Basic Elements Of Good Poetry
Meter
In most poems, the lines are written according to patterns of rhythm. Poetic meter is the measure of a line of poetry. It is rhythm that can be measured in poems.
Scansion is the act of making a poem to show the metrical units of which it is composed. It means any attempt, by signs, to indicate the beat of a line of poetry and to mark off the division of feet. Here are the steps to take in scanning a poem,
(1) Mark the syllables (Read the poem at this and each succeeding step.)
(2) Mark the feet. (3) Mark the caesuras (noticeable pause in a line of poetry and it has a peculiar effect on the total beat of the line). (4) Expect to encounter variations, but do not consider them in naming the bad meter (5) Check your scansion to make sure that it reflects the poem rather than preconceived notion of your own.
The smallest of these metrical units is the 'syllable'. English syllables are two kinds: accented or stressed, and unaccented or unstressed. An "accented syllable" requires more wind and push behind it than an unaccented; it also maybe pitched slightly higher or held for a slightly longer time.
After the syllable, the next largest metrical unit is the 'foot', which is group of two or more syllables. The six common kinds of feet in English metrics have been names derived from Greek:
1. IAMBIC foot consists of unaccented syllable followed by an accented. It can be heard in such words as "because, hello, Elaine".
2. TROCHAIC foot consists of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented. These are trochaic words: answer, Tuesday, Albert.
3. DACTYLIC foot consists of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. You can hear the dactylic beat in these words: beautiful, silently, Saturday.
4. ANAPESTIC foot consists of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. These words are anapestic: cavalier, tambourine, Marianne.
5. SPONDAIC foot consists of two accented syllables.
6. PYRRHIC foot consists of two unaccented syllables.
The next largest metrical unit is the 'line'. A line is the regular succession of feet, and, though it is not necessarily a sentence, it customarily begins with a capital letter. The number of feet in a line of verse determines the measure or meter. Most poems are not built on a fixed meter, but rather on a combination of meters and variety of them. A line containing only one foot is called a "monometer"; one with two feet, a "dimeter" line; and so on through "trimeter", "tetrameter", "pentameter", "hexameter", "heptameter", and "octameter".
Granted that much more than meter is needed for a poem, does it follow that a poem must have a meter? A large number of poets, especially in the early years of the twentieth century, answered this negatively. Their poems, written in rhythmical language but not in traditional meters, are called 'free verse'. Nonmetrical poetry is called free because the poet has freed himself from conforming himself to the set of metrical patterns. Free verse must not be confused with "blank verse', which is the customary label for iambic pentameter without rhyme. Unlike the free verse, blank verse has a regular metrical pattern.
Meter has two functions. First, it makes poem pleasurable because it is intrinsically delightful. In addition to making a poem enjoyable, meter makes it more meaningful. It is a part of the total meaning -- a part that cannot always be described in words, but can always be felt and is always lost when a poem is paraphrased or when it is translated from one language to another.
RHYME
Rhyme, likeness of the terminal sounds of words, frequently used in versification either at the end of a line of verse or within the line. Rhyme appeared only occasionally in classical Greek and Latin poetry; it was used more extensively later, in songs of the medieval Roman Catholic church. Rhyme was not established as a technique in English poetry until the 14th century. Since then not all styles of poetry have employed rhyme, but it has never fallen entirely into disuse. Rhyme functions as an element of rhythm, emphasizing poetic beat. There are three types of true rhymes: masculine rhymes, in which the final syllable of the word or line is stressed ("spring," "bring"); feminine rhymes, in which two consecutive syllables, the first of which is accented, are alike in sound ("certain," "curtain"); and triple rhymes, in which all three syllables of a word are identical ("flowery," "showery"). Words in which the vowel and the following consonants in a stressed syllable are identical in sound, even if spelled differently, are called perfect rhymes ("two" and "too," or "spring" and "bring"). In eye, or sight, rhyme the words look as if they rhyme, but do not: "move," "love." Slant, or oblique, rhyme uses words with an imperfect match of sounds. Within this category, consonance relies on the similarity of consonant sounds: "shift," "shaft"; assonance relies on the similarity of vowel sounds: "grow," "home." A pair of rhyming lines is called a couplet; three lines that rhyme are called a triplet. Traditional poetic forms have prescribed rhyming patterns; for example, sonnets usually follow the Italian rhyme scheme, abba abba cde cde, or the English rhyme scheme, abab cdcd efef gg. Blank verse is regular in meter but does not rhyme; free verse is irregular in meter and may or may not rhyme.
IMAGERY
Most figures of speech cast up a picture in your mind. These pictures created or suggested by the poet are called 'images'. To participate fully in the world of poem, we must understand how the poet uses image to convey more than what is actually said or literally meant.
We speak of the pictures evoked in a poem as 'imagery'. Imagery refers to the "pictures" which we perceive with our mind's eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, and through which we experience the "duplicate world" created by poetic language. Imagery evokes the meaning and truth of human experiences not in abstract terms, as in philosophy, but in more perceptible and tangible forms. This is a device by which the poet makes his meaning strong, clear and sure. The poet uses sound words and words of color and touch in addition to figures of speech. As well, concrete details that appeal to the reader's senses are used to build up images.
Although most of the image-making words in any language appeal to sight (visual images), there are also images of touch (tactile), sound (auditory), taste (gustatory), and smell (olfactory). The last two terms in parentheses are mainly used by lovers of jargon. An image may also appeal to the reader's sense of motion: a verb like Pope's spring does so.
A good poet does not use imagery -- that is, images in general merely to decorate a poem. He does not ask Himself, "How can I dress up my subject so that it will seem fancier than it is?" Rather, he asks himself, "How can I make my subject appear to the reader exactly as it appears to me?" Imagery helps him solve his problem, for it enables him to present his subject as it is: as it looks, smells, tastes, feels and sounds. To the reader imagery is equally important: it provides his imagination with something palpable to seize upon.
TYPES OF IMAGES (according to the source of visual images)
1. SIMPLE DESCRIPTION - a large number of images which arise in a poem come from simple description of visible objects or actions.
2. DRAMATIC SITUATION
2.1 DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE - as soon as the reader becomes aware that the poem is a dramatic monologue, he visualizes a speaker with the result that the particularity of the situation is evident.
2.2 DIALOGUE - has the same effect as Dramatic Monologue.
3. STORY - like description, narration causes the reader or hearer to form images. When the reader realizes that he is being told a tale he visualizes from habit; he does not wish to miss the point of the story.
4. METONYMY - when a poet uses metonymy, he names one thing when he really means another thing with which the first is closely connected. e.g. Seven little foreheads stared up at me from the first row. (where "foreheads" is used for "eyes" ).
5. SYNECDOCHE - when a poet uses synecdoche, he names a part of a thing when he means whole thing (or vice versa) or the genius for the species.
6. ONOMATOPOEIA - although imagery usually refers to visual images, there are also aural images. The use of words which sound like their meaning is called onomatopoeia. e.g. buzz, hiss, clang , splash, murmur, chatter, etc.
As Sir Philip Sidney said: "Imaging is itself the very height and life of poetry." It must be so, form the very nature of poetic vision, which always embodies itself in the form of symbols. The personality of the poet, which is the well-spring of his poetry will be a world created from all that he has known and felt and seen and heard and thought. His image-making poetic faculty and his imagination will blend together his memories and his immediate perceptions into a thousand of varieties of shapes and associations of living loveliness and power. However apparently direct and unadorned the poet makes his verses, he will employ images. However simple his statement he cannot make it abstract. How imagery comes to the poet, how it is carried alive into the heart by passion is too mysterious a process to analyze. It brings us back at once to the problem of creation in general. Under the influence of the creative ferment, the consciousness of the poet seizes association and poetry is the union of the mental and emotional excitement of the experience with imagery which leaps to meet it, and which must be already in the memory of the poet.
THEME
Controlling Idea: The theme of a literary work. The controlling idea of a poem is the idea continuously developed throughout the poem by sets of key words that identify the poet's subject and his attitude or feeling about it. It may also be suggested by the title of a poem or by segment of the poem. It is rarely stated explicitly by the poet, but it can be stated by the reader and it can be stated in different ways. The controlling idea is an idea, not a moral; it is a major idea, not a minor supporting idea or detail; and it controls or dominates the poem as a whole.
The word theme is here used to name the particular subject matter of the poem in relationship to the reader's previous observation of the life about him and within him. Theme, then, here refers to those broad generalizations and high-order abstractions which each person develops in dealing with the common experiences of life. Each of us was born, and each of us will die. And, then no one of us can report his own birth of his own dearth, everyone had had some personal observation at first of second hand of the elemental and universal facts of life, Birth and Death. So, too, every mature person has had some experience of what we shall call of Heart of and Mind, of Friendship and of Love, of Youth and Of Nature and of Art, of Work and of Play, of War and of Justice, of Doubt and of Terror…; and most persons will add that they have had some experience of Faith and of God and is not complete list of universal experiences, but it will do to suggest the possible range of poetic themes.
FORMATE
For a literary work to be worthy of being called poetry it must be written in some type of poetic formate (type, style).
The list below, although not complete, gives some of most common types of poetic formates.
Acrostic Poetry
Acrostic Poetry is where the first letter of each line spells a word, usually using the same words as in the title.
Free Verse
Free Verse is an irregular form of poetry in which the content free of traditional rules of versification, (freedom from fixed meter or rhyme, but not necessarily free of them). In moving from line to line, the poet's main consideration is where to insert line breaks.Some ways of doing this include breaking the line where there is a natural pause or at a point of suspense for the reader.
Ballad
A short narrative poem with stanzas of two or four lines and usually a refrain. The story of a ballad can originate from a wide range of subject matter but most frequently deals with folk-lore or popular legends. They are written in straight-forward verse, seldom with detail, but always with graphic simplicity and force. Most ballads are suitable for singing and, while sometimes varied in practice, are generally written in ballad meter, i.e., alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, with the last words of the second and fourth lines rhyming
Limerick
A Limerick is a rhymed humorous or nonsense poem of five lines which originated in Limerick, Ireland. The Limerick has a set rhyme scheme of : a-a-b-b-a with a syllable structure of: 9-9-6-6-9.
The rhythm of the poem should go as follows:
Lines 1, 2, 5: weak, weak, STRONG, weak, weak, STRONG, weak, weak, STRONG, weak, weak
Lines 3, 4: weak, weak, STRONG, weak, weak, STRONG, weak, weak
Sonnet
A Sonnet is a poem consisting of 14 lines (iambic pentameter) with a particular rhyming scheme:
Examples of a rhyming scheme:
#1) abab cdcd efef gg
#2) abba cddc effe gg
#3) abba abba cdcd cd
A Shakespearean (English) sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet, and rhymes abab cdcd efef gg.
An Italian sonnet is composed of an octave, rhyming abbaabba, and a sestet, rhyming cdecde or cdcdcd, or in some variant pattern, but with no closing couplet.
Usually, English and Italian Sonnets have 10 syllables per line, but Italian Sonnets can also have 11 syllables per line.
French sonnets follow in this same pattern, but normally have 12 syllables per line.
Epic
An Epic is a long narrative poem celebrating the adventures and achievements of a hero...epics deal with the traditions, mythical or historical, of a nation.
Ode
An Ode is a poem praising and glorifying a person, place or thing.
There are hundreds of different types of poetic formates to choose from, do your own research to learn about the different types.
