Poetry Part 2

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes
familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley's comment about poetry sums up accurately what poetry is all about - revealing the beauty
even in everyday, mundane things; For example this object:

It is an object so common, so ordinary we might not give too much though to it, except when it makes
us cry when we are peeling it and chopping it. How would you describe an onion?

Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet, wrote a poem about the onion. See how he described the object.

Ode To The Onion

by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,

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 round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.

I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives

in your crystalline nature.

Poetry expresses a wide range of emotions, giving word to that which we find difficult to express.
Poets never shy away from their subjects, even the things that are difficult to talk about. An
example is Sylvia Plath who struggled with mental illness; and it reflects in her poetry.

Mad Girl's Love Song

by Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

"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.)"

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And of course, the number 1 favorite theme in poetry: Love. Here's Yeats who managed to
express how much he loved the Beloved without using the word "love"

Aedh Wishes For Cloths Of Heaven

by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Understanding A Poem: There are 3 key elements we need to identify in a poem in order to
understand what the poem is trying to express.
1. Content
2. Form
3. Literary Devices

1. Content
A poem has subject and theme. Subject refers to what is being spoken about in the poem, and
theme refers to the message of the poem or the poet's opinion about the subject.

For example:
Portrait of Us as Snow White
by Theresa Lola (born 1994, Nigeria)

We inherited black holes for eyes,

so light was the benchmark we measured the beauty of skin against.
We sat in our dorm room
and discussed who the fairest of all was.
The Igbo girls claimed they could be cast as foreign
as long as the sun didn’t betray them.
The girls with skin the shade of the bronze masks
our ancestors carved directed the conversation.
The myth was that backstage curtains are dark colours
so that dark girls can camouflage into them.
We never said the word ‘race’, substituted ‘yellow pawpaw’ for ‘white’
as if we knew the word ‘white’ would peel our tongues down to a seed of guilt.
My bow legs hung from my bunk bed like question marks.
I was unsure of which shade my skin will grow into,
so I could not be the lead role in this fairy tale.

Now I know our ignorance is a kind of bacteria

bleach multiplies instead of killing.
One of my dorm mates used “Papaya Skin Lightening Soap”,
the scent was like every other soap,
she rubbed it on her skin until
she was cast as Snow White in the school play.

The myth is that despite all the light on her skin,

her soul remains a backstage curtain.

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The subject matter was about being cast in a play, but the theme of the poem is about the experience
of people with dark skin, specially those who tried to lighten their skin, thinking that it will make them
more accepted/acceptable.

2. Form
Form is the physical structure or the pattern of the poem: the length of lines, number of stanzas,
repetition, etc.

There are some forms with very strict rules about length, rhythm and rhyme, and there are poems do
not follow any rules at all. The longest list of poetry forms that I have seen so far listed around 100
different poetry forms which we will not all discuss. Only a few will be mentioned here.

a. Sonnet
The sonnet is a very popular form. It consists of fourteen lines with a specific rhyming scheme and
meter. The most popular forms are the Petrarchan style and the English style.You are already
familiar with the English style, for it is the form that William Shakespeare used in writing his 150+
sonnets.
Observe the rhyme and the rhythm of the following sonnet: (this is probably the most popular
non-Shakespearian sonnet)

Sonnet 43
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.”

Rhyme: The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line. This unity of sound created by
a rhyme scheme expresses closeness or intimacy. (The rhyme scheme of Browning's sonnet is ABBA
ABBA CDCDCD - that's only four sounds to end all the 14 lines of the poem)

Rhythm: The beat and pace of a poem, created by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in
a line or verse. Stressed syllables are pronounced longer than unstressed syllables. For example, in
the word TABLE, the first syllable TA is pronouced slightly longer BLE. Or in the word REMEMBER,
the middle syllable is stressed. Browning used the Iambic Pentameter as its rhythm scheme: The
pattern of Iambic Pentameter is 5 pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables. (capitalized text
indicated stressed syllables) I LOVE..|..thee TO..|..the DEPTH..|..and BREADTH..|..and HEIGHT

Rhythm is what makes the poem flow. One form that makes use of rhythm heavily is rap. Try
reciting the following out loud, and you'll find that when you place a beat in the way that you speak
the words, it sounds better:
His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti
He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready

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 To drop bombs, but he keeps on forgettin'
What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud
He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out
He's chokin', how, everybody's jokin' now
The clocks run out, times up, over, blaow
Snap back to reality, ope there goes gravity
Ope, there goes Rabbit, he choked
He's so mad, but he won't give up that easy? No
He won't have it, he knows his whole back's to these ropes
It don't matter, he's dope, he knows that, but he's broke
He's so stagnant, he knows, when he goes back to this mobile home, that's when it's
Back to the lab again, yo, this whole rhapsody
Better go capture this moment and hope it don't pass him

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment

You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
(excerpt from Lose Yourself by Eminem)

b. Villanelle
A nineteen-line poem consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, with a highly specified internal rhyme
scheme. The villanelle has very strict rules - the repeated lines are very specific and how often and
where are these lines repeated. Originally, villanelles had pastoral themes (pastoral - concerns the
natural world, rural life, and landscapes) but it has evolved to describe obsessions and other intense
subject matters. Due to its repetitive nature, it lends itself perfectly to intensifying emotions in a
poem

Example: Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath ( see ↑ for the text).

tercet - a stanza composed of 3 lines

quatrain - a stanza with 4 lines
Here's another example. Observe the repetition of lines

Do Not Go Gentle
by Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

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.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

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.

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And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

c. Blank Verse
Unrhyming iambic pentameter, also called heroic verse. This 10-syllable line is the predominant
rhythm of traditional English dramatic and epic poetry, as it is considered the closest to English
speech patterns. Blank verse has no fixed number of lines. It can be a long or as short as the poet
wants it to be. There really is just one rule: It has to be in iambic pentameter. There are some who do
not use iambic pentameter, which is okay as long as the same meter is used throughout the poem.
Paradise Lost by John Milton is 10, 565 lines written in blank verse. It is epic in subject and length. He
followed that up with 2, 065 lines of blank verse in Paradise Regained.

Yes, the Iambic Pentameter again. This is a popular meter for English language poems because the
beat mimics a human heart beat and it is closest to natural speaking cadence.

Example of blank verse:

Lost in the Hospital
by Rafael Campo (born 1964)

It’s not that I don’t like the hospital.

Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave.
The smell of antiseptic cleansers.
The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true.
My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out
To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s
And oxygen in tanks attached to them—
A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared
A cigarette, which was delicious but
Too brief. I held his hand; it felt
Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was,
The sunlight pointing down at us, as if
We were important, full of life, unbound.
I wandered for a moment where his ribs
Had made a space for me, and there, beside
The thundering waterfall of his heart,
I rubbed my eyes and thought, “I’m lost.”

d. Free Verse
Poems that do not have rhyme scheme, rhythm patterns, rules about length of lines or number of
verses and stanzas. The poet shapes the poem into whatever he or she desires, and doing so in an
artistic manner.

Webcam the World

Heather McHugh (born 1948)
[excerpt]

Get all of it. set up the shots

at every angle; run them online
24-7. Get beautiful stuff (like
scenery and greenery and style)
and get the ugliness (like cruelty
and quackery and rue). there’s nothing
unastonishing – but get that, too. We have

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 to save it all, now that we can, and while.
Do close-ups with electron microscopes
and vaster pans with planetcams.
it may be getting close
to our last chance –
how many

millipedes or elephants are left?

And Lang Leav's most popular poem of 2019:

Wednesday, December 9, we will have synchronous session and we will discuss poetic devices and
poetry analysis.

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