Poetry Rozi Khan

66 FEFA Course
th
(IFEC-03)
At The University of
Peshawar
ROZI KHAN GPGJC SWAT
In The Name Of Allah The Compassionate And Merciful.
LET`S
TEACH
POETRY

POETRY
 Objectives:
o Introduction
o Types
o Prosodic Features
o Stanza and Verse Forms
o Figurative Language
o Writing about Poetry
Introduction

Poetry (Greek " poiesis", "making") a literary art in which
language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in
addition to its apparent meaning.

Difficult to define conclusively

It is the type of thing the poet writes (Robert Frost)
Poetic texts have a tendency to:
oRelative brevity (with some exceptions)
oDense expression
oExpress subjectivity more than other texts
oDisplay a musical or songlike quality

Introduction (Continued)
o Be structurally and phonologically overstructured
o Be syntactically and morphologically overstructured
o Deviate from everyday language
o Aesthetic self-referentiality ( which means that
they draw attention to themselves as art form
both through the form in which they are written
and through explicit references to the writing of
poetry)

Introduction (Continued)
With all the difficulties of defining poetry it

is worth remembering that poetry, especially
in the form of song, is one of the oldest form
of artistic expression, much older than prose,
and it seems to answer- or to originate in- a
human impulse that reaches for expression in
joy, grief, doubt, hope, loneliness, and much
more.

TYPES OF POETRY
Categorizing poetry into types help us group
poems together on the basis of shared
characteristics which in turn facilitate the process
of interpretation and understanding of the poems.
Poetry can be categorized into a number of types
depending on the theme, subject matter or
structure of the poem. It is useful to keep two
general distinctions in mind: lyrical poetry and
narrative poetry.

LYRICAL POETRY
 The term “lyric” comes from “lyre,” a musical
instrument that accompanied ancient Greek songs.
Lyric poetry retains some of the elements of song
which is said to be its origin.
o A lyrical poem is a subjective, comparatively short,
non-narrative poem in which a single speaker
presents an idea, state of mind or an emotional state.
o Lyric poetry typically describes the poet's
innermost feelings or candid observations and
evokes a musical quality in its sounds and rhythms.
LYRICAL POETRY (Continued)
Subcategories of lyric poetry: lyric poetry has different
sub-types each having its own distinctive features, both
in form and in content. Some famous types include: the
elegy, ode, sonnet, dramatic monologue, epithalamion,
epigram, limerick, and haiku.
o Elegy: It is a formal lament for the death of a particular

person (for example Tennyson`s ‘In Memoriam’). More
broadly defined, the term elegy is also used for solemn
meditations often on questions of death, such as Grey`s
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’.

o Example of Elegy – Excerpt
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

by Thomas Gray
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

o Ode: Most popular and ancient form of
poetry, practiced by the Greek and Roman
poets. A long lyric poems with a serious
subject, written to a set structure in an
elevated style. John Keats's "Ode on a
Grecian Urn" and "Ode To A Nightingale"
and Wordsworth`s " Hymn to Duty " are
famous examples.

o Example of an Ode - Excerpt
Ode To A Nightingale
by John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

• Sonnet: A love poem of 14 lines, dealing with the
lover`s sufferings and hopes. Of Italian origin,
became popular in England through Wyatt and Earl
of Surrey who imitated the sonnets of Petrarch
(Petrarchan sonnet). Used for topics other than love,
as for religious experience (by Donne & Milton),
reflections on art (by Keats & Shelley), or even the
war experience (by Brooke & Owen). A series of
sonnets linked by the same theme, is called sonnet
cycle (for instance Petrarch, Spencer, Shakespeare)
which depict the various stages of a love relationship.
TYPES OF POETRY
o Example of Sonnets - Excerpt
Sonnet 18
by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

• Dramatic monologue: A lyric poem in which a
speaker, who is explicitly someone other than
the author, makes a speech to a silent auditor
in a specific situation and at a critical moment.
Without intending to do so, the speaker reveals
aspects of his temperament and character.
Browning`s “My Last Duchess” and
“Porphyria's Lover’ are examples of this type.
•

TYPES OF POETRY
o Example of Dramatic monologue - Excerpt
“My Las Duchess” by Robert Browning
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

• Epithalamium : From the Greek 'epi' meaning
'upon' and 'thalamium' meaning 'nuptial chamber'. It
is a wedding poem in honour of a bride and
bridegroom. The best example of Epithalamium in
Greek literature is the ‘18th Idyll of Theocritus’,
that celebrates the marriage of Menelaus and Helen.
The famous work "Epithalamium" was written by
Edmund Spenser in honor of his marriage in 1594.
Dryden`s “Annus Mirabilis” and R. Graves` “A
Slice of Wedding Cake” are other examples of this
form.
Example of Epithalamium Form - Excerpt

A Slice of Wedding Cake
by Robert Graves
Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls

Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavor, nine times out of ten.

o Epigram: A very short, satirical and witty poem usually written
as a brief couplet or quatrain. It derives from the Greek
'epigramma' meaning an inscription. It was cultivated in the late
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by poets like Ben Jonson
and John Donne who wrote twenty-one English epigrams.
o Example of Epigram
A Lame Beggar
By John Donne
I am unable, yonder beggar cries,

To stand, or move; if he say true, he lies.

NARRATIVE POETRY
A verbal representation, in verse, of a series of
connected events; and propels characters through
a plot.
 It is always told by a narrator and the narrative
may be a love story (like Tennyson`s ‘Maud’), the
story of a father and son (like Wordsworth`s
‘Michael’), the deeds of a hero or heroine (like
Scott`s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’), or the story of
man`s fall from Eden (like Milton`s ‘Paradise
Lost’). Subcategories of narrative poetry are for
example: epic, mock-epic, and ballad.
NARRATIVE POETRY
o Epic: Operates on a large scale, both in length

and topic, such as the founding of a nation
(Vergil`s ‘Aeneid’) or the beginning of world
history (Milton`s ‘Paradise Lost’). The poet
makes an invocation to a god or goddess to assist
him in the enormous task. It tends to use an
elevated style of language and supernatural
beings take part in the action.
NARRATIVE POETRY
o Mock-epic: Makes use of epic

conventions, like the elevated style and
the assumption that the topic is of great
importance, to deal with completely
insignificant occurrences. A famous
example is Pope`s ‘Rape of the Lock’.

NARRATIVE POETRY
o Ballad: A song, originally transmitted orally and tells a story. They
are similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain. A
ballad is often about love and often sung. Ballads are written in four-
line stanzas of alternating tetrameter and tri-meter.
o Example of Ballad Poems - Excerpt

The Mermaid
by Unknown author
Oh the ocean waves may roll,

And the stormy winds may blow,
While we poor sailors go skipping aloft
And the land lubbers lay down below, below, below
And the land lubbers lay down below.
DESCRIPTIVE AND DIDACTIC POETRY
 Both lyric and narrative poetry can contain
lengthy and detailed descriptions
(descriptive poetry) or scenes in direct
speech (dramatic poetry).
o Didactic poems are meant to teach in a
restrictive (James Thompson`s ‘The
Seasons’)or in a general (Popes` ‘Essay on
Criticism’)way. Horace famously demanded
that poetry should combine prodesse
(learning) and delectare (pleasure).
PROSODIC FEATURES
 Prosody: The study of speech rhythms and
versification. Most poetry is rhythmical
utterances, i.e. it makes use of rhythmic elements
natural to a language: alternation of stress and non-
stress, vowel length, consonant clusters, pauses
and so on. Various rhythmic patterns have different
effects on those who read or hear poetry. The
central question for the analysis of metre and
rhythm is to determine the function which these
rhythmical elements perform in each poem.
RHYTHM
 RHYTHM :
o The recurrence of stressed and unstressed sounds in
poetry. Depending on how sounds are arranged, the
rhythm of a poem may be fast or slow, choppy or smooth.
o Poets use rhythm to create pleasurable sound patterns and
to reinforce meanings.
o Poetic metre and metrical deviations contribute to
rhythm
o Relates to the variation of speed in which a poem is likely
to be read.

METRE
Metre: It is the measured arrangement of accents and
syllables. Poetry employs the stresses that occur naturally
in language utterances to construct regular patterns.
Some possibilities for metrical patterns in poetry are:
o Accentual metre: same stresses but different syllables
o Syllabic metre: same syllables but different stresses
o Accentual-Syllabic metre: equal number of stressed and non-stressed
syllables per line. Most common metre in English poetry.
o Free verse: irregular pattern of stress and syllables
 The visual representation of the distribution of stress and non-stress in
verse is called scansion. Stress syllable is denoted by ( ¹ ) and non-
stress by ( º ).

METRE (Continued)
 Accentual metre: each line has the same number

of stresses, but varies in total number of syllables.
It is found in nursery rhymes and was commonly
used in Old English poetry. Hopkins's sprung
rhythm and modern rap poetry make use of this
metre.
o Example from nursery rhymes:
There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile [0101010010101]
He found a crooked sixpence beside a crooked stile [0101010010101]
He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse [010101010101]
And they all lived together in a little crooked house [00100100010101]
(From: Christie, ‘Crooked House’)

METRE (Continued)
 Syllabic metre: It has a fixed number of syllables in each

line, though there may be a varying number of stresses.
Pure syllabic verse is comparatively rare in English and
what there is, is imported from foreign forms of poetry,
such is the Japanese Haiku. It is named according to the
number of syllables per line using Greek numbers.
o William Black, for instance, liked the so-called
fourteener, a line with fourteen syllables:
‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green,
Grey headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul`s they like Thames` waters flow.
( Blake`s Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday)

METRE (Continued)
 Accentual-syllabic metre: It is extensively used
in the English poetry. In this metrical system both
the number of stresses and the number of syllables
between the stresses are regular, but it is often the
case that a line leaves one metrical foot incomplete,
thus varying the number of syllables as a whole.
Each single unit of stress and non-stress is called
foot. There are a large number of metrical foot
measurements but the most common ones are:
iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapaest, and spondee.

METRE (Continued)
 Iambic (an iamb): da-DUM ( represented by º ¹ or ̌ ' )

2 syllables: unstressed followed by stressed
Examples:
That time / of year /thou mayst / in me / behold [̌ ' ̌ '̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ']
When ye / llow leaves, / or none, / or few / do hang [ ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ]
( Shakespeare`s sonnet: LXXII )
The cur/few tolls /the knell /of part/ing day, [ ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ']
The low/ing herd /wind slow/ly o`er/ the lea, [ ̌ ' ̌ ' ' ' ̌ ' ̌ ']
The plow/man home/ward plods /his wea/ry way [ ̌ ' ̌ '̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ']
And leaves /the world /to dark/ness and /to me. [ ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ̌ ']
( Thomas Grey`s “Elegy written in a country churchyard”)

METRE (Continued)
 Trochaic ( trochee): DUM-da ( represented by ¹ º or ' ̌ )

2 syllables: stressed followed by non-stressed
Examples:
Double , double, toil and trouble [' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ]
( Shakespeare`s “Macbeth” )
Go and catch a falling star [' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ] catalexis of the final foot.
Get with child a mandrake root[' ̌ ' ̌ ' ̌ ' ]
( John Donne “ Song” )
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together;
Youth is full of pleasance age is full of care;
( Shakespeare`s “The Passionate Pilgrim” )

METRE (Continued)
 Dactyl: DUM-da-da ( represented by ¹ º º or ' ̌ ̌)

3 syllables: One stressed followed by two non-stressed
Examples:
Woman much missed how you call to me, call to me [' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ]
( Thomas Hardy`s “The Voice” )
Cannon to the right of them
Cannon to the left of them
Cannon in front of them
Volley`d and thunder`d
( Tennyson`s “Charge of the Light Brigade” )

METRE (Continued)
 Anapaest: da-da-DUM ( represented by º º ¹ or ̌ ̌ ')

3 syllables: Two non-stressed followed by one stressed
Examples:
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, [̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ]
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; [̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ]
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea. [̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ̌ ̌ ' ]
( Byron`s “The Destruction of Sennachrib” )
But lo the old inn, and the lights, and the fire
And the fiddler`s old tune and the shuffling of feet;
( William Morris` “ The Message of the Wind” )

METRE (Continued)
 Spondee: DUM-DUM ( represented by ¹ ¹ or ' ')

2 syllables: Stressed followed by another stressed
o Often used as a substitute as whole poem cannot be
written in it. It slows down the pace of line and give
emphasis to words and phrases.
Examples:
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
( Shakespeare`s sonnet cxxx)
Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes

Its trotters stuck straight out.
( Ted Hughes`s “View of a Pig” )

PROSODY (Metre)
Pyrrhus: da-da ( represented by º º or ̌ ̌ )
2 syllables: non-stressed followed by another non-stressed
o Like the spondee it is also used as a substitute metre and
serves to speed up the pace of a line.
Examples:
And often is his gold complexion dimmed
( Shakespeare`s sonnet XVIII )
 Iamb and anapaest are called the rising rhythm as the move from
non-stressed to stressed, while, trochee and dactyl are called the
falling rhythm because the move from stressed to non-stressed.

METRE (Continued)
 In accentual-syllabic verse; lines are

named according to the number of accents
(feet) they contain, using Greek numbers:
1 accent monometre
2 accents dimetre
3 accents trimetre
4 accents tetrametre
5 accents pentametre
6 accents hexametre, and so on…

METRE (Continued)
 In naming the metre of a poem we combine

the term giving the stress pattern and the
number of feet per line. For example, a line
written in the iambic metre and having four
feet per line is called iambic tetrameter:
Had we but world enough, and time
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love`s day.
( From Marvell`s “To His Coy Mistress” )

RHYTHM
• Beside meter and metrical variations the
variations in speed in which a poem is read
is essential to rhythm. Speed is particularly
influenced by:
o Pauses
o Elisions & expansions
o Vowel length
o Consonant clusters
o Modulation in speech

SOUND PATTERNS
 Much of the effects of poetry depend on various
patterns of repetition. One such repetition most
people associate with poetry is the repetition of
sounds.
 Repetition of sounds which create extra meaning
include:
o Rhyme (rime)
o Alliteration
o Assonance
o Onomatopoeia
SOUND PATTERNS
Rhyme: The repetition of identical or nearly
identical sounds that usually occur in the last
syllable or syllables of two or more lines.
o The repetition normally involve the stressed
vowel sound and any subsequent sounds that
follows: shakes – lakes, going – blowing.

Rhyme (Continued)
o Exact or perfect rhyme: Identical sounds in which the
consonant preceding the last stressed vowel of two words
is different:
night – delight, power – flower,
flying – dying, roam – home.
o Slant or off rhyme: Only the final consonants are

identical; the vowel sounds are approximate:
Clear – scar, river – forever, reader – rider,
home – come, poppet – profit.
Rhyme (Continued)
o Masculine rhyme: It is a one-syllable repetition of
identical sounds:
street – meet, man – ban,
galaxy – merrily, thing – spring.
o Feminine rhyme: It consists of two or more syllables.

The first accented syllable of the group is the rhyming
syllable and is followed by identical sounds:
straining – complaining, going – blowing, slowly –
holy.

Rhyme (Continued)
o End rhyme: It occur at the end of a line, as in the
following couplet:
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring. (Pope, Alexander)
o Internal rhyme: It has at least one of the rhyming

syllables within the line, while the other may be at the
end, as in:
The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes, (Tennyson)

SOUND PATTERNS
o ALLITERATION: The repetition of
neighboring consonant sounds, usually at
the beginning of words. (e.g., the fair
breeze blew/The white foam flew, snowy
summits, long light)
o It can also apply to stressed syllables within
words, as in (Elfland faintly)

SOUND PATTERNS
• ASSONANCE: Repetition of identical or
similar stressed vowel sounds followed by
different consonants, as in:
(lake – fate, kill – kiss, snowy – old,).

SOUND PATTERNS
o CONSONANCE: The repetition of the
same consonant sounds (usually at the end
of the words) after different accented vowel
sounds.
Example:
Clear – scar, river – forever

SOUND PATTERNS
• ONOMATOPOEIA: Use of words whose
sounds imitate, echo or suggest natural
sounds or their meanings. Some general
examples include: tweet, chirp, cluck,
clink, and quack etc.

STANZA AND VERSE FORMS
o Sequence of lines within a poem are often
separated into sub-unit, called stanza.
o It is a group of lines in a poem that follow an
established pattern in meter, rhyme, and length
and number of lines.
o A stanza form is always used to some purpose,
it serves a specific function in each poem.
o Well-known stanza forms stand in a certain
tradition, such as: sonnet or ballade.
o Some main stanza forms in English poetry are:
o Stichic verse: It is a continuous run of lines of the

same length and the same meter. Mostly used in
narrative verse.
o Blank verse: It is usually stichic, non-rhyming iambic

pentameter. It is widely by Shakespeare for English
dramatic verse, but it is also used, under the influence
of Milton, for non-dramatic verse.
o Couplet: A two-line unit with end-rhyme,

having any meter or line length. It`s usually
a self-contained complete thought unit.
o A heroic couplet is a two line unit of iambic
pentameter. It is marked with end-stopped
lines, balanced syntax, and epigrammatic
expression, as in:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason`s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. (Pope)

o Tercet or triplet: It is a stanza with three

lines of same rhyme (aaa) or two rhyming
lines embracing a line without rhyme (axa).
o Terza rima is a variant of tercet with chain

rhyme (aba bcb cdc etc.), used by Dante in
his Divine Comedy. This type of rhyme is
also used by Shelly in his “Ode to the West
Wind”.
o Quatrain: A four-line stanza with various rhyme
patters most commonly used in the English verse.
o When written in iambic pentameter and rhyming
abab it is called heroic quatrain.
o A quatrain with embracing rhyme abba used by
Tennyson in “In Memoriam” has derived its name
from this poem.
o A quatrain with alternating iambic tetrameter and
trimeter lens is called ballad stanza. The rhyme
scheme is usually abcb or abab.

o Rhyme Royal: A seven-line stanza in
iambic pentameter which rhymes ababbcc,
named after King James-I of Scotland.
Chaucer had also employed this stanza in
“Troilus and Criseyde”.
o Ottava rima: An eight-line stanza, like the
terza rima based on the Italian model, and
rhyming abababcc. This stanza form is used
by Byron in “Don Juan”.

o Spenserian stanza: A nine-line stanza
rhyming ababbcbcc, used by Edmund
Spenser in the “Faerie Queene”. The first
eight lines are iambic pentameter, the last
line is an alexandrine, which breaks the
slight monotony of the pentameter and is
often employed to emphasize a point.

o Sonnet: A lyric poem of usually fourteen

lines in iambic pentameter, in the close
form. Two sonnet forms have been widely
used: the Italian ( or Petrarchan) sonnet
and the English ( or Shakespearean) sonnet.
o The Italian sonnet is divided in an octave

and a sestet. The octave rhyme abbaabba,
and the sestet rhyme cdecde or cdccdc.
o The English (or Shakespearean) sonnet is
composed of three quatrains and a couplet,
with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.
o An important variant of the English sonnet

is the Spenserian sonnet which links the
quatrains with rhymes: abab bcbc cdcd ee.
This sonnet type is used by Edmund
Spenser in his sonnet cycle “Amoretti”

• Villanelle: A French verse form with a rather
intricate verse and rhyme pattern. It has five tercets
rhyming aba and a final quatrain rhyming abaa.
The tercet provide a kind of refrain, as the first line
of the first tercet is repeated as the last line of the
second and fourth, and the third line of the first
tercet is repeated as the last line of the third and
fifth. The first and last line of the first quatrain form
the last two lines of the concluding quatrain. A
famous example is Dylan Thomas`s poem “Do not
go gentle into that good night”.

o Limerick: A short sometimes bawdy, humorous poem consisting of five
Anapestic lines. Lines 1, 2, and 5 of a it have seven to ten syllables and
rhyme with one another. Lines 3 and 4 have five to seven syllables and also
rhyme with each other. Edward Lear is famous for his Book of Nonsense
which included the poetry form of Limericks.
o Example of Limericks
Limerick from the Book of Nonsense
by Edward Lear
There was an Old Man with a gong,

Who bumped at it all day long;
But they called out, 'O law!
You're a horrid old bore!'
So they smashed that Old Man with a gong.

o Haiku: A poetry type of Japanese origin composed
of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five
syllables. It originated in the sixteenth century and
reflects on some aspect of nature and creates images.
o Example of Haiku Poetry Type

None is travelling
by Basho (1644-1694)
None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.

Free verse ( verse Libra ): It does not use any

particular pattern of stress or number of syllables
per line. Though, such poems are without regular
metre, rhyme or stanza form, but they are not
without rhythmic effects and organization. It can be
organized around syntactic units, word or sound
repetitions, or the rhythm created by a line break.
o Example:
It is time to explain myself– let us stand up.
What is known I strip away,
I launched all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.
The clock indicates the moment – but what does eternity indicate?
(Walt Whitman)
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The form of speech artfully varied from common
usage.
o Figurative language is divided into two main groups:
1) Rhetorical schemes: arrangement of individual
sounds, words, and syntax.
2) Rhetorical tropes: figurative language, representing a
deviation from common or main significance of a
word or phrase (semantic figures) or include specific
appeal to the audience ( pragmatic figures).

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Metaphor: A figure of similarity, in which
a word or phrase expresses, describes, or
defines one thing as though it were another
thing. It is an implicit or covert comparison
that adds a new dimension of meaning to
the original expression or thing.
Example:
The Bird of time has but a little way
To flutter, and the Bird is on the wing.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Simile: A comparison of one thing to
another in order to make a point about the
first thing. It is an overt comparison and
uses particles of comparison (as, like).
Examples:
My heart is like a singing bird
(Christina Rossetti, “A Birthday”)
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather.

(Shakespeare, “The Passionate Pilgrim”)

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Paradox: A statement that initially appears to
be contradictory but then, on closer inspection,
turns out to make sense. A paradox reduced to
two words is called Oxymoron, as:
Seriously Joking, Living dead, eloquent silence, and inertly strong
For example:
John Donne ends his sonnet "Death, Be Not Proud" with the
paradoxical statement "Death, thou shalt die."

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Symbol: Anything that stands for something
else. It may be a person, object, image, word,
or event that evokes a range of additional
meaning beyond and usually more abstract than
its literal significance. In literature, symbols
can be cultural, contextual, or personal.
o Keats starts his ode with a real nightingale, but quickly it

becomes a symbol, standing for a life of pure, unmixed joy;
then before the end of the poem it becomes only a bird again.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
• Personification: A form of metaphor in
which human characteristics are attributed to
nonhuman things. Personification offers the
writer a way to give the world life and motion
by assigning familiar human behaviors and
emotions to animals, inanimate objects, and
abstract ideas.
For example:
In Keats’s "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the speaker refers to the urn as an
"unravished bride of quietness."

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
• Pun: A play on words that relies on a word’s
having more than one meaning or sounding
like another word. Shakespeare and other
writers use puns extensively, for serious and
comic purposes:
• In Romeo and Juliet (III.i.101), the dying Mercutio puns,
"Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man."

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Imagery: It is the "mental pictures" that readers
experience within a passage of literature. It
signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to
in a poem, whether by literal description,
allusion, simile, or metaphor. It is not limited to
visual imagery; it also includes auditory
(sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold),
olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and
kinesthetic sensation (movement).
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
• Allusion: A brief reference to a person,
place, thing, event, or idea in history or
literature. It imply reading and cultural
experiences shared by the writer and reader,
functioning as a kind of shorthand whereby
the recalling of something outside the work
supplies an emotional or intellectual context

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
• Apostrophe: It is Addressing an abstraction
or thing, present or absent, or addressing an
absent person or entity.
Examples:
(1) Frailty, thy name is woman.–William Shakespeare.
(2) Hail, Holy Light, offspring of heaven firstborn!–John
Milton.
(3) God in heaven, please help me.
WRITING ABOUT POETRY
 The essential skills that may be useful for

writing about poetry and giving some ideas
about how to tackle questions on poetry.
o Key words and phrases:

Not all questions will be phrased in the same way, so
look carefully at the key words to help you work out what
you need to write about in your answer.

Key words and phrases Continued
For example:
• Comment on the ideas and attitudes in the poem
• How do particular words and phrases bring out the poet's ideas?
• What is the effect of the poem on you and why?
• What was the poet's intention in writing this poem and how do you
know?
• How does the poet use words to capture sensations such as sound,
smell, sight and touch?
o You may be asked to comment on specific features of the poem such

as:
• Imagery and symbolism
• Form and structure (including rhythm and rhyme)
 Getting to know the poem

Subject Matter: What? Where? When? What's
the story of the poem?
Answering these questions is a good starting
point to help you make sense of a poem, and
it can usually be done fairly easily.

o Language: There are certain features of language that

you can look out for in poetry and write about. Try and
find examples of them in the text and think about what
effect they have.
• Why did the poet use that particular feature? What was
s/he trying to convey?
• The choice of adjectives (describing words). They might
be simple or complex.
• Any images or symbols that convey particular ideas.
• The use of any techniques such as simile, metaphor or
onomatopoeia.

o Sound: Some people find writing about sound difficult

because you need to read the poem aloud to hear what it
sounds like. Here are some questions that you should try
and answer when you are considering the sound of a poem:
• Does the poet use rhyme or echoing sounds to bring certain
words together and reinforce the meaning?
• Does the poet use repetition to emphasize certain words?
• Does the poet use a definite rhythm throughout the poem,
or in part of the poem, which reinforces the meaning?

o Form: You should try and understand the

form of the poem (the way it is constructed).
• Look at the number and the length of the lines
and stanzas - are they regular? Irregular?
• Do the lines have a similar length or do they
look random?
• Are there any very short, direct, lines?

 Personal response: developing a viewpoint

o Ideas and attitudes: When you've got to
know the poem, you can begin to see what
ideas and attitudes are in there.
• What else is happening in the poem?
• What are the feelings of the poet and/or the
speaker(s)? You have to make up your mind
what the poet's intention in writing the poem
was and what they wanted to say.

o Tone : Make the idea of tone simpler by thinking

about it like this:
• If you were reading the poem aloud, how would you
do it?
• What kind of voice would you use?
• How would you want an audience to react when they
heard it?
• Practice thinking about tone by reading a number of
different poems.
• How does the poet want the audience to react to each
one?
• Using quotations: You may need to be able to pick out

quotations from the poem that illustrate the points that
you make. The selection of a quotation is one way to
know if you really understand the poem and if you are
able to construct an argument and have thought about
your ideas. Make sure you develop your point by
commenting about the quotation you've selected - how it
shows what you're saying.
• Remember this process: Point - Quotation - Comment
• Make a point, support it with a quotation and then explain
how the language used helps to add to the line's
effectiveness.

Checklist:
How to read a poem
I. What's it about? Get to know the subject matter of the
poem.
II. How does the poem work? Look at the language (words)
the poet has used. Think about the sound the poem
makes when you read it. Look at the form it's written in.
III. Develop your ideas about the poem. What ideas does the
poem give you? What attitude does the poet have to the
subject matter? What tone does the poem have - how
would you read it aloud?

THE END
By
Rozi Khan
The Department of English
Govt. P.G. Jahanzeb College
Saidu Sharif, Swat.

Poetry Rozi Khan

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66 FEFA Course

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With all the difficulties of defining poetry it

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o Elegy: It is a formal lament for the death of a particular

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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

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My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

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That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

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Example of Epithalamium Form - Excerpt

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls

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I am unable, yonder beggar cries,

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o Epic: Operates on a large scale, both in length

o Mock-epic: Makes use of epic

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o Example of Ballad Poems - Excerpt

Oh the ocean waves may roll,

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 Accentual metre: each line has the same number

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 Syllabic metre: It has a fixed number of syllables in each

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 Iambic (an iamb): da-DUM ( represented by º ¹ or ̌ ' )

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 Trochaic ( trochee): DUM-da ( represented by ¹ º or ' ̌ )

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 Dactyl: DUM-da-da ( represented by ¹ º º or ' ̌ ̌)

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 Anapaest: da-da-DUM ( represented by º º ¹ or ̌ ̌ ')

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 Spondee: DUM-DUM ( represented by ¹ ¹ or ' ')

Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes

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 In accentual-syllabic verse; lines are

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 In naming the metre of a poem we combine

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o Slant or off rhyme: Only the final consonants are

o Feminine rhyme: It consists of two or more syllables.

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o Internal rhyme: It has at least one of the rhyming

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• ASSONANCE: Repetition of identical or

similar stressed vowel sounds followed by

different consonants, as in: