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Standard modules

Close study of text

Standard Module B: Close study of text

Some notes on what to look for in poetry texts

Poetry is a loose term that refers to compositions that are not in prose and have some form of pattern to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry

Glossary of poetic terms

Form in poetry: three main groups in classical poety

  • lyrical poetry: used for the expression of feeling

for example: the song lyric; the sonnet; the Petrachan sonnet; the Shakespearian sonnet; the ode; the idyll; the elegy

  • narrative poetry: used to tell a story or recount an incident

for example: the ballad; the extended tale in verse form; the epic; dramatic poetry

  • didactic poetry: discusses, teaches or preaches and can be satirical

for example: discursive poetry; satire

Modern poetry often breaks the rules adhered to in earlier centuries as a part of the art and craft, creating unique expressions of feeling and ideas.

What you need to understand from the poem:

  • The content is quite simply the material the composer has selected to write about.

  • The theme is the message that comes out of the selected content and the ways in which the composer has created their meaning.

How the poet has created their meaning:

The poems used here for examples are in the public domain and freely available as e-texts from Project Gutenberg.

Easter 1916

by William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)

 Anthem for Doomed Youth

by Wilfred Owen
(1893-1918)

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terribly beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights is argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his help er and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute to minute they live;
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born. 

 What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

  • Imagery or 'figurative language'

Literally, imagery means a picture created by words. In the study of poetry it refers to figurative language eg metaphors, similes etc, the metalanguage for we use for deconstructing poetry. Some example follow:

Simile

The simile is easy to recognise because it is a comparison that uses either 'like' or 'as' in the comparison.

Yeats Owen
               ... our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.		 Yeats is telling his reader that we must never forget those who died in the rebellion and compares that memory to the tenderness and love of a mother who speaks to her sleeping child. ... for these who die as cattle? Owen is comparing young soldiers, dying in their masses on the battlefield, to cattle sent for slaughter.

Metaphor

A metaphor is also a comparison but the object being compared becomes the object it is compared to.

Yeats Owen
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.		 The heart is compared to the harness of a stone when it is required to make long term sacrifice, losing its passion and sensitivity. The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells To capture the sound of warfare, Owen makes a comparison with a choir of voices, giving the sound a beauty that is also frightening.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of consonants for a desired sound effect.

Yeats Owen
    the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Owen has repeated the short sharp 't' sound to replicate the sound of rapid gun fire. He has also used the short  'r' sound to reinforce this image of sound.

Personification

Personification is a special kind of metaphor in which and object or an idea is compared to a person, a living thing.

Yeats Owen
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.		 Yeats gives the stream life as a natural and picturesque way of describing the flow of life in cities like Dublin. Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons		  

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeic words are those words that suggest the sound they refer to.

Yeats Owen
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;		 'plashes' recreates the sound of splashing water when it is disturbed by something. the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Owen's use of alliteration creates the onomatopoeic effect of the words - it is like listening to the gun fire on the battlefield.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is a metaphor in which something is exaggerated and becomes greater than it actually is. Its opposite is understatement.

Yeats Owen
All changed, changed utterly:
A terribly beauty is born.		 A terrible beauty' describes the Dublin of Easter 1916. The two words appear to contradict each other and the idea of 'beauty' seems an exaggeration. By creating this metaphor Yeats captures the dual emotions he has about the uprising. and the commitment of his friends.    

Symbolism

A symbol is a term which stands for another. The most obvious example are road signs which replace text with a visual symbol.

Yeats Owen
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.		 The stone is used as a comparison to describe the cohesion of the patriots in their early stages of their struggle. He later uses the stone to describe the loss of feeling if the struggle goes on too long.
The 'living stream' represents the ebb and low of life in the cities and during the day.		 The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.		 The references to 'dusk' and to 'a drawing down of blinds' symbolises the end of life - the lives of the soldiers who have died on the battlefield.

and so forth ...

Mariana ... Alfred, Lord Tennyson
‘Mariana in the moated grange.’
Measure for Measure.
  
1
WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
    Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
    That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:
    Unlifted was the clinking latch;
    Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
    She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’ 		 

5
And ever when the moon was low,
    And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
    She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
    And wild winds bound within their cell,
    The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
    She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’
2
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
    Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
    Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
    When thickest dark did trance the sky,
    She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
    She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’
6
All day within the dreamy house,
    The doors upon their hinges creak’d;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
    Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,
Or from the crevice peer’d about.
    Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,
    Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
    She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’
3
Upon the middle of the night,
    Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
    From the dark fen the oxen’s low
Came to her: without hope of change,
    In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
    Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
    She only said, ‘The day is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’
7
The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof,
    The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
    The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
    When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
    Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
    Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary,
        He will not come,’ she said;
    She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
         Oh God, that I were dead!’
4
About a stone-cast from the wall
    A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,
And o’er it many, round and small,
    The cluster’d marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
    All silver-green with gnarled bark:
    For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
    She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’
Source:
http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/
words/authors/T/TennysonAlfred/verse/
juvenilia/mariana.html

  • Rhyme is one of the most obvious ways to differentiate poetry from prose. It is the pattern of sounds that poets may create in the last syllable of the lines in their poem.

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
    Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
    That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:
    Unlifted was the clinking latch;
    Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
    She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’ 		The rhyme scheme in this poem is: a b a b c d d c e f e f
The pattern of sounds creates part of the overall lyrical effect sound in the poem.

  • Rhythm is the pattern of stress given to syllables within a line of poetry and throughout the poem.

She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’

She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’

She only said, ‘The day is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’

  She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’

She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’

She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’

Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary,
        He will not come,’ she said;
    She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
         Oh God, that I were dead!’ 		To your left are the refrains from each verse. The emphasis is on 'dreary' and 'weary' which is used twice in each verse.
They are structured similarly, the one difference being a single word. Only in the last verse is the rhythm altered by the words chosen given emphasis to her despair.

  • Mood refers to the prevailing frame of mind or feeling in a text. It is often associated with atmosphere.

She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’ 		The use of a refrain (or chorus), lines repeated at regular intervals in the poem, underlines Mariana's mood: a feeling of despair that her lover will not come. In the last verse the refrain is given greater emphasis  with the addition of the word 'God'. The use of repetition further supports to mood as does the physical atmosphere of her environment.

  • Atmosphere is often seen as synonymous with mood. A physical atmosphere, however, can reflect the mood of a character or an event for example, the tempest in King Lear Act 3 reflects the tempest within Lear's mind.

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
    Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
    That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:
    Unlifted was the clinking latch;
    Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
    She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
        He cometh not,’ she said;
    She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
        I would that I were dead!’

The physical details in this verse reflect Mariana's mood:

  • blackest moss
  • rusted nails
  • The broken sheds look’d sad and strange
  • Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
  • the lonely moated grange.

 

 

 

 

 
 

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