Nature of poetry

Poetry can be differentiated from prose, which is language meant to convey meaning in a less condensed way, using more logical or narrative structures. This does not imply poetry is illogical. Poetry is often created from the desire to escape the logical, as well as expressing feelings and other expressions in a tight, condensed manner. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability.

Prose poetry combines the characteristics of poetry with the superficial appearance of prose. Other forms include narrative poetry and dramatic poetry, used to tell stories and so resemble novels and plays.

The Greek verb ποιέω [poiéō (= I make or create)], gave rise to three words: ποιητής [poiētḗs (= the one who creates)], ποίησις [poíēsis (= the act of creation)] and ποίημα [poíēma (= the thing created)]. From these we get three English words: poet (the creator), poesy (the creation) and poem (the created). A poet is therefore one who creates and poetry is what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon. For example, in Anglo-Saxon a poet is a scop (shaper or maker) and in Scots makar.

Tools

Sound

Perhaps the most vital element of sound in poetry is rhythm. Often the rhythm of each line is arranged in a particular meter. Different types of meter played key roles in Classical, Early European, Eastern and Modern poetry. In the case of free verse, the rhythm of lines is often organized into looser units of cadence. Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams were three notable poets who rejected the idea that meter was a critical element of poetry, claiming it was an unnatural imposition into poetry.

Poetry in English and other modern European languages often uses rhyme. Rhyme at the end of lines is the basis of a number of common poetic forms, such as ballads, sonnets and rhyming couplets. However, the use of rhyme is not universal. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes. Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. Rhyme did not enter European poetry until the High Middle Ages, when adopted from the Arabic language. Arabs have always used rhymes extensively, most notably in their long, rhyming qasidas. Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of the Tamil language, had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar), which ensured a rhythm. Alliteration played a key role in structuring early Germanic and English forms of poetry, alliterative verse. The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry and the rhyme schemes of Modern European poetry include meter as a key part of their structure, which determines when the listener expects instances of rhyme or alliteration to occur. Alliteration and rhyme, when used in poetic structures, help emphasise and define a rhythmic pattern. By contrast, the chief device of Biblical poetry in ancient Hebrew was parallelism, a rhetorical structure in which successive lines reflected each other in grammatical structure, sound structure, notional content, or all three; which lent itself to antiphonal or call-and-response performance.

Sound plays a more subtle role in free verse poetry by creating pleasing, varied patterns and emphasizing or illustrating semantic elements of the poem. Alliteration, assonance, consonance, dissonance and internal rhyme are among the ways poets use sound. Euphony refers to the musical, flowing quality of words arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Form

Poetry depends less on linguistic units of sentences and paragraphs. The structural elements are the line, couplet, strophe, stanza, and verse paragraph.

Lines may be self-contained units of sense, as in the well-known lines from William Shakespeare's Hamlet:

To be, or not to be: that is the question.

Alternatively a line may end in mid-phrase or sentence:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

this linguistic unit is completed in the next line,

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

This technique is called enjambment, and is used to create expectation, adding dynamic tension to the verse.

In many instances, the effectiveness of a poem derives from the tension between the use of linguistic and formal units. With the advent of printing, poets gained greater control over the visual presentation of their work. As a result, the use of these formal elements, and of the white space they help create, became an important part of the poet's toolbox. Modernist poetry tends to take this to an extreme, with the placement of individual lines or groups of lines on the page forming an integral part of the poem's composition. In its most extreme form, this leads to concrete poetry.

Rhetoric

Rhetorical devices such as simile and metaphor are frequently used in poetry. Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor". Since the rise of Modernism, some poets have opted for reduced use of these devices, attempting the direct presentation of things and experiences. Surrealists have pushed rhetorical devices to their limits, making frequent use of catachresis.

History

Poetry as an art form predates literacy. Poetry was employed as a means of recording oral history, storytelling (epic poetry), genealogy, and law. Poetry is often closely identified with liturgy in pre-literate societies. Many of the scriptures currently held to be sacred by contemporary religious traditions with their roots in antiquity were composed as poetry rather than prose to aid memorization and help guarantee the accuracy of oral transmission in pre-literate societies. As a result many of the poems surviving from the ancient world are a form of recorded cultural information about the people of the past, and their poems are prayers or stories about religious subject matter, histories about their politics and wars, and the important organizing myths of their societies.

Manuscript of the Rig Veda, Sanskrit verse composed in the 2nd millennium BC.

The use of verse to transmit cultural information continues today. Many English-speaking Americans know that "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue". An alphabet song teaches the names and order of the letters of the alphabet; another jingle states the lengths and names of the months in the Gregorian calendar. Some writers believe poetry has its origins in song. Most of the characteristics that distinguish it from other forms of utterance—rhythm, rhyme, compression, intensity of feeling, the use of refrains—appear to have come about from efforts to fit words to musical forms. In the European tradition the earliest surviving poems, the Homeric and Hesiodic epics, identify themselves as poems to be recited or chanted to a musical accompaniment rather than as pure song. Another interpretation is that rhythm, refrains, and kennings are essentially paratactic devices that enable the reciter to reconstruct the poem from memory.

In preliterate societies, these forms of poetry were composed for, and sometimes during, performance. There was a certain degree of fluidity to the exact wording of poems. The introduction of writing fixed the content of a poem to the version that happened to be written down and survive. Written composition meant poets began to compose for an absent reader. The invention of printing accelerated these trends. Poets were now writing more for the eye than for the ear.

Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British Museum

The development of literacy gave rise to more personal, shorter poems intended to be sung. These are called lyrics, which derives from the Greek lura or lyre, the instrument that was used to accompany the performance of Greek lyrics from about the seventh century BC onward. The Greek's practice of singing hymns in large choruses gave rise in the sixth century BC to dramatic verse, and to the practice of writing poetic plays for performance in their theatres. In more recent times, the introduction of electronic media and the rise of the poetry reading have led to a resurgence of performance poetry. The late 20th-century rise of the singer-songwriter, Rap culture, and the increase in popularity of Slam poetry have led to a split between the academic and popular views.

Links

Reference material and resources

• Glossary of Poetic Terms, from Bob's Byway
• Poetry Definitions from poetrymagic.co.uk
• Library of Congress Poetry Resources
• Poetry and Science Education
• Favorite Poem Project
• Recorded poems and interviews at Wired for Books - RealAudio

Poetry collections and anthologies

• Poetry eTexts at Project Gutenberg
• The HyperTexts has poetry by the Masters, contemporary poets, Esoterica, essays, and more
• Representative Poetry Online
• Bartleby Verse
• Cosmoetica: Hundreds of poems, and essays on poetry
• Vast Collection of Poems sorted by Subject and Poet
• Oldpoetry.com: Classical poetry archives and discussion.
• Plagiarist.com
• Poetry X: 10,000+ classic and contemporary poems
• AfroPoets Famous Black Writers
• Starbuck:Classical Poetry

Poetry organizations and publications

• Academy of American Poets
• Poets & Writers: American poetry and writing magazine
• Poetry Magazine
• American Poetry Review
• Contemporary Poetry Review
• Miami Poetry Review

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Action Poetry is the active use of poetry, often spreading in a community. It might include painting poetry on murals, or distributing poetry. It can also involve the encouragement of live poetry recitings and distribution of free poetry.

Link

Action Poetry as An Empowering Art [1]

Ethnopoetics refers to poetic traditions which are typically seen as tribal or otherwise ethnic by the Western world (or indeed between any ethnoculturally different peoples). Within the field of linguistics, it refers to the study of linguistic use and structure in oral narration, including poetry, prose narratives, such as folk tales, ceremonial speech and other forms of extended utterances. It may also refer to the act of hearing poetries of perceived distant people, often this distance is in terms of time. Examples are the poetry of Native Americans, the Native Hawaiian Pidgin, and tribal Africans.

Bibliography

• Hymes, Dell H. (1981). "In vain I tried to tell you": Essays in Native American ethnopoetics. Studies in Native American literature (No. 1); University of Pennsylvania publications in conduct and communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-7806-2 (hbk); ISBN 0-8122-1117-0 (pbk); ISBN 0-5851-7266-8 (electronic bk.).
• Hymes, Dell H. (2003). Now I know only so far: Essays in ethnopoetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-2407-9 (hbk); ISBN 0-8032-7335-5 (pbk).
• Tedlock, Dennis. (1972). Finding the center: Narrative poetry of the Zuñi Indians. New York, Dial Press.
• Tedlock, Dennis. (1983). The spoken word and the work of interpretation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-7880-1 (hbk.); ISBN 0-8122-1143-X (pbk.).
• Tedlock, Dennis. (1999). Finding the center: The art of the Zuni storyteller (2nd. ed.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4439-8 (hbk.); ISBN 0-8032-9440-9 (pbk.)

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Poet is a term applied to a person who composes poetry, including extended forms such as dramatic verse. Poets, like any artist, exist within a cultural and intellectual tradition and generally write in a specific language, but the qualities which comprise good poetry are to some extent timeless and address issues common to all humanity.

In the English language, poets often considered to be some of the very best include Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, and T.S. Eliot. In the Western tradition, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Goethe round out a basic list. In world poetry, Li Bai, Du Fu, Basho, and Omar Khayyám complete one defensible canon. Unfortunately, the very definition of a canon is political and personal, and so no objectivity can be pretended to. For a young poor African-American New Yorker, Patricia Smith may very well be the foremost poet who ever lived. An Australian might see the work of Banjo Paterson as epitomizing universal human values. The French may demand the inclusion of Baudelaire; a homosexual, Allen Ginsberg. No matter how large or small of a group is defined, the list of definitive poets would change, just as the notion of poetry itself cannot be strictly defined. Perhaps the best approach is simply to rely on numerous inclusionist lists:

Bad poets are sometimes called poetasters and what they write is sometimes termed doggerel.

Life of a poet

Any five-year-old making up a nonsense rhyme is to some degree a poet in the oral tradition. To be generally recognized as a poet, however, one needs to create work that receives widespread distribution and study. Certain correlations and characteristics stand out in the biographies of the major poets. First, most poets come from an haute bourgeois (upper-middle) class or lower-upper class background. Academics speculate that this may be so because ordinary middle-class people aspire to increase or maintain their social standing, whereas the aristocracy become involved in politics and power. This particular social standing (high-middle/low-high) allows for an elevated education, access to social knowledge of the very powerful, yet also sufficient connexion to ordinary life so as to understand the basic feelings of the poor and alienated as well as the experiences of the common man. Perhaps no combination is more fruitful to developing a broad, critical understanding of the human condition.

The biographies of poets typically include as well some sort of personal or identity alienation. Homer, of course, was reportedly blind and his appellation suggests that he was the son of captured prisoners-of-war, and thus ineligible for full participation in the political life of his state. Virgil was of non-Roman descent, and actively promoted (and perhaps subverted) the concept of a universal, mixed-blood Rome in his work. Currents of homosexuality, pedarasty, or other deviant sexualities are clearly evident in both the works and days of Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Ginsberg, and many other poets. Conversely, deviant political ideologies mar history's reception of such greats as Ezra Pound (who made propaganda broadcasts on behalf of fascist Italy) and T.S. Eliot (whose anti-Semitic inclinations are well-documented). See creativity theory for more research into how creativity proceeds out of the "gaps" and through the conflation of different intellectual currents.

Once they have established their name, poets, through their connexion to the eternal, often fully ascend into the ranks of the aristocracy, although continued identification and membership in bohemia is also not unknown. Today, there are a grand total of zero poets who are self-maintaining themselves entirely in the marketplace, just as history itself includes only a very limited number of examples, even for short periods of poet lives. Patrons and the state have long been the solution to this particular problem, including through such institutions as the poet laureate.

Poets and society

Perhaps no other occupation demands so much thought for so little output, epitomized in the Japanese haiku tradition, which involves production of seventeen syllable poems. Even in other traditions including thousand-line poems, a poet's total lifetime output might fill only two or three volumes. For this reason, poets occupy a peculiar position in society, even when compared to other artists. A painter might easily find work producing architectural drawings or caricatures. Other creative writers can work on industry trade journals or grant proposals. Musicians can busk, score sound for movies or videogames, perform at weddings, or otherwise earn a living in addition to their creative side projects. Poets, however, tend to be either on the fringes of or at the very center of their culture. Until they achieve prominence, they are stereotypically poor or low in prestige. Such a distinction even holds within the context of a specific institution: the "poet" of a given high school or college class is often a moody, introverted individual, disconnected from mainstream social life. However, poets who receive recognition from authority suddenly find themselves the very spokesperson of their generation or group.

Because of this "most very low; a few very high" dynamic, the practice of poetry itself is oftentimes a hobby or side activity rather than the central focus on an individual's life. In the tradition of courtly love, a knight would become a poet only when inspired by his lady love. After having his initial advances rejected, he would then become very moody and exclaim how close he felt to death. He might then produce a number of usually very poorly-written verses (or find a skilled friend to write them for him), before eventually recovering his will to live and returning to his knightly duties (only in which he could ever hope to win honours and the heart of his love). Full-time poets of remarkable skill might be maintained by a lord or by royalty, but the average knight was only a poet for brief period of his life, if ever so.

In the east, poets were similarly maintained by royal patronage, and those of high birth were expected to develop this skill alongside many others. Within the tradition of Japanese chivalry, bushido, Japanese knights, known as samurai, were expected to become poets only once: right before death. Thus, the tradition of love poems does not exist in Japan, but the quantity and quality of death poems is renowned.

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Poetry analysis is the process of investigating a poem's form, content, and history in an informed way, with the aim of heightening one's own and others' understanding and appreciation of the work.

The words poem and poetry derive from the Greek poiēma (to make) and poieo (to create). That is, a poem is a made thing: a creation; an artifact. One might think of a poem as, in the words of William Carlos Williams, a "machine made of words". Machines produce some effect, or do some work. They do whatever they are designed to do. The work done by this "machine made of words" — a poem — is the effect it produces in the reader's mind. A reader analyzing a poem is akin to a mechanic taking apart a machine in order to figure out how it works.

Like poetry itself, poetry analysis can take many forms, and be undertaken for many different reasons. A teacher might analyze a poem in order to gain a more conscious understanding of how the poem achieves its effects, in order to communicate this to his or her students. A writer learning the craft of poetry might use the tools of poetry analysis to expand and strengthen his or her own mastery. And (perhaps the best use of poetry analysis), a reader might use the tools and techniques of poetry analysis in order to discern all that the work has to offer, and thereby gain a fuller, more rewarding appreciation of the poem.

This article begins with an Overview that demonstrates the nature, method, and value of poetry analysis through close reading of three poems. Subsequent sections provide readers with terms and methods that will help them analyze poems on their own.

Overview

"Another", by Robert Herrick

Returning to the mechanical metaphor introduced earlier, some machines — ballpoint pens, flashlights — can be taken apart by hand or with only the simplest tools. Similarly, some poems reward careful reading, and respond to analysis, but do not require of the reader an extensive set of critical terms, such as this short poem written by Robert Herrick in the 17th century.

Here a pretty baby lies

Sung asleep with lullabies:

Pray be silent and not stir

Th' easy earth that covers her.

In the first three lines, the reader understands the speaker to be describing a sleeping baby. At the fourth line, this understanding is shaken. The baby is covered, not by a blanket, but by earth. That is, the baby has been buried. The baby is dead.

This realization can produce a sharp emotional reaction, an almost physical pang. And this reaction, this effect on the reader, is the "work" that this "machine of words" is designed to do. Although this poem is not humorous, its "mechanism" is akin to that of most jokes: a sudden alteration of perspective produces an immediate and visceral response.

There are these two fish in a tank. The first fish looks over at the second fish and says, "Hey, do you know how to drive this thing?"

At the outset of the joke, the listener imagines the fish to be in a fish tank. For the listener who "gets it" (and who cares for this sort of joke), there is an immediate and visceral reaction (pleasure, perhaps laughter) when this perspective is suddenly altered. The fish are not in a fish tank: they are in a military tank, a tracked, armored, combat vehicle.

Just as one needs no critical terminology or tools to "get" the joke, one does not really need critical terminology or tools to appreciate Herrick's poem. One needs only to read attentively and thoughtfully (it is crucial to recognize the incongruence and significance of the phrase "Th'easy earth"). Critical terminology, though, becomes useful when one attempts to articulate one's reaction to the poem in order to share it with others. A simile is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another, typically using the words like or as: "My love is like a red, red rose." A metaphor is a figure of speech in which the comparison is implicit, with one thing replacing another: "My love is a red, red rose" or "The red, red rose of my love." Constructions such as similes and metaphors are known as figurative speech.

This terminology becomes useful when one attempts to articulate how Herrick's poem works. Because the poem begins with natural language, and a common, easily imagined scene, and because it does not include "like" or "as", a reader first understands lines 1-3 to be literal (nonfigurative). The revelation that this "sleeping" baby is covered not by a blanket, but instead by earth, causes a sudden and dramatic shift in perspective, and in how the reader understands what he or she has just read. The effect of the poem traces to an almost instantaneous reversal of the reader's own understanding. The preceding lines are not literal, they are instead a sustained metaphor in which an unbearable reality (the baby is dead) is replaced by something else (the comforting but unsustainable fantasy that the baby is merely sleeping).

"The Destruction of Sennacherib", by Lord Byron

Similarly, one can derive pleasure from two of the most fundamental tools in the poet's toolbox — meter and rhyme — without necessarily knowing a lot of terminology, as in this, the first stanza of Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib":

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,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Byron's use of meter and rhyme is especially evident and rewarding when one reads the lines out loud. The lines have a powerful, rolling, and very evident rhythm, and they rhyme in a way that is impossible to ignore. In other words, the physicality of the language — how it sounds and feels — accounts for a large measure of the poem's effect. The poem does not have a deep, hidden, symbolic meaning. Rather, it is simply pleasurable to read, say, and hear.

Critical terminology becomes useful when one attempts to account for why the language is pleasurable, and how Byron achieved this effect. The lines are not simply rhythmic: the rhythm is regular, it is the same in each line. A poem having a regular rhythm (not all poems do) is said to follow a certain meter. In "The Destruction of Sennacherib", each line has the basic pattern of two unstressed syllables followed by a third stressed syllable, with each of these basic patterns being repeated four times in a line. Those basic patterns are called feet, and this particular pattern (weak weak STRONG) is called an anapest. A line with four feet is said to be in tetrameter (tetra-, from the Greek for four). This poem has a pleasurable and appropriate rhythm, and that rhythm has a name: this poem is written in anapestic tetrameter. (This process of analyzing a poem's rhythms is called scansion.) The poem also rhymes (not all poems do), and the rhymes follow a pattern (they do not have to). In this case, the rhymes come right next to each other, which emphasizes them, and therefore emphasizes the sound, the physical nature, of the language. The effect of the poem's language derives in part from Byron's choice of an appropriate pattern of rhyme (or rhyme scheme): these adjacent, rhyming lines are called couplets. The sound, the physical nature, of the language is also emphasized by alliteration, as in the repetition of s sounds in the third line.

"The Silken Tent", by Robert Frost

In these two examples, analytic terms are not needed to appreciate the poem; they are only needed to explain or describe the poem's effect. Sometimes, though, the reader needs a certain skill in analyzing poetry in order to appreciate the poem. If a listener doesn't know what fish tanks and military tanks are, he or she will not "get the joke" about the two fish. Similarly, sometimes a poem cannot work, cannot produce its intended effect, and cannot do what it was designed to do, unless the reader brings a certain level of analytic skill to the experience of reading it. One such poem is Robert Frost's "The Silken Tent".

She is as in a field a silken tent

At midday when the sunny summer breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,

So that in guys it gently sways at ease,

And its supporting central cedar pole,

That is its pinnacle to heavenward

And signifies the sureness of the soul,

Seems to owe naught to any single cord,

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To everything on earth the compass round,

And only by one's going slightly taut

In the capriciousness of summer air

Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

Often, a good way to begin analyzing a poem is to reword it, putting it in one's own words, or into ordinary speech, in order to get a good grasp of the poem's content. (This is called doing a prose paraphrase.) Like Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day", this poem uses a sustained image to describe another person. Frost draws out an extended comparison between a woman and a silken tent in order to make some essential aspect of the woman's character real and available to the reader. The comparison is not to just any tent, but to a tent imagined in a very specific way. Ropes or cords draw up, become taut, when wet. In this case, the tent is imagined at midday. Any morning dew which would have soaked the tent's guy-lines has evaporated, and the ropes are now somewhat slack. The tent sways slightly in response to the wind. This imagery conveys — at a subconscious but very real and effective level — a sense that the woman being described is not tense or nervous, but is instead genial, relaxed, comfortable to be around. This does not mean, though, that she is wishy washy, someone who is blown about by every gust of fad and fashion. The tent's pole — its upright nature, its strength — conveys a sense of backbone, character, and firmness in the woman being described. In this woman's case, firmness of character does not lead to her becoming dogmatic or insistent. Rather, her character derives in part at least from her deep investment in friends, family, and community, from "countless silken ties of love and thought". Some people would experience numerous relationships — and the obligations they entail — as something entangling, binding, or limiting. This woman does not seem to. She seems to be very much at ease in this situation, so much so that she and those around her are only likely to be aware of their bounds and limits in unusual circumstances.

When one reads this poem aloud, rhythm and meter are much less evident, much less emphatically presented than in "The Destruction of Sennacherib". In fact, most people who hear the poem read aloud for the first time will say that it does not rhyme and it does not have any particular rhythm. Closer examination reveals that the poem does rhyme though. In fact, it rhymes in a specific pattern: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG (that is, the first line rhymes with the third line (the A's), the second line rhymes with the fourth line (the B's), and so forth). But, the rhymes are much less forceful, much less emphatic and noticeable, than in Byron's poem. This is in part because Byron arranged the words such that each line ending (and therefore each rhyme) corresponds a natural pause in speech. That is, the lines end at the same places where one would pause if the lines were set as prose and one were reading the words aloud. Such lines are said to be end stopped. End stopping makes rhyme more noticeable. Frost, though, arranged at least some of the lines in "The Silken Tent" such that the line endings do not coincide with natural pauses (such as the end of line 2: someone reading the words "a sunny, summer breeze has dried the dew" would not necessarily pause after "breeze"). This technique is called enjambment. Enjambment de-emphasizes rhyming lines.

And, there is a rhythm, albeit a rather subtle or muted one. Each line has ten syllables, and (with slight and pleasant variations) they follow a pattern of weak syllables followed by strong syllables:

has DRIED the DEW and ALL its ROPES reLENT

This pattern (weak STRONG) is called an iamb. There are five iambs to the line here: these are pentameter lines (penta- is from the Greek for "five"). The poem does have a meter: it is called iambic pentameter. Frost employs the meter with a very light touch, though, and — rather like a good jazz musician — feels free to "play around with it", briefly departing from the regular pattern as appropriate.

Interestingly, the whole poem is a single sentence:a single, rather long, but nonetheless conversational sounding sentence that covers fourteen lines.

So, this poem, which at first seems rather formless, in fact has a very specific structure: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. There is a term for this structure: it is called the Shakespearean sonnet, and it is regarded as one of the stricter, more difficult forms. Frost is not writing a shapeless poem; he is writing within very strict rules, and in fact has raised the bar by making himself do it all in one sentence. The poem is single, long, graceful sentence that unfolds — in very relaxed, natural sounding way — within the strict boundaries of the Shakespearean sonnet form.

And — going back to the prose paraphrase — it describes a woman whose life unfolds in a very relaxed, natural way, within numerous strict boundaries. In the woman's character, as in the poem's form, one is not really aware that the boundaries are even there. The woman, like the poem, exists comfortably, naturally, easily within numerous limits and boundaries.

And this is the poem's great accomplishment: the form enacts the content; the language of the poem does what the language itself says. Though this analysis proceeded by temporarily separating form and content, the result of the analysis is the realization that in "The Silken Tent", form and content are truly inseparable: they are exact complements to each other. The effect of this poem, the work it is designed to do, is to create a sharp sense of pleasure and appreciation when one recognizes how skillfully and appropriately the poet has used the words.

In this case, a certain amount of critical terminology and analytic skill is necessary in order to appreciate the poem. If the reader does not know what a sonnet is, much less more subtle aspects of form such as enjambment, he or she will have no way to see what the poem does. He or she will have no way to "get the joke". In this case, poetry enjoyment is enabled by poetry analysis.

Approaches to poetry analysis

Schools of poetry

There are many different 'schools' of poetry: oral, classical, romantic, modernist, etc and they each vary in their use of the elements described above.

The Imagists were (predominantly young) poets working in England and America in the early 20th century, including F. S. Flint, T. E. Hulme, and Hilda Doolittle (known primarily by her initials, H.D.). They rejected Romantic and Victorian conventions, favoring precise imagery and clear, non-elevated language. Ezra Pound formulated and promoted many precepts and ideas of Imagism. His "In a Station of the Metro" (Roberts & Jacobs, 717), written in 1916, is often used as an example of Imagist poetry:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Schools of criticism

Poetry analysis is almost as old as poetry itself, with distinguished practitioners going back to figures such as Plato. At various times and places, groups of like-minded readers and scholars have developed, shared, and promoted specific approaches to poetry analysis.

The New Criticism dominated English and American literary criticism from the 1920s to the early 1960s. The New Critical approach insists on the value of close reading and rejects extra-textual sources. The New Critics also rejected the idea that the work of a critic or analyst is to determine what author's intended meaning (a view formalized by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley as the intentional fallacy). The New Critics prized ambiguity, and tended to favor works that lend themselves to multiple interpretations.

Reader Response developed in Germany and the United States as a reaction to New Criticism. It emphasises the reader's role in the development of meaning.

Reception aesthetics is a development of Reader Response that considers the public response to a literary work and suggests that this can inform analysis of cultural ideology at the time of the response.

Reading poetry aloud

Poems may be read silently to oneself, or may be read aloud solo or to other people. Although reading aloud to oneself raises eyebrows in many circles, few people find it surprising in the case of poetry.

In fact, many poems reveal themselves fully only when they are read aloud. The characteristics of such poems include (but are not limited to) a strong narrative, regular poetic meter, simple content and simple form. At the same time, many poems that read well aloud have none of these characteristics (for example, T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi"). Poems that read aloud well include:

"The Frog", by Hillaire Belloc
"One Art", by Elizabeth Bishop
"Tyger", by William Blake
"Meeting at Night", by Robert Browning
"She Walks in Beauty", by Byron
"The Song of the Western Men", by Robert Stephen Hawker
"November in England", by Thomas Hood
"Dream Variations", by Langston Hughes
"The Jackdaw of Rheims", by Thomas Ingoldsby
"To put one brick upon another", by Philip Larkin
"Paul Revere's Ride", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Adventures of Isabel", by Ogden Nash
"Nothing but Death", by Pablo Neruda translated by Robert Bly
"A Small Elegy", by Jirí Orten translated by Lynn Coffin
"Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Sea Surface Full of Clouds", by Wallace Stevens
"Silver", by Walter de la Mare
"How to Tell a Story", by Robert Penn Warren
"On Westminster Bridge", by William Wordsworth

Poetry in different cultures

This article is focussed on poetry written in English and reflects anglophone culture. Other cultures have other poetic forms and differ in their attitudes towards poetry.

Further reading

• Olderr, Steven. Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 1986) ISBN 0786421274
• Olderr, Steven. Reverse Symbolism Dictionary: Symbols Listed by Subject (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 1992) ISBN 0786421258

References

• Auden, W.H. and Norman Holmes (Eds.) Restoration and Augustan Poets: Milton to Goldsmith. (New York: Viking Press, 1950) ISBN 670010510
• Cummings, E. E. Complete Poems: 1913 — 1962. (New York: Harcouth Brace Jovanovich, 1968). ISBN 0151210608
• Harrison, G. B. (Ed.). Shakespeare: The Complete Works. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968) ISBN 0155805304
• Hirsch, Edward. How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999) ISBN 0151004196
• Kennedy, X. J. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Drama, and Poetry. (4th ed.) (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1987) ISBN 0673392252
• Roberts, Edgar V. & Henry Jacobs (Eds.). Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing 6th edition. (Upper Saddle Creek, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000) ISBN 0130184012
• Wallace, Robert. Writing Poems. (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1982) ISBN 0316919969

Link

• Glossary of Poetry Terms

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Thousands of poetry awards and prizes are given throughout the world, ranging from very well-respected down through ones that are nothing more than con schemes designed to milk gullible would-be poets.

Lists of poetry prizes and awards

Major international awards

• Griffin Poetry Prize (the international prize)
  • Annual.
  • C$40,000.
• Nobel Prize in Literature
  • Annual
  • Not exclusively for poetry. This is considered the foremost prize for literature in the world.
• Nosside International Poetry Prize
  • Any language
  • 1,000 euros.
• Rhysling Award for science-fiction poetry
  • Annual.
• Stokestown Poetry Prize
  • English and Gaelic
  • 4,000 euros.

Major British awards

• Forward Poetry Prize
  • Annual
  • 16,000 GBP total prizes; including 10,000 GBP for best collection
• T S Eliot Prize
  • Annual
  • 10,000 GBP prize
• Whitbread Poetry Award
  • Annual

Major Canadian awards

• Griffin Poetry Prize (the Canadian prize)
  • Annual.
  • C$40,000.
  • For best collection of poetry in English published during the previous year to a living Canadia poet or poetry translator.

Major German awards

• Wilhelm-Busch-Preis für satirische und humoristische Versdichtung
  • Annual contest.
  • Euro 7,000.
  • Unpublished satirical or humorous verse not more than three pages long.

Major Korean awards

• Dong Suh Literary Prize, poetry category
• Kim Su-yông Contemporary Poetry Award
  • Annual
• Korean Literature Prize
• Poetry Prize
• Poetry Prize Chosen by Poets
• Sowol Poetry Award
  • Annual
  • 150,000,000 Korean won (ca. U.S. $150,000)

Major Spanish-language awards

• Premio Adonais
  • Annual.
  • For poets under thirty-five.
  • No remuneration.
• Premio de la Poesía Fernando Paz Castillo
  • 1,500,000 bolivars.
• Premio de Poesía Hermanos Argensola
  • Collection or book of poems.
  • Annual.
  • 3,000 euros.

Major U.S. awards

• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
  • Annual.
  • U.S.$10,000.
  • "For a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author"

• Bollingen Prize for Poetry
  • Given every two years.
  • U.S. $25,000.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

A poetry reading is a performance of poetry, normally given on a small stage in a cafe or bookstore, although poetry readings given by notable poets frequently are booked into larger venues (amphitheaters, college auditoriums, etc.) to accommodate crowds. Unless otherwise indicated in advance, poetry readings almost always involve poets reading their own work or reciting it from memory -- the recitation of a work by another poet is normally the act of a well-known poet who chooses to read a few poems by forgotten poets or old friends that the poet feels should be more widely known. Poetry readings normally involve several readers (often called "featured poets" or "featureds"), although normally one poet is chosen as a "headliner".

Poetry readings are often paired with open mikes -- many open mikes restrict themselves exclusively to poetry, and most welcome it. Sometimes the two events are fused -- a successful open mike will invite a local poet to "feature" in the middle of its normal event, or to be the final performer of the evening.

Poetry readings have diminished in popularity (along with poetry) in recent decades -- they have become less and less a part of the mainstream pop culture, and more and more identified with an artistic fringe. They have remained most popular in large cities and college towns, where the population of artists and poets is larger and more self-sustaining. Not all readings have gone this way, however; for instance, slam poetry is poetry that has adopted to a hip-hop sensibility, and slam poetry contests have enjoyed rising popularity in recent years, especially in the United States.

Links

• Online recordings of poetry readings by famous poets
• A list of Manhattan poetry readings
• Atlanta area poetry readings

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: Poetry Reading: Ted Kooser

World Poetry Day is on March 21, and was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. The purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the UNESCO session declaring the day says, to "give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements."

References

1. National Poetry Day, United Kingdom
2. 41 countries observed World Poetry Day on October 15 in 1951. Ref. cited: The International Who's Who in Poetry 1978-79. Ernest Kay, Ed. International Biographical Council, Cambridge, England.

Links

• UNESCO World Poetry Directory
• World Poetry Day, Sydney, Australia, 1963 photo

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Video: world poetry day 2008 in Stavroupoli at bar 16