Essential Question
How do poets use imagery, symbols, and figurative language to produce meaningful themes, especially themes related to nature, God, relationships, and virtues?
Guiding Questions
The Sights of Poetry
- What objects dominate the poem? What images or descriptions are particularly beautiful or well-done?
- What does the reader see in the poem?
The Sounds of Poetry
- Is there rhyme or meter? Do these make a pattern? Is the pattern every broken or varied? If so, what is the effect?
- How does the poem use elevated speech, or common speech/vernacular? How do these choices in style relate to the main themes?
- What does the reader hear in the poem?
Poetic Themes
- How does the poem create patterns, using sights, sounds, symbols, images, and figurative language, to develop a single, central theme?
- What is the thematic relationship between the poem and nature, God, humans, or virtues/ideas?
Key Terms (take notes)
Key Terms (take notes)
Literary Devices
- Theme: a central idea, lesson, or concept developed through specific patterns in a work of art. A theme includes an idea plus commentary on that idea. Ex: love leads people into goodness as well as evil.
- Symbol: an object, item, place, or even person (some kind of noun) that contains a deeper meaning or stands in for an important concept. Ex: a rose, an eagle (in America), an upraised fist (in communist countries)
- Imagery: language that elicits any of the five senses.
- Figurative Language: any kind of language that is not literal, but invokes a higher meaning than the literal words contain.
- Metaphor: a comparison of two unlike things in which the comparison is very close--the things are simply described as the same thing, usually using “is.”
- Simile: a comparison of two unlike things in which the comparison is more distant--the things are usually compared using “like” or “as.”
- Personification: describing a non-human thing using human-like language or attributes.
Four Forms of Poetry
- Lyric: A poem written to be accompanied by music.
- Sonnet: A strict poetic form, including lines written in iambic pentameter (10 syllables in an unstressed-stressed pattern), and usually 14 lines with a variety of end-rhyme patterns.
- Haiku: Short, three-lined poems usually in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern, focusing on a single, powerful image.
- Free Verse: Poetry in which the poet is free to choose or re-make his or her own poetic form. This does not mean there are no rules--it means the poet chooses the rules.
Three steps for analyzing poems
1) Read out loud and focus on comprehending the meaning. Write notes in the margin that summarize what is happening.
2) Re-read; circle symbols and underline figurative language. In the margins, write what the symbols could stand for and what the figurative language means.
3) Re-re-read; ask yourself what ideas the author is getting at through the symbols and language he presents. Take notes at the bottom, writing out a short phrase of what theme or themes you notice.
Creative Assignment:
Write a poem that uses at least one symbol, one sample of figurative language, and imagery to develop a theme related to nature? Consider mimicking the form of one of the poems or poets that we have read.
Analysis assignment:
Choose one of the poems we have not read (the second group of poems). Follow the three steps for analysis, then respond to the following prompt:
How does the poet use symbolism and figurative language in his or her poem to develop a single theme? Compose an analysis essay using specific evidence.
- Review 5 Paragraph structure on the MVCS Writing Resource Blog.
- Use present tense for literature
- Only third person
- Using quotes properly (two per paragraph, see Bedford 55)
- Avoid common grammar mistakes
- Each sentence needs a subject and object
- their/there/they’re
- its/it’s
- “Titles of poems or short stories,” Titles of Books
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