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Lecture notes Introducing Poetry
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This PDF document gives a detailed overview of each lecture and seminar from the module, including key topic areas, analysis and definitions.
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Introducing PoetryLecture and Seminar One
What is poetic language?
-Lyre
-Aeolian Harp; wind
-Both hold the importance of sound within them, like poetry
Robert Herrick
-Importance of song
-Repetition of ‘I sing’
-Both there in poetic language, but also often used as a theme
“The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry” William Empson
Sound in poetic language
-Rhythm – rhyme /alliteration/consonance/stress…
-Form/metre
William Barnes
-Geographical location – Devon
-Metrical beats
W.B. Yeats
-Lack of regular rhyme scheme
-Otarmourima (?)
-Use of half rhymes and full rhymes
-Against the grid it is supposed to be forming to
-Dying generations dying off as they are out of date
Iambic Pentameter
-A line of verse with five metrical feet, each one consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable
followed by one long (or stressed) syllable
“Affect arises in the midst of in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon. Affect
is an impingement or extrusion of a momentary or sometimes more sustained state of relation as
well as the passage of forces and intensities” – Gregory J. Seigworth
William Shakespeare
-Anxiousness
-Line endings and phrases
-Pulling in different directions
-Raises questions of what poetic language should consist of
-Compounds
-Concludes that because love is constant, no need to create new poetic language
-Couplet at the end of the poem
,“What does the word or phrase bring with it that is constant enough to make it a contributor as
well as a recipient of the poetic power of the structure it enters?” Winnifred Nowotty
John Keats
-On the Sonnet
-Stressing a poem, by a poet considering the limits of form
-Strain on poetic language
-Set free
-Continuity of idea, what poetic language might be
-What does and why does…
-Rhymes conform to sonnet structure ABCCBDCAD ETC
-Imagery of sandals; like a Greek sandal interwoven
-Capitalisation; personification of poetry
-Metrical foot of poetry and foot of the goddess of poetry
“Poetry is a form for special attention and one that calls unusual attention to the way it is
formed” Jefferey Wainwright
“Poetics deal primarily with the question, what makes a verbal message a work of art?” Roman
Jakobson
-Resurgence of finding new ways to read poems, depending on their shape in other ways to
depict their meanings
-William Blake (TATE); often figured in relation to the real, mixed up with the visual on the
page, attention to the world outside the poem, verbal images
Poetic language in context
-Importance of material shape of form in relation to meaning
-Aeolian Harp; “And that simplest Lute, /Placed length ways in the clasping casement, hark!”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“Poetry is a social institution. It has complex affinities with other parts of our cultural existence”
Terry Eagleton
-How poetic language sounds and is received around the date of the poem
Andrew Marvell
-Tensions forming between …
-Breaking, to open a gap of irony
-Sounds so close to the rhyme scheme begins to ring hollow
- “How should we take Bermudas? Is it a straightforward propaganda poem, commemorating
the commencement of the godly governorship of the newly appointed Somers Island
commissioner and erstwhile colonist, john Oxenbridge? Or is the poem shot through with
doubted and questions – with ironies …”
Poetic Environments
-Subject to change
-Habitats for growth, development and transplantation of language
-Thought and subjectivities
-Poetic language from exterior environments transplanted to the new habitat of the world
, Margaret Cavendish
-Fragility
-Writes an apology
-Metaphor of poem as environment for language
-Literal importance of language as environment
-Dangers of those linguistic environments
Emily Dickenson
-They shut me up in prose
-Didn’t publish many poems in her lifetime
-Ecology being one of concealment and fragility
-Poem as responsive environment by the poet for you the reader
-How does poetic language contribute…
“Poetic works … asking what are the conventions that enable this work to have the sorts of
meanings and effects it does for readers. It does not attempt to find a meaning but to understand
the techniques…”
Seminar
What is poetry?
(refer to sheet)
-narrative, dramatic and lyric
-Poetry s valued for combining pleasure of dignity of expression
‘Poetry interacts with the language we use in our daily lives’ -Jefferey Wainwright
How do we recognise poetry to be ‘poetry’? How do we know a poem is a ‘poem’?
-Forms and structures; verse, sonnet, rhyme etc etc
-Doesn’t read naturally like prose
-Use of language is different; phrases or expressions
-The conveying of emotions; detailed imagery put short description
-Double meanings
-Contextual influence
-Authors; prominence
-Meaning more distinctive in prose
-Having unruliness; can be disorganised
W.B. Yeat’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’
-Use of octaves; four stanzas
-Last line; ‘of what is passing, past or to come’ reference to past, present and future leaves the
poem open at the end for intrigue
-‘no country for old men’ setting an image that all men that remain in the country are full of life
and youth
-Imagery of life; fish swimming, birds in the trees,
-Sustained metaphor of being old and how the speaker is recognising this compared to
everything else full of life
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