal Rhyme: Two or more rhyme within the same line or verse

 I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores

Plus: Example of Scansion of Iambic Pentameter in Macbeth