A. How to read a poem:
There is no single way. The best advice I can give you is to sit by yourself in a quiet place and read aloud slowly, several times, paying attention to the images, ideas, and feelings the words call into your mind, imagination, and heart. Poetry can be magical stuff, but it can't compete with ipods and cell phones, tv's and texting. Give it a chance to get inside you and stretch out.
B. Questions to ask of individual poems:
1. Who is the speaker of the poem? What qualities of personality does the poet provide? What kind of language does the speaker use? How does the speaker's mind work? What hints of personal history are given? Are there any specific facts about the speaker's identity?
2. What is the situation of the poem? Is there a social, cultural, historical, or familial context given? Does the poem refer to any specific events? Does it contain an account of an incident? Imagine the poem as a dramatic utterance—what scene is being portrayed?
3. What is the tone of the poem? Are there words that describe the attitude of the speaker toward the subject of the poem as a whole? Does the tone change as the poem develops? If so, where are those "turns" (shifts of tone or subject)? What is the tone of individual lines or sections of the poem?
4. How would you paraphrase the poem into a series of prose sentences. What clarity is gained from paraphrasing? What essential qualities are lost?
5. Does the poem have a basic meter? What is it? How does it either advance the musicality of the poem or provide emphasis to certain words and ideas? Where does the meter change?
6. What devices or poetic techniques does the poet employ? How does the poet use strong diction, concrete detail, sensory images, irony, or figurative language? How do these devices help us better understand some element of the poem's meaning? How does the use of language strengthen both the idea of the poem and its emotional content?
C. Define and be able to identify examples of each of the following terms:
FORMS
sonnet (Elizabethan, Petrarchan)
villanelle
sestina
dramatic monologue
quatrain
couplet
stanza
closed form
open form
terza rima
heroic couplet
blank verse
free verse
ballad stanza
STYLE
diction
imagery
detail
repetition
speaker
connotation
denotation
tone
DEVICES
apostrophe
personification
irony
rhetorical question
simile
metaphor
metonymy/synecdoche
allusion
symbol & allegory
SOUND
masculine rhyme
feminine rhyme
approximate (slant)
rhyme
alliteration
consonance
assonance
end-stopped lines
enjambement
caesura
METER
iambic/ anapestic
dactylic
trimeter
tetrameter
pentameter
trochees
spondees
TONE (apply to poems)
audacious
awestruck
baffled
bemused
bitter
bleak
complacent
confident
critical
desperate
discouraged
disheartened
disturbed
dreamy
ecstatic
envious
euphoric
exuberant
fearful
gentle
giddy
humble
humorous
hypnotic
ironic
lethargic
lonely
majestic
melancholy
mocking
mystical
outraged
passionate
patronizing
persuasive
playful
pleading
puzzled
sarcastic
seductive
shrewd
timid
vengeful
weary
wistful
yearning
