Index

1. Definition of terms_______________________________ 3

1. Spenserian and Shakespearean Sonnets_______11

1. Types of poem____________________________________18

1. Poem Analysis____________________________________37

1. Bibliography______________________________________47

1.- Definition

of

Terms

In literature, apostrophe is a figure of speech sometimes represented by an exclamation, such as “Oh.” A writer or speaker, using apostrophe, speaks directly to someone who is not present or is dead, or speaks to an inanimate object.

E.g. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

       How I wonder what you are.

       Up above the world so high,

       Like a diamond in the sky.”

1.1 Apostrophe

Assonance takes place when two or more words, close to one another repeat the same vowel sound, but start with different consonant sounds.

E.g. Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night (By Dylan Thomas)

      “Do not go gentle into that good night,

      Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

      Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

      Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight,

      Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

      Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

1.2 Assonance

1.3 Consonance

Consonance refers to repetitive sounds produced by consonants within a sentence or phrase.

E.g. T was later when the summer went (By Emily Dickson)

         “ ‘T was later when the summer went

         Than when the cricket came,

         And yet we knew that gentle clock

         Meant nought but going home.

        ‘T was sooner when the cricket went

         Than when the winter came,

         Yet that pathetic pendulum

         Keeps esoteric time.”

1.4 Alliteration

Alliteration is derived from Latin’s “Latira”. It means “letters of alphabet”. It is a stylistic device in which a number of words, having the same first consonant sound, occur close together in a series.

E.g. Romeo and Juliet (By William Shakespeare)

“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes;

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”

1.5 Cacophony

The term refers to the use of words with sharp, harsh, hissing, and unmelodious sounds. Cacophony uses consonants in combinations that require explosive delivery (e.g., p, b, d, g, k, ch-, sh- etc.).

E.g.  Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

” ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

1.6 Euphony

The literary device euphony is derived from the Greek word euphonos, which means “sweet-voiced.” It can be defined as the use of words and phrases that are distinguished as having a wide range of noteworthy melody or loveliness in the sounds they create. It gives pleasing and soothing effects to the ear due to repeated vowels and smooth consonants.

E.g. Success is counted sweetest by Emily Dickinson.

“Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne’er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host

Who took the flag to-day

Can tell the definition,

So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Break, agonized and clear!”

2.- Shakespearean Sonnet

Spenserian Sonnet

Sonnet 130

My Mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;  a

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;  b

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;  a

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.  b  

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,  c

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;  d

And in some perfumes is there more delight  c

There in the breath that from my mistress reeks.  d  

Shakespearean Sonnet poem

I love to hear her speak; yet well I know e

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;  f

I grant I never saw a goddess go;  e

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground  f

Any yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare  g

As any she belied with false compare.  g

Sonnet LXXV 

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, a

But came the waves and washed it away; b

Again I wrote it with a second hand, a

But came the tide and made my pains his prey. b

"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay b

A mortal thing so to immortalize, c

For I myself shall like to this decay, b

And eke my name be wiped out likewise c

Spenserian Sonnet poem

"Not so." quod I, "Let baser thing devise c

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame; d

My verse your virtues rare shall eternize c

And in the heavens write your glorious name, d

Where, when as death shall all the world subdue,    e

Our love shall live, and later life renew." e

Comparing and contrasting.

Both sonnets have the same quantity of lines using iambic pentameter (3 quartrains and 1 heroic couplet). However, their rhyme scheme is different since the Spenserian sonnet uses the "b" and "c" rhymes to link the previous stanza to the next one.

3.- Types

of

poem

Ode on the Spring (Extract)

By Thomas Gray

The untaught harmony of spring...

Still is the toiling hand of Care: 

The panting herds repose: 

Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air 

The busy murmur glows! 

Some lightly o'er the current skim, 

Some show their gaily-gilded trim 

Quick-glancing to the sun. 

3.1 Ode

Characteristics

• Literary technique that is lyrical in nature.

• Not very Lengthy

• Poets praise people, natural scenes, and abstract ideas.

• The tone is often formal.

3.2 Haiku

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

An old silent pond...

A frog jumps into the pond,

splash! Silence again.

Autumn moonlight—

a worm digs silently

into the chestnut.

In the twilight rain

these brilliant-hued hibiscus -

A lovely sunset.

Characteristics

• It has five moras (syllables) in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the last line.

• It does not rhyme.

• They are usually about nature or natural phenomena.

• The poem has two juxtaposed subjects that are divided into two contrasting parts.

• In English, this division between two parts can be shown by a colon or a dash.

3.3 Ballad

Ballata 5 by Guido Cavalcanti

"That which befalls me in my Lady's presence

Bars explanation intellectual.

I seem to see a lady wonderful

Spring forth between her lips, one whom no sense

Can fully tell the mind of,and one whence

Another, in beauty, springeth marvelous,

From whom a star goes forth and speaketh thus:

'Now my salvation is gone forth from thee.'"

Characteristics

• French provenance.

• Basically used in dance songs in ancient France.
• 
• Popular and emotional.

• Passed from generation to generation through oral traditions in the past.

• Uses simple and easy-to-understand language.

• It contains a message.

3.4 Villanelle

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath



“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

Characteristics

• It has five tercets (first 15 lines), a quatrain (last four lines), and a couplet at the end of the quatrain.

• There is no well-organized meter in a villanelle, but it has a set rhyme scheme.

• There are no fixed numbers of syllables.

3.5 Sestina

Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

September rain falls on the house.

In the failing light, the old grandmother

sits in the kitchen with the child

beside the Little Marvel Stove,

reading the jokes from the almanac,

laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears

and the rain that beats on the roof of the house

were both foretold by the almanac,

but only known to a grandmother.

The iron kettle sings on the stove.

She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It’s time for tea now; but the child

is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears

dance like mad on the hot black stove,

the way the rain must dance on the house.

Tidying up, the old grandmother

hangs up the clever almanac

Characteristics

Like the villanelle and the triolet, the sestina is very strictly patterned. Unlike these other forms however, the sestina in its original form was not written using rhymes.

Instead it uses a set of six ending-words in six different patterns of six-line stanzas (sestets), followed by a three-line envoi which uses all six of these refrained words. This gives the poem its thirty-nine lines.

3.6 Elegy

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by Walt Whitman

(Extract)

1 

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, 

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, 

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. 

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, 

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 

And thought of him I love.