Being able to capture the essence of an object or creatively express one’s feelings or emotions through poetry can be a challenge for many writers. The main goal for any poet should be to capture and inscribe that feeling of awe (Hirsch, 2000).
Fundamental Elements
There are many elements to consider when trying to achieve this goal such as: the speaker, the listener, language, imagery, sound, sense, patterns of sound, rhyme schemes, assonance, consonance, form, meter, metaphors, stanzas, style, and lineation. Although there are no formal rules to writing poetry, a great poem takes careful consideration into these elements in order to better assist the listener or reader to properly conceptualize the underlying theme.
The Speaker
The speaker is the point of view in which the poem is being presented. Often times the speaker is the poet. However, like any other piece of imaginative literature the poem can be written through another subject’s perspective. The listener is the implied reader or audience. It is important to remember that many poems attempt to create a relationship between the speaker and the listener. Therefore attention to word choices such as “I” and “you” can help to give clues behind the purpose of the point of view within the poem.
Linguistic Form in Poetry
“Although poems are often about such grand themes as love or death, they rarely dwell long in these abstractions”(Gardner, Lawn, Ridl & Schakel, 2009, p. 1239), which is why most poets choose to utilize the elements of imagery, symbols and metaphors to convey a deeper meaning to the audience. A more in depth message from the author can also be accomplished by the careful selection of wording. The word choice or language of a poem can be compiled and broken down into smaller categories such as assonance, consonance, sounds, senses, and rhyme schemes, which are integrated in order to establish the tone. Meters, stanzas and lineation can also impact word choice or language and provides the overall framework of the poem.
Vocabulary in Poetry
Countee Cullen was a leading African American poet during the Harlem’s Renaissance period. Cullen’s poem titled “Incident”, (Gardner, Lawn, Ridl & Schakel, 2009, p. 577) is a wonderful example of how word choice can be an essential component to developing the poem’s theme behind the painful experience of a child’s first encounter with racism. “Word choice is integral to how your poem will read” (Moustaki, 2001, p. 208). The poem starts out by introducing the setting, which takes place in ‘old’ Baltimore. The speaker of the poem is an eight-year old, African American, child, who is arriving at Baltimore for the first time. In the first four lines the child appears to be ecstatic as he is ‘heart-filled, head-filled with glee’. He has then caught the attention of another child or ‘Baltimorean’ as he was ‘no whit bigger’ and then proceeds to greet him with a smile. As he smiles the other child pokes out ‘his tongue’ and calls him a ‘nigger’. The last four lines of the poem read:
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember
From this last rhyme scheme it can be concluded that the experience has left a detrimental impact upon the child’s psyche and was probably a painful and life-altering event since it was long remembered.
Styles of Poetry
Among the elements of poetry there are also numerous styles to consider such as acrostic, ballad, clerihew, epitaph, damante, free verse, haiku, limerick, monody, monorhyme, an ode, palindrome, pantoum, quatrain, shape, and villanelle to name a few (Poetry for the heart, http://members.cox.net/berniehpoetry/styles.html).
Sonnets
The sonnet also known as sonnetto or ‘little song’ is another style of poetry, which was manifested in Italy during the thirteenth century. Specifically, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a set rhyme and metrical scheme (Moustaki, 2001). Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “God’s Grandeur”, (Gardner, Lawn, Ridl & Schakel, 2009, p 540), provides an example of how a sonnet should be written. In this sonnet Hopkins uses both language and metaphorical references to capture the omnipotent and omniscient theme behind the glory of god. Although the sonnet does not display a perfect example of a traditional iambic pentameter (five accents and two syllables) the rhythm of the poem still flows well enough for the reader to appreciate the metaphors of the ‘grandeur of God’.
The sonnet begins with stating that ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of God’ or the magnificence of all creation despite the recognition of man. The greatness which gathers ‘like the ooze of oil, which will one day flame out ‘like shining from shook foil’. It can be clear through the word choices of this poem Hopkins wished to express the splendor of witnessing Heaven on Earth that so many generations of humanity often ignore and blindly destroy.
References
Gardner, J., Lawn, B., Ridl, J., Schakel, P., (2009). Literature: A Portable Anthology, Second
Editon. New York : Bedford/ St. Martin’s.
Hirsch, E., (2000). How to read a poem, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Hartcourt.
Howe, B., (2009). Poetry Styles, Poetry of the heart, Retrieved November 30, 2009 from
http://members.cox.net/berniehpoetry/styles.html
Moustaki, N., (2001). The complete idiot’s guide to writing poetry, New York: Penguin Group.
Kimona Brown - "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi
