Introduction to Poetry

Hello, Welcome to our lesson today. By the end of the lesson we should be able to:

a)    Understand what poetry entails.

b)    Understand the different types of poetry.

c)     Understand the common terms used in poetry.

What is a Poetry?

Poetry is one of the three major types or forms of literature, the others being prose and drama. In this case prose is further subdivided into short stories, novels and novellas, while drama entails plays. Defining poetry more clearly is not easy, simply because there is no single, unique characteristic that all poems share. Poems are often divided into lines and stanzas and often employ regular rhythmic patterns or meters.

However, some poems are written out just like prose and some are written in free verse. Most poems make use of high concise, musical and emotionally charged language. Many also make use of figurative language and special devices of sound such as rhyme.

In poetry, language is used in special ways to create clear, memorable and sometimes musical impressions. Poems may capture a single moment in time, take the reader into a world of make believe, or even tell a story of person’s life. Poems are composed with the desire to communicate an experience.

Poetry expresses feelings or thoughts in a way that is fresh and different from everyday common way of expression. Poems communicate a lot of meaning in only a few words possible.

Poetry categories.

There are many types of poetry, but in this article, I will deal with the three main ones namely:

a.      Narrative poetry

b.      Lyric poetry

c.      Dramatic poetry.

Narrative Poetry

These are poems that tells a story. Like short stories, narratives poems have a plot (story line), setting, characters, dialogue and a theme.

Unlike stories, however, narrative poems rely on rhyme and rhythm and are broken into stanzas rather than paragraphs. Narrative poetry can be simple or complex, long or short and they can be based on a true story or a fictional story.

In most cases, narrative poems have only one speaker-the narrator who relates the entire story from beginning to the end.

For example, Edger Allan Poe’s The Raven is narrated by a grieving man who, over the course of 18 stanzas describes his mysterious confrontation with the Raven and his descent into despair.

It is important to note that Narrative poetry presents a series of events through action and dialogue and it has a single speaker.

 

Let us examine an example of Narrative poem by Amy LudwigVanDerwater.

Eavesdropping

I’ve never seen the face

Of that musician

Down the hall

 

I like to stand outside

And listen. listen

Leaning on the wall

 

Piano.

 

Sky blue notes

Float through keyhole

Sweetening hallway air.

 

I close my eyes. I dream.

I want to clap.

But I don’t dare

© Amy Ludwig VanDerwater National poetry Month 2017.

Task

1.After reading the poem are able to follow the storyline.

2. Read the poems Building the nation by Christopher Henry Muwanga Barlow and Night of the Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel and explain with clear illustration why they can be said to fall under narrative poems.

 

Lyric Poetry

They express the poet’s thoughts and feelings, creating a mood through vivid images, descriptive words, and the musical quality of lines. In Lyric poetry, the reader can almost ‘see’ or ‘hear’ the images the poet presents. They may be made up of regular stanzas.

Unlike narrative poetry which chronicles events, lyric poetry doesn’t have to tell a story instead they convey powerful feelings via the use of rhyme, meter or other literary device to create a song like quality.

For instance, American poet Emily Dickinson describes inner feelings when she wrote her Lyric poem that begins,

' I felt a Funeral, In my brain

And mourners to and fro.’

It is important to note that Lyric poem is a private expression of emotions by an individual speaker and it is highly musical because it features poetic devices like rhyme and meter.

Examples of lyric poems are, Blow,Blow, Thou Winter Wind by William Shakespeare and Harlem Night Song by Langston Hughes

Dramatic Poetry

Like narrative poetry, they tell stories but unlike them the poet lets one or more characters (speakers) act out. Most plays are written as dramatic poetry. The difference between drama and dramatic poetry is the matter of degree. If a dialogue in a play rhymes (has repeated rhythms or features or other distinctive poetry element) the play is considered to be dramatic poetry.

An example of dramatic poetry to check out is Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka.

W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Shadowy waters ‘is another example of Dramatic poetry

 

COMMON TERMS USED IN POETRY

These are terms which a learner of poetry has to understand because they play an important role in understanding poetry in general. They include:

a)    Speaker/voice/speaker

b)    Poet

c)     Stanza

d)    Message/Theme

e)    Subject Matter

f)      Form and content

g)    The You

h)    Setting

 

Speaker/Voice/Persona

When penning stories one of the important element writers employ is the use of characters in their work. In Blossoms of the Savannah, by Henry Ole Kulet, Resian, Taiyo, Mama Milanoi are the characters in the novel. While Nora, Helmer, and Doctor Rank are also characters in ADoll’s House a play by Henrik Ibsen.

In the same breath, poets create characters in the poem who help them to bring out their ideas. Therefore,  Persona refers to voice or speaker one hears when they are reading a poem. Unlike in novels and plays where the names of characters are given directly in poems the persona is not directly implied rather the poet uses pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘he’ , ‘she’, ‘they’ and ‘we’ to refer to them. This simply means that for reader to figure out who the persona is they need to ask themselves who the,’he’,’she’,’they’ or ‘we’ are referring to from the poem they reading.

Let us try to figure out who the persona is from the lines given below.

  ‘Today I did my share, in building the nation

   I drove a permanent secretary to an important, urgent function

   In fact, to a luncheon at the Vic…’ 

                      Building the Nation by Henry Muwanga Barlow.

Task 1

Who is the speaker/persona/voice from the poem?

 ‘I remember the night my mother

 was stung by a scorpion.

Ten hours of steady rain had driven him

To crawl beneath a sack of rice 

Night of the Scorpion by Nissim Ezekiel

Task 2

Identify the persona from the above stanza with clear illustration.

 

The speaker/persona/voice in the poem Building the Nation is a driver or chauffeur who drives a senior government officer to a meeting. While in the second poem Night of the Scorpion the speaker is a child, from the poem he/she says ‘… my mother.’

When answering literature questions always remember to support your answer with illustration from the material you reading.

Poet

Poets are people who writes poems.

Stanzas and Lines

Authors employ sentences which joins to form paragraphs in their work. A stanza is a formal division of lines in a poem, considered as a unit. That is, while novels employ sentences, poets use lines which joins to form a stanza/verse not a paragraph. It is therefore important to remember when quoting a poem to say something like line two stanza one and not sentence two paragraphs one.

Many poems are divided into stanzas that are separated by spaces. Stanzas often function just like paragraphs in prose. Each stanza states and develops a single main idea. Stanzas are commonly named according to the number of lines found in them, as explained below.

v A couplet is made up of two lines in each stanza

v Tercet made up of three lines in each stanza

v Quatrain made of four lines in each stanza

v Cinquain made of five lines in each stanza

v Sestet made up of a six line in each stanza

v Heptastich made up of seven line in each stanza

v Octave made up of eight stanzas in each stanza.

Task

Taught Me Purple by Evelyn Tooley Hunt

My mother taught me purple

Although she never wore it

Wash -gray was her circle

The tenement her orbit.

Question

Considering the number of lines in the stanza above, which type of poem is this.

Message /Theme

It refers to the general idea or insight about life that a poet wishes to express in their literary work. Writers, playwright and poets write because they have a message they want to pass across to the reader. That message that either an author or poet wishes to share is the one we refer as a theme.

A simple theme can be stated in a single sentence. Theme may be stated directly or indirectly. When stated indirectly the reader must read between the lines to figure out the theme by looking at what the poem reveals about people’s life.

As you read the poem it is important to ask yourself what message does the poet puts across after reading it .It is also important to note that the different aspects of poetry like style ,title,setting,mood attitude, persona will contribute to the development of a theme.

Many learners confuse between message and theme, which makes it crucial for us to note that two words are used to mean the same in poetry. In literature there are major/main themes and minor themes. Major themes are widely expressed and developed with many illustrations from the poem unlike minor themes which are not developed well in the poem with few illustrations.

Themes in poems may be expressed in a single word like, ‘oppression’, ‘death’, ‘love’ or in a phrase/group of words like, ‘child abuse’, ‘Plight of women’ etc.

Subject Matter

This is yet another term that often confuse learners. Many take it to mean the same as message/theme. Theme as already explained early refers to the central or main idea /concern/purpose the poet /writer wishes to share with the reader. While on the other hand, subject matter means what a poem is talking about.

Subject matter focuses on the content of the poem; hence it is more of a summary of the turn of events in a given poem.

 

Form and Content

It refers to the external appearance of a poem or shape of the poem. Form of a poem refers to the way different components of that poem are arranged. Poems give form to their poems through use of rhyme scheme, stanzas, meter.

Content on the other hand is the opposite of form, while form is outward appearance of the poem, content refers to the details in the words. Content requires a learner to give summary of what the poem is talking about (subject matter).

The You

When a poem is penned, the poet hopes to pass a message to the reader. The poet assumes there is a second person listening to him. This is what is referred as ‘the you’ in poetry.

Setting

It refers to the time and place where the actions in either a poem or story one is reading occurs. The setting includes all the details of place and time-the year, the time of the day even the weather. The place may be specific country, state, region, community, neighbourhood, building, institution, or home.

Note that details such as dialect, customs and modes of transportation are often used to establish setting. The setting of a poem often helps to create a particular mood, or feeling.

 Learn how to prepare for oral skills question based on poetry here.

As I conclude my article, I would like to leave you with poetry reading strategy to always keep in mind. Readers are encouraged to read lines according to the punctuation, that is, just like a driver observes road signs which tells them when to stop, slow down or go. In poetry, these signs are punctuation marks, readers are encouraged to read lines in poetry according to punctuations. For instance, if there is no mark of punctuation at the end of line of poetry, keep going until you get a punctuation mark.

A comma in poetry tells one to slow down, a full stop/period tells the reader to stop and exclamation marks, question marks and dashes give you other signals to help reading and understanding the poem.

Test yourself with questions and answers Here