Poetry Terms and TPCASST

Read the poems in Billy Collins pg. 23-42.  Select one poem that you like and do a TPCASST analysis of it.

Poetry cycles were due on Monday.  Several of you have not turned them in.  I suggest you do so as soon as possible and take a late penalty.

Also, several of you did not take the Thomas and Beulah test.  That, too, will affect your grade for this marking period and you might fail.

Finally, on Friday, we will begin our presentations of our selected contemporary  poet.
Please prepare a 10 minute discussion in which you share 2 poems by the poet and give an overall REVIEW of your poetry book:

1. What kind of poetry does the poet write?  How would you characterize the THEMES, TONE, and STYLE of these poems?

2. Does the poet write in OPEN or CLOSED forms (formal poetry--sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, etc)?

3. What are the major IMAGES the poet focuses on in his or her poetry?

4. BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL INFO---Awards, fellowships, etc.

And any other key points you feel are important to know about the poet.

Billy Collins

Billy Collins website:

http://www.billy-collins.com/

TED talk:

http://blog.ted.com/2012/02/28/poems-in-motion-billy-collins-at-ted2012/

Poetry Cycle Deadlines

For today, you should work on your poetry cycles that were to be completed for next Tuesday.  I will extend the deadline to next Friday if:

GOALS FOR TODAY:  You turn in an outline/chronology with descriptions of the 8-10 poems in your cycle and at least two first drafts of poems.

Remember, you do not need to begin at the beginning.  You can write the poems out of order.
What is important is that you experiment with style, voice, and form as you create your overall narrative through the poems.

Rita Dove/ Beulah's poems

Pronunciation:

Imagery is the name given to the elements in a poem that spark off the senses. Despite "image" being a synonym for "picture", images need not be only visual; any of the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) can respond to what a poet writes. Examples of non-visual imagery can be found in Ken Smith's 'In Praise of Vodka', where he describes the drink as having "the taste of air, of wind on fields, / the wind through the long wet forest", and James Berry's 'Seashell', which puts the "ocean sighs" right in a listener's ear.

A poet could simply state, say, "I see a tree", but it is possible to conjure up much more specific images using techniques such as simile ("a tree like a spiky rocket"), metaphor ("a green cloud riding a pole") or synechdoche ("bare, black branches") - each of these suggests a different kind of tree. Techniques, such as these, that can be used to create powerful images are called figurative language, and can also include onomatopoeia, metonymy and personification.

One of the great pleasures of poetry is discovering a particularly powerful image; the Imagists of the early 20th century felt it was the most important aspect, so were devoted to finding strong images and presenting them in the clearest language possible. Of course, not every poem is an Imagist poem, but making images is something that nearly every poem in the Archive does.

An interesting contrast in imagery can be found by comparing Alison Croggon's 'The Elwood Organic Fruit and Vegetable Shop' with Allen Ginsberg's 'A Supermarket in California'; although both poets seem to like the shops they write about, Ginsberg's shop is full of hard, bright things, corralled into aisles, featuring neon, tins and freezers, while the organic shop is full of images of soft, natural things rubbing against one another in sunlight. Without it being said explicitly, the imagery makes it clear that the supermarket is big, boxy, and tidy, unlike the cosy Elwood's. This is partly done with the visual images that are drawn, and in part with Croggon's images that mix the senses (this is called synaesthesia), such as the strawberries with their "klaxons of sweetness" or the gardens with "well-groomed scents", having the way the imagery is made correspond with what the imagery shows.

Fleur Adcock's poem, 'Leaving the Tate', uses imagery of picture-making to build up the overlap between art and sight at the centre of the poem.

 

• Simile
• Metonymy
• Metaphor
• Irony
• Synecdoche
• Onomatopoeia

 

• A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
• In praise of vodka by Ken Smith
• Leaving the Tate by Fleur Adcock
• Seashell by James Berry - Children's Poems
• The Elwood Organic Fruit and Vegetable Shop by Alison Croggon

Poetry Cycle Assignment

Poetry Cycle Assignment Rita Dove

Go over Mandolin section:

Reader Response to a Poem:
Select one of the poems in "Thomas and Beulah". How does the poem make you feel? In what ways can you relate to the poem? What has Rita Dove done with imagery, form, theme, rhythm, language, etc. to make this poem work? Any lines that particularly strike you as interesting or powerful? Think about poetic technique: enjambment, caesura, metaphor, simile, alliteration, assonance, consonance, linebreaking, stanzaic form, apostrophe, onomatopeaia, etc.

Post your response



Begin working on Poetry Cycle assignment:
Similar to Thomas and Beulah, consider some characters in your own life, imagined characters, or actual historical characters. Imagine the significant chronological dates in their lives--high points and low points. consider how to construct a series of 8-10 (preferably more) poems that tell a story (narrative poetry) and explore these key moments and occasions.

• a. Your poetry cycle should consist of 8-10 poems
• b. Your poetry cycle should be accompanied by a chronology to support the key dates and occasions you chose to write about.
• c. At least two of the poems should explore the same event from two different perspectives or viewpoints (like "Courtship" in Thomas and Beulah). These poems can have the same title.
• d. Place one poem per page, single-spaced, 12 point type in a clean font and be sure to title each poem. you may want to title the entire cycle as well. Use italics for dialogue, songs, memories, etc as you observe in Rita Dove's work. Experiment with different stanzaic forms and poetic styles.
• e. Poems can, of course, be narrative or lyric, but remember that the overall cycle is a narrative and must tell a story of a life or lives although we only see "fragments" or moments/snapsho

Rita Dove and Imagery

Discuss Mandolin:
 
www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=6719 

Literary term:

motif [moh‐teef], a situation, incident, idea, image, or character‐type that is found in many different literary works, folktales, or myths; or any element of a work that is elaborated into a more general theme. The fever that purges away a character's false identity is a recurrent motif in Victorian fiction; and in European lyric poetry the ubi sunt motif and the carpe diem motif are commonly found. Where an image, incident, or other element is repeated significantly within a single work, it is more commonly referred to as a leitmotif. See also archetype, stock character, topos.

What are some of the motifs in "Mandolin"?

Image in Poetry

Summary: This section covers images as they appear in poetry and covers related terminology, definitions and origins of images, uses of images, and several exercises.
Contributors:Purdue OWL
Last Edited: 2010-04-21 08:28:17

Introduction

What is an image? This is a question that philosophers and poets have asked themselves for thousands of years and have yet to definitively answer. The most widely used definition of an image these days is:"...an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." (Ezra Pound)
But this definition from Pound has a history to it. Before Pound outlined his definition, the image was seen very differently by most people. Therefore, the question "what is an image?" immediately breaks down into three fundamental parts:

1) Where do images come from?
2) Once an image is created, what is it?
3) How can an image function in a poem?

Before we answer these questions, we'll want to discuss some terms related to image so that we can use them in our answers.

Related Terms

Imagery
The category of which all images, as varied and lively as they are, fall into. "Imagery is best defined as the total sensory suggestion of poetry" (John Ciardi, World Book Dictionary def. of "Imagery.")
Imagination

1) The mental laboratory used for the creation of images and new ideas.
2) "n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership." (Ambrose Bierce, 60)
3) "Imagination is not, as its etymology would suggest, the faculty of forming images of reality; it is rather the faculty of forming images which go beyond reality, which sing reality." (Gaston Bachelard ,"On Poetic Imagination and Revery," 15)

Imagism
A school of poetry and poetics made popular by Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) in the early 20th century that focused on "direct treatment of the thing, whether subjective or objective." H.D.'s "Sea Garden" is often seen as a good example of this style.
Concrete detail
A detail in a poem that has a basis in something "real" or tangible, not abstract or intellectual, based more in things than in thought.
Sensory detail
A detail that draws on any of the five senses. This is very often also a concrete detail.

Where do images come from?

The first question is one best left to psychologists and philosophers of language. Perhaps one of the most complete philosophical inquiries (and the one that seemed to create a dramatic break from classical philosophy), was that of Gaston Bachelard. Bachelard believed that the image originated straight out of human consciousness, from the very heart of being. Whereas before the image was seen merely as a representation of an object in the world, Bachelard believed that the image was its own object and that it could be experienced by a reader who allowed him or herself the opportunity to "dream" the image (the "revery" of reading poetry). The image then could not be intellectualized so much as experienced.
He even went so far as to claim that "Intellectual criticism of poetry will never lead to the center of where poetic images are formed." ("Poetic Imagination" 7) He believed that the image erupts from the mind of the poet, that the poet is not entirely in control of the image and therefore is not seen as "causing" the image to come into being. Since the image has no "cause," the image has no past, and, subsequently, is an object in and of itself, separate from its maker and separate from the object it describes. He claims "[The image] becomes a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what it expresses; in other words, it is at once a becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being."
Bachelard is, of course, just one person's opinion on the matter, but his philosphy does hold true to the somewhat enigmatic and difficult-to-pin-down nature of the image. Where the image comes from is an issue that will probably never be solved, but suffice to say that if you approach its making as a mystery (and allow it to simply happen without too much intellectualizing) you will at least keep in line with one major aspect of its origin, that of the unknown.

Rita Dove

About the Oriental Ballerina:


www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV16g979jRM

Read aloud and discuss "Mandolin". Respond and analyze  one of the poems in a comment posted here for credit.

Rita Dove and Billy Collins at the White House:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi33BQRtIKo&feature=related 

Rita Dove, introduced by Barack Obama:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi33BQRtIKo&feature=related

2nd period:
Begin planning and outlining your poetry cycle.  Discuss with Ms. Gamzon

HMWK: Finish Mandolin section for Tuesday

Period 2--Begin work on Poetry Cycle --Due Tues. Nov. 13

Check out Rita Dove videos:

www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21787

www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21327

www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20412

The First Book
Rita Dove

Open it.

Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well...maybe a little

More a nip, like.  A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.

You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.

Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learning to use

knife and fork?  Dig in:
You'll never reach bottom.

It's not like it's the end of the world--
just the world as you think

you know it.