Poetry, What Is A Poem?

Learning Objectives:

-To explore rhythm, pace, style, voice, tone, mood

-The importance of word choice, word order and syntax

-The importance of structure in writing in all forms

-To experiment with free form poetry

How do we recognize a poem? There’s a structure and a visual aid to it, stanzas. There is also a rhythm to it and it flows as you read through it with a pace. Throughout the poem there is a message or a moral for the reader to pick up on. Another purpose of a poem is to entertain. Most poems don’t always have to look like a poem, sometimes the structure could seem different and come across as if the writer is talking to you and for me it is important to have that emotional connection while reading it. By having metaphors and extended metaphors allows the writer to add that little bit more to a sentence that can reach out to the reader and have the emotional connection.

Is this a poem? – Two all-beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun

Where can we add punctuation to it? –

Two all beef patties,

special sauce,

lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions,

on a sesame seed bun.

Poetic Devices:

-Allegory – a short moral story

-Alliteration – use of the same consonant at the beginning of each word

-Imagery – the ability to form mental pictures of things or events

-Metaphor – a figure of speech that suggests a non-literal similarity

-Foreshadowing – the act of providing vague advance indications

-Irony – incongruity between what might be expected and what occurs

 

Poetry… making others look at the world differently – Amselm Keifer. 

Theme – the message of the poem, the point the author wishes to make

Topic – what the poem is about

Tone – The attitude of the writer towards his subject matter

Mood – feelings expressed, included what the writer/speaker feels AND how the reader feels when they read the poem, may also be related to the atmosphere created.

 

Mothers Of Sons

Mothers of sons

teach your child to respect women

show and tell them to appreciate beauty in its finest form

teach him to be wise and strong

inform your son of all the horror that comes with being an ungrateful disrespectful man

and how respect is the key to being a real man

he will grow to be loving and caring and considerate

and have his mother to thank for it

to not tell him is to harm him

as the brutality of his actions could harm others

he will grow to hate you for allowing him to be the way he is

for allowing him to become the monster he is now

it will only cost you a conversation at the dinner table one evening

to keep him on the straight and narrow

to avoid the rips in a girls skirt and blouse

his mind being a sponge

your knowledge and guidance being the water

he will be loved

he will be respected for having respect

he wont cross the unthinkable boundaries so many have tragically crossed

teach your son to be a man you can be proud of

or else

the blood is on your hands

decency, dignity

respect, honesty

truthfulness, sincerity

 

Having A Bagel With You

is a daily occurrence that I love more than blasting my music singing as loudly as I possibly can

or binge watching a new intense crime documentary in a dark room at winter

partly because seeing your smile makes everything okay in my world and no one can wear a smile better than you

when you laugh I forget all my troubles and all my pain, it’s as if the sound fills my wounds and makes me whole again

when you talk I’m drawn to every word you say as if nothing else matters or exists, I hang onto every last word that leaves your beautifully perfect shaped lips

your difference in this world of normality keeps me sane, your fluorescent orange socks with the freshness of your vividly green shirt leaves me speechless in a way I enjoy

your beauty is so amusing to me and so unique that no explanation or drawing could ever do you justice, your individuality inspires me, you do everything so confidently it makes me wonder if such levels of confidence existed before the world met you

if your personality could be graded a triple distinction wouldn’t suffice as your warm heart gives me hope that the world could yet be a better place one day if someone as perfect as you came out of it

and the fact that despite your perfection you are humble, it’s as if you cannot see how flawless you really are and that my love makes me love you even more

it seems as if I have UV vision into seeing your pulchritudinous which is why I’m telling you about it

 

 

Evaluation: 

I feel quite passionately about the poem “Mothers of Sons” that I have written due to having had personal experiences from men that have made me uncomfortable, I feel it is very important to guide and advice men/boys from young as our childhood molds who we are as adults. The last six words of my poem “decency, dignity, respect, honesty, truthfulness, sincerity” are the things that make a man, my father once told me. This has stayed with me in my life and I use those words as a guideline in figuring someone out. When writing this poem I imagined actually speaking to a mother and trying to get across to her the importance her responsibility as a mother really is. Young girls and women are being harassed and abused on a daily basis because men cannot control themselves, which leaves women at an unfair advantage in life.

My poem “Having a Bagel With You” is one that has come from a real life personal experience for me, I used my feelings to inspire me to create this poem and by doing so it created an emotional effect for the reader. I used my personal experience so that I could bring the rawness into my work and really express how I feel rather writing fiction. I feel by learning how to write poems in today’s lesson and being comfortable enough to express myself has really helped my writers block. Before today’s lesson I have an idea of how to write a poem but the format to it was never for me until I tried myself. In this poem I have used literary tools and showing not telling techniques to put across more of an emotive relation to the readers. I feel by doing this it makes my poem feel more relatable rather than just being factual, as when a reader reads this poem they will feel the emotional background to it. I have borrowed some techniques from Frank O’ Hara’s poem “Having A Coke With You” such as speaking in first person in order to bring the reader into the mind of the writer, in this case, my mind.