poem analysis –part 1

When you are given a poem to analyze

pay attention to any type of deviation
and parallelism, alliteration,
assonance, rhyme, types of rhymes,
sound symbolism, deviations in
morphology, newly formed words. Pay
attention if the poet has deviations in
punctuation, capitalization and
spelling.
Linguistic deviation

 Linguistic deviation is the occurrence of unexpected

irregularity in language and results in foregrounding on
the basis that the irregularity is surprising to the reader.
e.g.
 A grief ago
 (‘A grief ago’, by Dylan Thomas)
Deviation-external vs. internal

 The word ‘grief’ is semantically deviant

 ‘a … ago’ – external deviation, in external deviation the existing
rules of the language are broken.
 Internal deviation – a poem by E.E. Cummings- in internal
deviation the rule established by the writer him/herself is broken
by him or her. In the poem below the poet does not use capital
letters where they must be used, but later breaks the rule and
uses “Doom” with a capital letter.
Deviation vs parallelism

 Deviation is unexpected irregularity in a language, i.e., deviation

is violation of the language norms and rules to creative, aesthetic
and artistic purposes.
 Parallelism is unexpected regularity in a language, i.e., repetition
either of similar sounds, words, word combinations, sentence
structures, etc. for creative, aesthetic and artistic purposes.
Parallelism in Beautitudes
Levels of Language-stylistic analysis covers
all these levels of the language
Phonology
 Apt Alliteration's Artful Aid. Charles Churchill
 Alliteration/consonance is a
stylistic literary device identified by
the repeated sound of the first
consonant in a series of multiple
words, or the repetition of the same
sounds or of the same kinds of
sounds at the beginning of words or
in stressed syllables of a phrase.
Here are examples of alliteration taken
from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe:

 Once upon a midnight dreary while I

pondered weak and weary
 ...rare and radiant maiden
 And the silken sad uncertain rustling of
each purple curtain
 Deep into that darkness peering, long I
stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting,
dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared
to dream before
Alliteration in news headlines
Assonance
 Assonance is the repetition of
vowel sounds to create internal
rhyming within phrases or
sentences, and together with
alliteration and consonance serves
as one of the building blocks of
verse.
Assonance-Robert Frost “Stopping by
Woods on a Snowy Evening”:

 “He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dar and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
Rhyme
 A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds
(or the same sound) in two or more
words, most often in the final syllables of
lines in poems and songs.
 “Midstairs” by Virginia Hamilton Adair:
 
        And here on this turning of the stair
         Between passion and doubt,
         I pause and say a double prayer,
         One for you, and one for you;
         And so they cancel out.
Types of rhymes
 we distinguish between full
rhymes and incomplete rhymes.
rhymes
The full rhyme presupposes
identity of the vowel sound and the
following consonant sounds in a
stressed syllable, as in might,
right; needless, heedless.
 Types of rhymes
Incomplete rhymes present a greater variety.
They can be divided into two main groups: vowel
rhymes and consonant rhymes. In vowel
rhymes the vowels of the syllables in
corresponding words are identical, but the
consonants may be different, as in flesh— fresh—
press. Consonant rhymes, on the contrary, show
concordance in consonants and disparity in
vowels, as in worth—forth; tale—tool—Treble—
trouble; flung—long.
half-rhyme-only the final consonants of the final
words of 2 or more lines are rhymed

 If love is like a bridge

or maybe like a grudge,
and time is like a river
that kills us with a shiver,
then what have all these mornings meant
but aging into love?
What now is straight must have been
bent;
what now is whole must have been rent.
My hand is now your glove.
(To My Wife, by George Wolff)
eye rhymes
 eye rhyme, in poetry, an imperfect
rhyme in which two words are spelled
similarly but pronounced differently
(such as move and love, bough and
though, come and home, and laughter
and daughter). Some of these (such as
flood and brood) are referred to as
historical rhymes because at one time
they probably had the same
pronunciation.
 Feminine vs masculine rhyme
 In a masculine rhyme the last stressed vowel sound is in
the last syllable of the rhyming words (e.g. said – head,
extol – enrol, grey – today); while a feminine rhyme
includes an unstressed syllable after the last stressed vowel
sound (e.g. gaily – daily, daughter – water). In the
following stanza you can find an example for both feminine
and masculine rhymes:
 When we two parted
 In silence and tears,
 Half broken-hearted
 To sever for years
 parted – hearted: feminine rhyme
 tears – years: masculine rhyme
Internal rhyme-the rhyme within the
same line of poetry
 Rhyme in the Same Line
 I went to town to buy a gown. / I took
the car and it wasn’t far. 
 Rhyme in Separate Lines
 I see a red boat that has a red flag. / Just
like my red coat and my little red pail. 
 Word at the End and Word in the
Middle
 The snowflakes are dancing, floating, and
falling. / The church bells are calling, but
I will not go. 
Reverse rhyme
 The first words in each line of a stanza are
rhymed, e.g.,
 Ask is to seek an answer to a question.
Bask means to laze in the sun, or relax.
Cask is a container – a barrel, tub, or drum.

Mask is a façade, or cover.

rhyming
 According to the way the rhymes are
arranged within the stanza, certain models
have crystallized, for instance:
 1. couplets —when the last words of
two successive lines are rhymed.
This is commonly marked aa,
 2. triple rhymes—aaa
 3. cross rhymes—abab
 4. framing or ring rhymes—abba
Sound symbolism
 Here language provides not only
musical effect, but also symbolises
directly the meaning it represents.
The most iconic of such effect is
normally referred to as
onomatopoeia and concerns the
direct echoing of the sounds being
described in the phonology of the
words used to describe them.
Sound symbolism
 Kata kata
 Spack a speck speck
 Kish kish
 Achoo
 Phew
 Boo boo
 Blah blah
 Zap zapping
Sound symbolism
 "In English, words beginning with
fl-, such as fly, flee, flow, flimsy,
flicker, and fluid, are often
suggestive of lightness and
quickness. Also, there are many
words in English that begin with gl-
and refer to brightness (such as
gleam, glisten, glow, glint, glitter,
and glimmer)."
Sound symbolism

white
downpours shudder
like curtains, rinsing
tight hairdos to innocence.

 In the poem sounds /s/, /z/, /ʃ /

directly represent the sound of rain
 Poe's poem "The Bells" where the
words tinkle and bells are distributed in
the following manner:

 "Silver bells... how they tinkle, tinkle,

tinkle"
 and further
 "To the tintinabulation that so musically
wells
 From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
 Bells, bells, bells —
 From the jingling and the tinkling of the
bells."
morphology
 The following morphological aspects can be
used by writers to achieve foregrounding by
means of deviation:
 Inflection (to use grammatical flections in an
irregular way): bestest
 Word formation: word formation models can be
used to form absolutely new words skillfully.
 Derivation-reportion
 Compounding-feather-light
 Conversion-to mouth, etc.
Word formation
 Back clipping-ad, doc, cable
Ad form advertisement
 Fore clipping-chute, gator

Chute from parachute

 Middle clipping- flu, jams

Flu from influenza

 Complex clipping–op art from optical art

 Reduplication- tip-top, wishy-washy

 Back formation-baby-sit, edit

Baby-sit form baby-sitter

 Initialisms-BBC, CNN
Word formation
 Acronyms- NATO, VAT
 Blends-smog (smoke + fog),
breathalyzer (breathe + analyzer)
 Affixation- pseudo-humanism,
defragment
 Compounding- stargaze, mouth-
potato
 Conversion-a bore- to bore, the poor- poor,
sand- to sand