Rationale
I have been asked, "What value does the teaching of poetry hold in relation to the academic needs of our students?" The answers to this question are innumerable, but let me point to the most academically compelling. Foremost, other than within music, one will find limited literature that condenses the plethora of ideas and devices, that poetry does. Except for music, no other form of communication lends itself to the study of sound as does poetry. Studying the elements of sound in poetry can help students become more effective writers in all genres. In Writer's Ask, a periodical that publishes interviews of writers about writing, author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni commented on the crossover from poetry to prose: "[P]oetry...makes me more sensitive to language, particularly to the sound of words. I'm very aware of the rhythm of prose - which is very different from poetry, but it is certainly there. If you're not used to writing poetry, you're not aware of it" (Divakaruni, 5). In addition, the characteristic briefness of poetry allows for a variety of ideas to be explored within a short timeframe. Most importantly, my large student base contains a constantly expanding spectrum of cultures and an even larger array of learning styles. A wide variety of poems written by poets from all walks of life can be explored to help reach these students, whereas other forms of literature pose significant time constraints and make it difficult to reach all ethnic and social groups.
Poetry is the thoughtful combination of words supported by structural components that enhance the overall effectiveness of the work. Poetry falls into three categories: lyrical, narrative, and dramatic. Lyrical poetry is the category in which most poetry falls. Such poems are generally short and structured, like tanka or haiku. Narrative poetry tells a story. Examples of poems in this category are epics and ballads. Epics are long poems that unveil heroic deeds. Ballads are much shorter than epics, and focus on one particular person. Dramatic poetry is the third category; however, it arguably differs little from narrative poetry. Dramatic poetry can often be in play or story form if either of those contains poetic elements, such as the use of rhyme or meter. Many of Shakespeare's plays could be categorized this way.
Poetry exists in many forms. For students, the word form conjures thoughts of tangible and visible things, such as a book, tree, or desk. Many forms do lend themselves to a visual acquisition of structure, such as a poem written in quatrains. Limericks and nursery rhymes, for example, allow you to easily hear their form.
Prosody is the study of versification - the orally delivered arrangement of acoustic patterns. Reading poetry aloud makes one consciously aware of sound. Robert Hass examined the interconnectivity between words and sound. If, as Hass states, "the material of poetry is language...," then the spirit of a piece of poetry must be sound (Hass, 119). Sound is the foreground for poetry. It has a direct relationship with meaning. One cannot exist without the other, yet the sound of words used within a work of poetry is often taken for granted. When poetry is read aloud, several devices are specific to the creation of sound, building an auditory imagery for the reader. A non-exhaustive list of elements that create auditory imagery includes accent, alliteration (assonance and consonance), dialect, line break (enjambment and end-stop), meter, onomatopoeia, pitch, punctuation, repetition, rhyme, rhythm, and word structure.
It is my intention to access the student's prior, and possibly untapped, knowledge by beginning with rhyme and meter - specifically nursery rhymes and Limericks - as these are commonly recited during early childhood. These forms of poetry have consistent rhyming and structures. Rhythm is the pattern of sound created by the alternating lengths and emphasis metrical given to different syllables. The rise and fall of spoken language is called cadence. Meter is the rhythmic pattern of syllables spoken with accent in a specific sequence. Accent refers to a stressed, or orally punctuated, syllable. A stressed syllable is also often referred to as long. Slack refers to a syllable that is not stressed and is interchangeably referred to as short. A stress is usually noted with a strike mark ? and unstressed is noted as a smile-of-sorts, U.
There are several types of meter used in the English language. The act of reading line-by-line and marking the stressed syllables is called scansion. An iamb is two syllables spoken as unstressed - stressed. This type of meter is medieval in origin. An example of a poem written in iambs is Paul Lawrence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask." (see Poem Selections and Background section below) American Standard English is generally spoken in iambs. The word hello, for example, is marked as it is spoken:
A trochee is the opposite of an iamb. It also is two syllables, but is spoken as stressed-unstressed. An example of trochaic meter is seen in Eloise Greenfield's poem "Way Down in the Music" (see Poem Selections and Background section below). A spondee is two syllables spoken as stressed-stressed. Spondaic meter is rarely a dominant pattern, as there are few words in the English language that follow this meter. It is more commonly seen in Latin poetry. An anapest is three syllables spoken as unstressed-unstressed-stressed. Anapestic meter is commonly used in poetry written for children. An example is the poem "The Night Before Christmas." A dactyl is three syllables spoken as stressed-unstressed-unstressed. Dactylic meter is seen in ancient Greek and Roman poetry. An example is the epic by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow entitled "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie."
The term feet refers to the units of measurement in any particular type of meter. If, for example, you have a line of poetry that has five feet in iambs, then it is said to be in iambic pentameter: monometer = one foot, dimeter =two feet, trimeter =three feet, tetrameter=four feet, pentameter=five feet, hexameter=six feet, heptameter =seven feet, octameter=eight feet. When any of these types of meter are used consistently throughout a piece of poetry, the poetry is considered to fall under the category of accentual-syllabic meter. This category counts both syllables and the accents, having a specific number of syllables that are broken into a specific pattern of accents. It is the metrical structure that creates the sounds that many English speakers think of as poetry.
In free verse poetry, the structure is often detected primarily through the ear. Sound is physical; thus it has form. We cannot see or touch it, but it is a moving, spirited entity, resounding around us. In order to read and understand a poem in the manner in which the poet had intended, this requires the student to be knowledgeable of the multitude of this possibility. They need to be cognizant that poets make choices about what form their poems will take and how the form will effect the poem's meaning, and this includes the form of the poem in the reader's ear.
Although poetic forms are not the focus of this unit, free verse poetry is most frequently used in this unit because I think this type of poetry requires a lot from both the reader and the writer. Uncovering the careful and responsible construction of such a poem will certainly be a challenge for the students. Free verse needs to be explained using the concept of meter. When interviewed about his writing, novelist Chang-rae Lee said, "There's nothing more beautiful to me than free verse. There's a rigor to it, but also possibilities within the meter and stresses that are amazingly wide and strangely beautiful" (Lee, 6). Free verse is not truly free. I think that it is safe to say that in a poet's attempt to write in free verse, they take on the responsibility of creating sound in the absence of a prescribed form. Free verse is often written in accentual meter, which can interchangeably be called strong-stress meter or alliterative-meter. Noting the strong accents -not syllables- in a line of poetry reveals the sound structure within a piece of free verse poetry. Scansion is the act of reading poetry aloud to find the natural fall of accents. The number of syllables between the accents is not counted in free verse. Anglo-Saxon meter has a grouping of four accents per line of poetry, but contemporary accentual meter can vary. Richard Wilbur's "Junk" is an example of Anglo-Saxon accentual or alliterative meter. Several examples of free verse poems are referenced in this unit, including Jimmy Santiago Baca's "Set This Book On Fire," Eloise Greenfield's "Way Down in the Music," Langston Hughes "From Mother to Son," " Sylvia Plath's "Daddy."
Pitch is a concept that I would like to students to consider while reading and writing poetry. Pitch accounts for the difference between the emotions and facial expressions are conjured when the words like terrible and gloom are spoken.1 It is not merely the definition of a word that gives it life. Inhalation, exhalation, vocal cord compression, and the muscles of the mouth create the sounds of different letters. An example of the use of pitch is seen in Jimmy Santiago Baca's "Set This Book on Fire!" (see Poem Selections and Background section below).
There are many other literary devices that are essential for students to learn so that the student can connect the figurative meaning of a poem to its structure. Many of these devices do also help to create a sound for the reader. Imagery is the most easily recognizable literary device. Imagery is not limited to words that help to create an image, but also encompasses all of our senses, including sound. These images are created through unique word choice and are often embedded within other devices. Devices that help to create an image in the readers mind also help to create meaning. This includes the sounds that are created by the words and structure of a poem.
Symbolism is the use of imagery that stands for something greater than itself. A rose, for example, can be a representation of the duality of love - painful when thorny or unrequited and beautiful or fragrant when requited. Comparative devices such as simile, metaphor, allegory, and allusion, help to create images, and with a careful selection of words, can also create sound.
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