Reading Poetry Study Guide: GED Language Arts, Reading

Elements of Sound

First of all, it is important to understand that poetry is intended to be read aloud, not just read silently from a book. When you read a poem out loud, you will discover that part of its power is drawn from the sound of the writing. The following humorous poem by Ogden Nash is entitled "Good-By, Bugs." Read it silently to yourself, then read it again out loud.

Some insects feed on rosebuds,
And others feed on carrion.
Between them they devour the earth.
Bugs are totalitarian.

In reading that poem silently, you probably got the humorous sense of what Nash was saying—that bugs are trying to take over the world. But in reading it out loud, you may have been surprised to hear yourself pronouncing totalitarian in an unusual way. The full sense of Nash's humor in this little poem only becomes clear when you read it aloud and find yourself rhyming totalitarian with carrion.

This is part of the power of poetry: It uses the sounds of words as well as the sense or meaning of words to convey its ideas to the reader.

Rhyme, Alliteration, and Onomatopoeia

The most common element of sound that poetry uses is rhyme. Two words that sound alike—such as cat and bat—are said to rhyme. Words can rhyme in various ways. The words cat and bat, for example, are called exact rhymes because they differ in only one sound—the initial consonants c and b. Technically an exact rhyme requires that the words rhyme completely, regardless of the number of syllables. For instance, buffer and rougher are exact rhymes. For our purposes, however, we will include any words whose final syllables rhyme. This would, therefore, include such word pairs as suggest and behest. Here is an example of exact, or perfect, rhyme, from Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees":

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A half-rhyme occurs when two words share only the same final consonant. The words hot and cat would be considered half-rhymes because they share the final consonant t. Some other examples of half-rhyme include trolley and bully; soul and oil; Firth and fourth. Here is an example of half-rhyme:

The coffee in the pot
Is not quite ready yet.

Note that the above example is a half-rhyme because the final consonant is the same in pot and yet. These two lines would become exact rhymes, however, if they were changed to this:

The coffee in the pot
Is not very hot.

A less common type of rhyme is called eye-rhyme. Eye-rhymes actually don't rhyme—they just look as if they should rhyme. The words cough and bough and rough all look as if they'd rhyme, but they actually don't when spoken aloud. Here is an example of eye-rhyme:

The man walked through even though the way was rough.

Alliteration occurs when a consonant sound is repeated throughout a line or stanza of poetry. Here is an example of alliteration, drawn from the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf:

Now Beowulf abode in the burg of the Scyldings,
Leader beloved, and long he ruled
In fame with all folk, since his father had gone
Away from the world, till awoke an heir,
Haughty Healfdene, who held through life,
Sage and sturdy, the Scyldings glad.

Read these lines aloud, and take note of the consonant sounds that repeat in each line. In line 1, the letter b is repeated frequently: Beowulf; abode; burg. Line 2 uses the letter l frequently: Leader; beloved; long; ruled. Line 3 repeats the letter f, and so forth. This is known as alliteration.

Another element of sound is onomatopoeia, pronounced on-oh-maht-ah-PEE-ah, meaning words that sound like what they describe. You may not have heard of onomatopoeia before, but you've used it just the same—words such as bang and pop and hiss and buzz are all examples of onomatopoeia, words that describe something by imitating it.

Rhyme Scheme

Poems that rhyme will often follow a specific rhyming pattern, which is called the poem's rhyme scheme. There is no set formula for how a poem should rhyme—in fact, many poems don't rhyme at all—but let's look at a couple of examples. Here is some more of Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees":

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

Notice that the rhyming words are see and tree, followed by prest and breast, and so on. We would call the see/tree rhyme a, prest/breast would be b, day/pray is c, and so forth. Thus we would say that this poem has a rhyme scheme of a, a, b, b, c, c.

But suppose that Kilmer had repeated some of the rhymes—let's say that he added the line "This is what I love in thee" to each stanza. Perhaps it might read like this:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
    That is what I love in thee.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
    That is what I love in thee.

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
    That is what I love in thee.

In this imaginary rewriting, we have changed the rhyme scheme to a, a, a, b, b, a, c, c, a, and so on. In other words, each time that we end a line with a word rhyming with tree, we are returning to the a rhyme—the first rhyme. Read the following lines from John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," and see if you can determine the rhyme scheme:

This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
    That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

The first line ends with morn, which we label a. The next line ends with King, which does not rhyme with morn, so it's labeled b. The third line, however, ends with born, which does rhyme with morn, so it's labeled a again because it rhymes with line a. Line 4 ends with bring, which rhymes with King and is therefore labeled b. Line 5 also rhymes with King, so it is also labeled b. Then the final two lines introduce a new rhyme of release and peace, so they are labeled c. So the rhyme scheme for these lines is a, b, a, b, b, c, c.

Here's one more example from John Milton, this time from his "Sonnet 19," which he wrote when he discovered that he was going blind (his one Talent refers to his ability to write poetry if he becomes blind):

When I consider how my light is spent, [a]
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, [b]
And that one Talent which is death to hide, [b]
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent… [a]

Finally, poetry that does not rhyme is called blank verse. Even if it does not rhyme, a poem may still be written in a specific meter, however, which brings us to the next element of poetic sound.

Meter

Another important aspect of sound in poetry is the poem's rhythm or meter. Meter is composed of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables within an individual line of poetry. A stressed syllable is the part of the word which we tend to accentuate when speaking.

For example, say the word meticulous out loud. (It is important to read poetry aloud if you want to hear the stressed and unstressed syllables correctly.) You probably spoke the word meticulous with a greater accent on the second syllable, like this: me- TIC-u-luss. Now try thoroughbred. With that word, you probably accented the first syllable. These are examples of stressed and unstressed syllables. The part of the word which you accent is the stressed syllable, and the other syllables are unstressed.

This same principle applies in poetry even when words are all one syllable. Read out loud the opening lines of Milton's "Sonnet 19," which you looked at earlier. Notice which words and syllables you instinctively stress, and which ones you don't stress.

Your out-loud reading may have sounded like this, where the stressed syllables are in bold italics:

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent…

What you have done in these lines is to take the first step toward identifying the meter that Milton used in this poem. A specific meter is determined by a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

A useful way of recognizing which syllables are stressed and which are unstressed is to replace the words with a sort of metrical beat—saying da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM out loud as your eye reads through the poem. The da represents an unstressed syllable, and the DUM represents a stressed syllable. Try reading through those lines again, but this time, read the words silently while speaking the metrical rhythm out loud.

Your out-loud reading probably sounded like this: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Now go back through and mark the lines with a pencil, marking a U over the unstressed syllables, and a slash (/) over the stressed syllables. Your markings will look something like this:

Congratulations! You have now scanned a poem, which means that you have identified the stressed and unstressed syllables. You are now prepared to identify the metrical pattern that Milton is using in each of those lines.

There are a great many different types of meter, but here are some of the more common ones:

• iambic: one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. Iambic most closely resembles normal English speech, and is one of the most common meters used in poetry.
  Example:
  
• trochaic: one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable. This is the opposite of iambic.
  Example:
  
• anapestic: two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
  Example:
  
• dactylic: one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
  Example:
  

Which type of meter is Milton's sonnet that we've been looking at? If you compare your scanned lines with the examples in each type, you will quickly see that Milton was using the iambic meter—one unstressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.

Now take another look at the examples provided for each of the metrical types. You will see that a new symbol, a vertical line (|) has been added to the U and / symbols. This line is used to separate the bits of meter from one another within each line.

Those bits of meter are called feet. A foot is one complete bit of iambic or trochaic or anapestic or dactylic meter. Now that you have identified Milton's sonnet as iambic, go back to your marked-up lines and add the vertical lines (|) between the iambic feet.

Your marked-up text should look something like this now:

The advantage to adding those vertical lines is that you can now count how many feet there are in each line. If you count the feet in the first line of Milton's sonnet, you'll see that there are five. This is the final piece of the puzzle in defining a poem's meter: identifying how many feet are in a line. Here are the most commonly used patterns:

• trimeter: three feet per line
• tetrameter: four feet per line
• pentameter: five feet per line
• hexameter: six feet per line

Congratulations again! You have now fully identified that the opening lines of Milton's "Sonnet 19" are written in iambic pentameter—five feet per line (pentameter), each foot composed of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (iambic).

Of course, you have probably already noticed that only the first three lines of Milton's sonnet are written in iambic pentameter; the fourth line is different. Can you identify what meter that fourth line is written in?*

Elements of Structure

You have now learned one of the basic elements of poetical structure: that lines are broken down into metrical feet. The line is the basic structure of poetry, just as the sentence is the basic structure of prose.

But prose sentences are grouped together into a larger structure, called the paragraph. In the same way, lines of poetry are often grouped together into a larger unit called a stanza. Not all poems are constructed in stanzas, but when they are, they are known as stanzaic poems.

Another way to think of stanzas is to think of a popular song. Songs are frequently written in verses, each verse starting again at the beginning of the tune. The "Star Spangled Banner," for example, is a song with numerous verses (although most of us only know the first verse). In the same way, a poem that is constructed of stanzas will follow the same pattern for each stanza. The stanzas may also be set apart from one another visually on the page, although that is not always the case.

Rhymed and Metered Poetry

We have already considered both rhyme scheme and meter in the preceding section, so we don't need to reiterate it here. It is important, however, to understand that not all poetry rhymes, and not all poetry follows any specific meter. We looked at Milton's "Sonnet 19," which is both rhyming and metered; now let's look at some poems that are not. Here, for example, are the opening lines from another poem by John Milton, "Paradise Lost."

Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat…

Take a moment now and scan those lines, using the techniques you learned in the previous section. Mark each line using the U and / symbols, separating each line into feet. What do you find?

You will discover that Milton is using iambic pentameter in this poem—but there are no rhymes. This is an example of blank verse, poetry that is written in a specific meter but does not rhyme. (Traditionally, blank verse was always written in iambic pentameter, but nowadays that is no longer the case.)

There is also a type of poetry that uses neither rhyme nor meter, called free verse, which is very popular in modern poetry circles. Here is a sample from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself ":

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Types of Poetry

As you can see by now, the world of poetry is very flexible and broad. A writer can create a poem using almost any rhyme scheme and meter—or none at all. In spite of this, however, there are many classifications within poetry: specific types of poems that follow a strict set of rules, and more general classifications of poetry that address a poem's purpose while leaving the actual structure undefined. We will start by looking at a few of the more specific types of poetry, then address some of the more generic categories.

Sonnets

The sonnet was a very popular form of poetry for hundreds of years, and even today it is still found in contemporary poetry. The sonnet form is very strict concerning the structure and rhyme scheme, although many poets still take some liberty in deviating somewhat from some of these structural rules.

In general, a sonnet is 14 lines in length, is written in iambic pentameter, and has a rhyme scheme (usually) of a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f, g, g. Obviously, this is a very strict set of rules, but the structure actually lends itself to some of the greatest poetry in the English language. Shakespeare, for example, used this structure for almost all of his poetry—and he wrote a great deal of it. So much so, in fact, that this structure is sometimes called the Shakespearean Sonnet form. Here is an example.

Sonnet 100
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill;
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humor hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest:
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' costs,
Of more delight than hawks and horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away, and me most wretched make.

Practice your scanning skills on this sonnet, marking up the feet with the U and / symbols, separating each foot with a vertical line (|). Then mark the rhyme scheme for each line, beginning with the first line as a. You will find that it is written in iambic pentameter (five feet per line of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable), rhyming a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f, g, g.

Elegies

An elegy is literally a song for the dead, and as a poetical form is a poem that praises the virtues and laments the death of a person. The elegy can also be used to treat abstract subjects, such as death, war, or even love. Like the sonnet, the elegy was a very popular poetical form for hundreds of years, and is still used in contemporary poetry.

Elegies in general do not follow any specific rules for structure or rhyme. The subject of the poem does not even have to be a dead person; it can address abstract ideas, as we've already said, or even a person who is still alive. In general, however, an elegy is a serious poem that offers the reader some deeper insight into the subject.

Elegies are frequently rather long poems. Here is an excerpt from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
  Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
  Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
  Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
  How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
  Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
  The short and simple annals of the poor.

Odes

The ode is another rather formal and lengthy poetical style, and it, too, generally deals with some weighty subject matter—death or war or the loss of someone important. Public odes are written for some important event or occasion, such as a funeral or an important national occasion. Private odes are written in response to the poet's own experiences, such as the loss of love or his own impending death. In general, odes of any kind are thoughtful and reflective, encouraging the reader to consider how the subject matter touches him or her.

Here is the opening stanza of "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats. The poem as a whole is addressed to a bird noted for its beautiful song, yet Keats is actually addressing much deeper subjects. In this first stanza, you can get a glimpse of the poem's sadness and struggle against despair.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
  My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
  One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
  But being too happy in thy happiness,
    That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
      In some melodious plot
  Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
  Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

There are many other specific types of poetry, but the sonnet, the elegy, and the ode are the most common types that you will find on the GED. Now let's move on to more generic classifications of poetry.

Emotive Poetry

An emotive poem is designed to arouse some emotional response in the reader. Some poems, such as elegies, try to lead the reader to a deeper understanding of some topic; this is not what emotive poems do.

Emotive poems attempt to describe something that is hard to describe—something that is essentially emotional. Consider this untitled poem by Alexander Pushkin.

I have loved you; even now I may confess,
Some embers of my love their fire retain
but do not let it cause you more distress,
I do not want to sadden you again.
Hopeless and tonguetied, yet, I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you—so sincerely;
I pray God grant another love you so.

Pushkin is attempting to describe the mixed feelings of having loved someone who no longer loves you in return. He is not trying to persuade his lover to come back, nor is he trying to analyze and understand the causes of why their love has ended. His poem is concerned only with the emotions he is experiencing, and he is trying to convey those through this emotive poem.

Imagistic Poetry

Imagistic poetry attempts to describe an event or setting, helping you to visualize the subject matter as though you were actually experiencing it yourself. One well-known imagistic poet is T.E. Hulme; here is his poem "Above the Dock."

Above the quiet dock in midnight,
Tangled in the tall mast's corded height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.

In this poem, Hulme is describing a scene, something that he sees: The moon rising in the sky, behind the masts of a sailing ship. As he stands watching the moon, he notices that it looks like a balloon that has floated upward and gotten tangled in the rigging of the ship's mast. This image is unusual, and in fact ironic: The moon is so far away and so huge, yet here it looks both small and close. This is the image the poet is trying to convey to the reader.

Narrative and Argumentative Poetry

A narrative poem tells a story, while an argumentative poem addresses some theme or idea, such as love or courage. Many of the poems we have looked at already are argumentative, because they address some deep subject. Gray's "Elegy," for example, addresses the danger of forgetting about those who have died.

Other poems tell a story. Ballads, for example, frequently recount some event or person. Such poems have been popular down through the ages because they tell interesting stories written in everyday language. This poetic form is still used today in much popular music.

Some poems do both together, telling a story in narrative style while also addressing some deep issues in argumentative style. Here is one by Robert Frost.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

This poem is first of all a narrative, because it is telling a story. Frost is describing the time that he was walking through the woods and came to a fork in the path. He had to decide whether to go left or right, and he noticed that one path appeared to be more frequently used than the other. He decided to continue down the path that was less frequently traveled.

But the poem is also argumentative, because Frost is using his walk in the woods both on a literal level (he had taken a real walk in a real forest) and also on a metaphorical level: The path in the woods can mean more than simply a path in the woods. He is using this experience to suggest that there are times when people should deliberately not follow the example of what everyone else does; sometimes we should take the path that is less traveled by, making a decision that might seem unusual to people around us. He also warns, however, that there can be consequences to making such a choice: It might be irreversible. He tells us, I doubted if I should ever come back, implying that his choice to take one path meant that he might never learn what lay at the end of the other path. These are deep subjects that Frost is tackling, and this is the argumentative aspect of the poem.

Word Choice in Poetry

Poetry uses many of the elements of fiction addressed in Chapter 3, such as irony, metaphor, personification, symbolism, and so forth. Poems are different from most fiction, however, in the fact that they are relatively short pieces of writing (far shorter than a novel, for example) and must therefore compress a great deal of meaning and thought into a short space.

For this reason, word choice becomes critically important in poetry. In fact, one might say that word choice is the very essence of poetry—the ability to use words powerfully and succinctly, conveying a mood or idea in a very small space.

Poetry frequently takes advantage of the many-layered aspect of language. We all know how to use words and phrases that can be interpreted in more ways than one. One common form of this is called double entendre, a form of humor that describes something from everyday life but that also carries some other connotation—usually of a sexual nature.

Another example of such layered meaning is the common pun, a form of wording that takes advantage of a word's different uses to produce humor or to deepen the reader's understanding—although puns are usually used humorously. A pun can also be created by taking advantage of homophones, words that sound alike but have different meanings. The words son and sun, for example, are homophones because they sound the same but have very different meanings.

Here is an example of a poem that uses a pun to be humorous, playing on the double meaning of the word maroon, which can refer either to a color (a dark, bluish red) or to being stuck on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. (Festooned means to be decorated.)

Two ships collided with much ado:
One ship was red, the other blue.
With colors these ships had been festooned,
But now their crews were all marooned.

The pun here lies in the idea that the colors of the ships were mingled to create the color maroon, while the sailors found themselves stuck in the ocean without a ship—they were marooned.

Limericks provide a classic example of this sort of word play. Most limericks are, shall we say, indelicate—they use double entendre and other forms of layered meaning to create a poem that can be interpreted either literally or metaphorically. As we've noted, these double entendres are very frequently of a sexual nature. Here is a limerick that avoids sexual innuendo but still plays with words.

There once was a woman from Riga
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
  She came back from her ride
  With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Practice questions for this study guide can be found at:

Reading Poetry Practice Exercises: GED Language Arts, Reading