Advanced Poetry & Forms of Verse

MYP5 Language & Literature Unit 3

Created by Ethan Glemaker

Revised and edited by Yvonne Willems and Piotr Sobczak
 Table of Contents
Introduction 4

The Sonnet 5
“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” (or “Sonnet 18”) by W. Shakespeare 6
“When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” by John Keats 7
“Farewell to Love” by Michael Drayton 8
“Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds” (or “Sonnet 116”) by W. Shakespeare 9
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden 10
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley 11

The Sestina 12
“Sestina” by Algernon Charles Swinburne 13
“After the Trial” by Weldon Kees 15
“The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina” by Miller Williams 17

Slam Poetry/Spoken Word 19

“Shake the Dust” by Anis Mojgani 20
“Somewhere in America” by Belissa Escobedo, Rhiannon McGavin, & Zariya Allen 22
“Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars” by Buddy Wakefield 24
“Hands” by Sarah Kay 28
“Letter to the Girl I Used to Be” by Ethan Smith 31
“When Love Arrives” by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye 33

The Ballad 36
“The Host of the Air” by William Butler Yeats 37
“Her Immortality” by Thomas Hardy 39
“The Tale of Custard the Dragon” by Ogden Nash 41
“The Cherry-tree Carol” by Anonymous 43

2|Page
The Villanelle 45
“The Waking” by Theodore Roethke 46
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas 47
“The World & the Child” by James Merrill 48
“By the Sound” by John Hollander 49
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop 50

The Ode 51
“To Autumn” by John Keats 52
“Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo 54

Glossary of Terms 55

3|Page
 Introduction
Poetry can come in all sorts of containers. In this course, we will look at some containers that can and will hold
poems. We will also include selected significant poems from some major periods and discuss the forms popular in those
periods. We’ll be conversing about ways we can make our own poems better through a direct application of our newfound
knowledge. Don't let forms or formal verse intimidate you. I don’t expect you to necessarily write your best poems in this
course, but I do expect you to put your best foot forward. This course is designed as a workshop. Through writing,
reading, and listening to poems written in these traditions we’ll strive to gain a deeper appreciation of poetry as an art
form.

In this course, we will look squarely at some of the headaches and mysteries of poetic form. We will develop answers
for down-to-earth queries. How does a Sonnet work? What are the rules of a Sestina, and who established them? What
gets repeated in a Villanelle? And where?

In order to provide some answers, the authors of our unit text, Eavan Boland and Mark Strand, have gone back to
the exuberant history of forms. They have drawn answers out of their shadows in French harvest fields and small Italian
courts and have laid out as clearly as possible their often-turbulent passage across countries.

It is our hope that you become enchanted, as we have been, by the compelling witness of poet after poet
discovering and unfolding their inner world through outward customs and cadences. We hope you agree that these forms
are—as we believe—not locks, but keys.

The fascination of poetic form, however, goes well beyond the answer to questions about structure and origin. Once
these are answered, another door opens, another labyrinth waits. This course and the poems in this anthology are
intended as a small map of the journey through corridors where history, society, solitude, and power are all traceable
from a single poetic form.

The journey is not a smooth one. Perhaps the chief problem is that form is a powerful filter, but not an inclusive one.
Women are often underrepresented in poetry in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. In the same way,
and for some of the same reasons, minority visions and diverse voices are not as present as we would like. There are
reasons for this, and the reasons make a further subtle and important argument about the sociology of poetic form: In the
societies that produced the sonnet, the villanelle, the sestina, poetic form was not just an expression of art, it was also a
register of power.

But the true and final power of form is not societal: poetic form, when it comes from deep feeling as it does in the
poems I have chosen, is also deeply human. The real story here is the inward grace. The subtlety, elegance, and hunger of
the human spirit is obvious everywhere in this collection. Our goal for this course is for your spirit to emerge in your voice
and on the page as we explore poetic form together.

***Note on this course and this anthology: Much of the information contained in this collection, as well as many of the poems
selected, were borrowed from the text, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Form by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland.
It is with immense gratitude and pride, that we present this collection to you as our students and aspiring writers.

4|Page
 The Sonnet
The Sonnet at a Glance

1. It is a form of fourteen lines, usually iambic pentameter

2. There are two kinds of sonnet, with very different histories behind their different forms: The Petrarchan
and the Shakespearean.
3. The Petrarchan sonnet is Italian in origin, has an octave of 8 lines and a sestet of six. The Rhyme scheme
of the octave is ababcdcd and the sestet cdecde.
4. The Shakespearean sonnet was developed in England and has far more than just surface differences
from the Petrarchan.
5. The rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet is ababcdcdefefgg. There is no octive/sestet structure
to it. The final couplet is a defining feature.

5|Page
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
Sonnet 18
By William Shakespeare, 1609

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

6|Page
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
By John Keats, 1848

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;

When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love—then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

7|Page
 Farewell to Love
By Michael Drayton, 1563-1631

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part;

Nay I have done, you get no more of me,

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,

When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,

When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And innocence is closing up his eyes;

Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,

From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.

8|Page
Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
Sonnet 116
By William Shakespeare, 1609

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

9|Page
 Those Winter Sundays
By Robert Hayden, 1962

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

10 | P a g e
 Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

11 | P a g e
 The Sestina
The Sestina at a Glance

1. It is a poem of thirty-nine lines.

2. It has six stanzas of six lines each.
3. This is followed by an envoi of three lines.
4. All of these are unrhymed.
5. The same six end-words must occur in every stanza.
6. This recurrent pattern of end-words is known as “lexical repetition.”
7. Each stanza must follow on the last by taking a reversed pairing of the previous lines.
8. The first line of the second stanza must pair its end-words with the last line of the first. The second line
of the second stanza must do this with the first line of the first and so on.
9. The envoi, or last three lines, must gather up and deploy the six end-words.

The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the
remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its
initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral
indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the
course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme
scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to affect a sort of rhyme.

12 | P a g e
 Sestina
By Algernon Charles Swinburne, Unknown

I saw my soul at rest upon a day

As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
And knew not as men waking, of delight.

This was the measure of my soul's delight;

It had no power of joy to fly by day,
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;
But in a secret moon-beholden way
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,
And all the love and life that sleepers may.

But such life's triumph as men waking may

It might not have to feed its faint delight
Between the stars by night and sun by day,
Shut up with green leaves and a little light;
Because its way was as a lost star's way,
A world's not wholly known of day or night.

All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night

Made it all music that such minstrels may,
And all they had they gave it of delight;
But in the full face of the fire of day
What place shall be for any starry light,
What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way?
13 | P a g e
Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,
Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,
And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,
Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,
Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,
Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.

For who sleeps once and sees the secret light

Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way
Between the rise and rest of day and night,
Shall care no more to fare as all men may,
But be his place of pain or of delight,
There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.
Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light
Before the night be fallen across thy way;
Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.

14 | P a g e
 After the Trial
By Weldon Kees, 1941

Hearing the judges’ well-considered sentence,

The prisoner saw long plateaus of guilt,
And thought of all the dismal furnished rooms
The past assembled, the eyes of parents
Staring through walls as though forever
To condemn and wound his innocence.

And if I raise my voice, to protest my innocence,

The judges won’t revoke their sentence.
I could stand screaming in this box forever,
Leaving them deaf to everything but guilt;
All the machinery of law devised by parents
Could not be stopped though fire swept the rooms.

Whenever my thoughts move to all those rooms

I sat alone in, capable of innocence,
I know now I was not alone, that parents
Always were there to speak the hideous sentence:
“You are our son; be good; we know your guilt;
We stare through walls and see your thoughts forever.”

Sometimes I wished to go away forever;

I dreamt of strangers and of stranger rooms
Where every corner held the light of guilt.
Why do the judges stare? I saw no innocence
In them when they pronounced the sentence;
I heard instead the believing voice of parents.

I can remember evenings when my parents

Settling my future happily forever,
Would frown before they spoke the sentence:

15 | P a g e
“Someday the time will come to leave these rooms
Where, under our watchful eyes, you have been innocent;
Remember us before you seize the world of guilt.”

Their eyes burn. How can I deny my guilt

When I am guilty in the sight of parents?
I cannot think that even they were innocent.
At least I shall not have to wait forever
To be escorted to the silent rooms
Where darkness promises a final sentence.

We walk forever to the doors of guilt,

Pursued by our own sentences and eyes of parents,
Never to enter innocent and quiet rooms.

16 | P a g e
The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina
By Miller Williams, 1992

Somewhere in everyone's head something points toward home,

a dashboard's floating compass, turning all the time
to keep from turning. It doesn't matter how we come
to be wherever we are, someplace where nothing goes
the way it went once, where nothing holds fast
to where it belongs, or what you've risen or fallen to.

What the bubble always points to,

whether we notice it or not, is home.
It may be true that if you move fast
everything fades away, that given time
and noise enough, every memory goes
into the blackness, and if new ones come-

small, mole-like memories that come

to live in the furry dark-they, too,
curl up and die. But Carol goes
to high school now. John works at home
what days he can to spend some time
with Sue and the kids. He drives too fast.

Ellen won't eat her breakfast.

Your sister was going to come
but didn't have the time.
Some mornings at one or two
or three I want you home
a lot, but then it goes.

It all goes.
Hold on fast
to thoughts of home
when they come.

17 | P a g e
They're going to
less with time.

Time
goes
too
fast.
Come
home.

Forgive me that. One time it wasn't fast.

A myth goes that when the years come
then you will, too. Me, I'll still be home.

18 | P a g e
 Slam Poetry
Slam Poetry at a Glance

Slam poetry, a form of performance poetry that combines the elements of performance, writing, competition,
and audience participation. It is performed at events called poetry slams, or simply slams. The name slam
came from how the audience has the power to praise or, sometimes, destroy a poem and from the high-
energy performance style of the poets.

1. It doesn’t follow any particular structure or rhyme scheme.

2. It is meant to be memorized and performed in under 3 minutes.
3. It often incorporates rhythm and passion.
4. The subject matter should be something readily relatable.
5. The style, tone, and voice of the performance should mirror the content of the poem, and should
be unique to the performer.

19 | P a g e
 Shake the Dust
By Anis Mojgani, Unknown

This is for the fat girls

This is for the little brothers
This is for the schoolyard wimps and the childhood bullies that tormented them
For the former prom queen and for the milk crate ball players
For the nighttime cereal eaters
And for the retired elderly Walmart store front door greeters
Shake the dust

This is for the benches and the people sitting upon them
For the bus drivers who drive a million broken hymns
For the men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children
For the nighttime schoolers
And for the midnight bikers who are trying to fly
Shake the dust

This is for the two year olds

Who cannot be understood because they speak half English and half God
Shake the dust
For the boys with the beautiful sisters
Shake the dust
For the girls with the brothers who are going crazy
For those gym class wallflowers and the twelve year olds afraid of taking public showers
For the kid who is always late to class because he forgets the combination to his locker
For the girl who loves somebody else
Shake the dust

This is for the hard men who want love but know that it won't come
For the ones who are forgotten
The ones the amendments do not stand up for
For the ones who are told speak only when you are spoken to
And then are never spoken to
Speak every time you stand so you do not forget yourself
Do not let one moment go by that doesn't remind you
That your heart, it beats 900 times every single day
And that there are enough gallons of blood to make everyone of you oceans
Do not settle for letting these waves that settle
And for the dust to collect in your veins
This is for the celibate pedophile who keeps on struggling

20 | P a g e
For the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacation alone
For the sweat that drips off of Mick Jaggers' singing lips
And for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner's shaking hips
For the heavens and for the hells through which Tina has lived
This is for the tired and for the dreamers
For those families that want to be like the Cleavers with perfectly made dinners
And songs like Wally and the Beaver
This is for the bigots, for the sexists, and for the killers
And for the big house pin sentenced cats becoming redeemers
And for the springtime that somehow seems to show up right after every single winter

This is for everyone of you

Make sure that by the time the fisherman returns you are gone
Because just like the days I burn at both ends
And every time I write, every time I open my eyes
I'm cutting out parts of myself simply to hand them over to you

So shake the dust

And take me with you when you do for none of this has ever been for me
All that pushes and pulls
And pushes and pulls
And pushes and pulls
It pushes for you
So, grab this world by its clothespins
And shake it out again and again
And jump on top and take it for a spin
And when you hop off shake it again
For this is yours, this is yours
Make my words worth it
Make this not just some poem that I write
Not just some poem like just another night that sits heavy above us all
Walk into it, breathe it in, let it crash through the halls of your arms
Like the millions of years of millions poets
Coursing like blood, pumping and pushing
Making you live, shaking the dust
So when the world knocks at your front door
Clutch the knob tightly and open on up
And run forward and far into its widespread, greeting arms
With your hands outstretched before you
Fingertips trembling, though they may be

21 | P a g e
 Somewhere in America
By Belissa Escobedo, Rhiannon McGavin, and Zariya Allen, 2009

Here in America, in every single state, they have a set of standards for every subject
A collection of lessons that the teacher's required to teach by the end of the term
But the greatest lessons you'll ever teach us will not come from your syllabus
The greatest lessons you will ever teach us, you will not even remember

You never told us what we weren't allowed to say

We just learned how to hold our tongues
Now somewhere in America, there is s a child holding a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" and there is a child
holding a gun
But only one of these things have been banned by their state government
And it's not the one that can rip through flesh
It's the one that says "fuck you" on more pages than one

Because we must control what the people say, and how they think
And if they want to become the overseer of their own selves, then we'll show them a real one
And somewhere in America, there's a child sitting at his mother's computer, reading the homepage of the
KKK's website, and that's open to the public
But that child will never have read "To Kill a Mockingbird" because the school has banned it for it's use of
the "N" word

Maya Angelou is prohibited because we're not allowed to talk about rape in school
We were taught that 'just because something happens, doesn't mean you are to talk about it'
They built us brand new shopping malls so that we'll forget where we're really standing
On the bones of the Hispanics, on the bones of the slaves, on the bones of the Native Americans, on the
bones of those who fought just to speak!

Transcontinental Railroad to Japanese Internment Camps

There are things missing from our history books
But we were taught that it is better to be silent, than to make them uncomfortable
Somewhere in America, private school girls search for hours through boutiques, trying to find the prom
dress of their dreams
While kids on the south side spending hours searching through the 'lost and found' 'cause winter's coming
soon and that's the only jacket they have

Kids are late to class for working the midnight shift

They give awards for best attendance, but not for keeping your family off the streets
These kids will call your music ghetto, they will tell you you don’t talk right

22 | P a g e
Then they’ll get in the backseat of a car with all their friends singing ‘ bout how “They’re ‘bout that life” and
“we can’t stop”
Somewhere in America, schools are promoting self confidence
While they whip out their scales and shout out your body fat percentage in class

While heftier girls are hiding away, and the slim fit beauties can’t help but giggle with pride
The preppy kids go thrift shopping ‘cause they think it sounds real fun
But we go ‘cause that’s all we got money for
‘Cause momma works for the city, momma only gets paid once a month
Somewhere in America, a girl is getting felt up by a grown man on the subway
She’s still in her school uniform and that’s part of the appeal
It’s hard to run in knee socks and Mary Jane’s, and all her male teachers know it too

Coaches cover up the star players raping freshmen after the dance
Women are killed for rejecting dates, but God forbid I bring my girlfriend to prom
Girls black out drunk at the after party, take a picture before her wounds wake her
How many pixels is your sanity worth? What’s a 4.0 to a cold jury?
What’d you learn in class today?
Don’t walk fast, don’t speak loud, keep your hands to yourself, keep your head down
Keep your eyes on your own paper, if you don’t know the answer, fill in “C”
Always wear earbuds when you ride the bus alone
If you feel like someone’s following you, pretend you’re on the phone

A teacher never fails, only you do

Every state in America, the greatest lessons, are the ones you don’t remember learning

23 | P a g e
Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars
(Hope is Not a Course of Action)
By Buddy Wakefield, 2009

If we were created in God’s image

then when God was a child
he smushed fire ants with his fingertips
and avoided tough questions.
There are ways around being the go-to person
even for ourselves
even when the answer is clear
like the holy water Gentiles drank
before they realized Forgiveness
is the release of all hope for a better past.

I thought those were chime shells in your pocket

so I chucked a quarter at it
hoping to hear some part of you
respond on a high note.
You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars
and abandoned me for not making sense.
Evidently, I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.

For example, I know mercy

when I have enough money to change the jukebox at a gay bar
(somebody’s gotta change that shit).
You understand the power of God’s mercy
whenever someone shoves a stick of morphine
straight up into your heart.
It felt amazing
the days you were happy to see me
so I smashed a beehive against the ocean
to try and make our splash last longer.
Remember all the honey
had me lookin’ like a jellyfish ape
but you walked off the water in a porcupine of light

24 | P a g e
strands of gold
drizzling out to the tips of your wasps.
This is an apology letter to the both of us
for how long it took me to let things go.

It was not my intention to make such a

production of the emptiness between us
playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano
to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.
It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there
and that you meant it
but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open

so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat

hoping they’d get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots
that I wouldn’t have to hear you leaving
so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying
all my eggs were in a basket of red flags
all my eyes to a bucket of blindfolds
in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze
ya know I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off
trying to drive all your nickels to the well
when you were happy to let them wishes drop

but I still show up for gentleman practice

in the company of lead dancers
hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.
Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman
or is it a cattle call
in a school of fish? Still dance with me
less like a waltz for panic
more for the way we’d hoped to swing
the night we took off everything
and we were swingin’ for the fences

don’t hold it against

my love
you know I wanna breath deeper than this
you know I didn’t mean to look so serious
didn’t mean to act like a filthy floor

25 | P a g e
didn’t mean to turn us both into a cutting board
but there were knives s-stuck
in the words where I came from
too much time in the back of my words.
I pulled knives from my back and my words.
I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away

and I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady

yeah you know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell
you know I know I mighta gone and lost my breath
but I wanna show ya how I found my breath
to death
it was buried under all the wind instruments
hidden in your castanets
goddamn
if ya ever wanna know how it felt when ya left
yeah if you ever wanna come inside

just knock on the spot

where I finally pressed STOP

playing musical chairs with exit signs.

I’m gonna cause you a miracle

when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.

Forgiveness
is for anybody
who needs a safe passage through my mind.

If I was really created in God’s image

then when God was a boy
he wanted to grow up to be a man
a good man
and when God was a man
a good man
He started telling the truth in order to get honest responses.
He’d say,
“I know.
I really shoulda wore my cross

26 | P a g e
again
but I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.”

27 | P a g e
 Hands
By Sarah Kay, 2007

People used to tell me that I had beautiful hands.

Told me so often, in fact, that one day I started to
believe them; started listening, until I asked my
photographer father, Hey Daddy, could I be a hand model?

To which Dad laughed, and said no way.

I don’t remember the reason he gave,
and it probably didn’t matter anyway.
I would have been upset, but there were

far too many crayons to grab, too many

stuffed animals to hold, too many ponytails to tie,
too many homework assignments to write,
too many boys to wave at: too many years to grow.
We used to have a game, my Dad and I, about holding hands.
We held hands everywhere. In the car, on the bus, on the street,
at a movie. And every time, either he or I would whisper a
great big number to the other, pretending that we were

keeping track of how many times we had held hands,

that we were sure this one had to be eight-million,
two-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-three.
Hands learn. More than minds do.

hands learn how to hold other hands.

How to grip pencils and mold poetry.
how to memorize computer keys,
and telephone buttons in the night.

How to tickle piano keys and grip bicycle handles.

How to dribble a basketball and how to peel apart
pages of Sunday comics, that somehow always seem to stick together.
They learn how to touch old people, and how to hold babies.

28 | P a g e
I love hands like I love people. They are the maps and
compasses with which we navigate our way through life:
feeling our way over mountains passed and valleys crossed,
they are our histories.

Some people read palms to tell your future,

I read hands to tell your past.
Each scar marks a story worth telling: each callused palm,
each cracked knuckle—a broken bottle, a missed punch,

a rusty nail, years in a factory.

Now, I watch Middle Eastern hands
clenched in Middle Eastern fists.
Pounding against each other like war drums,

each country sees their fists as warriors

and others as enemies, even if fists alone are only hands.
But this is not a poem about politics; hands are not about politics.
This is a poem about love.

And fingers. Fingers interlocked like a beautiful accordion of flesh,

or a zipper of prayer. One time, I grabbed my Dad’s hand
so that our fingers interlocked perfectly, but he changed his
position, saying, No, that hand hold is for your mom.

Kids high five, sounds of hand to hand combat

instead mark camaraderie and teamwork.
Now, grown up, we learn to shake hands.
You need a firm handshake, but not too tight, don’t be limp now,

don’t drop too soon, but for God’s sake don’t hold on too long…
but… hands are not about politics?
When did it become so complicated?
I always thought it simple.

The other day, my Dad looked at my hands, as if seeing them

for the first time. And with laughter behind his eyelids,
with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster, he said,
You’ve got nice hands. You could’a been a hand model.

29 | P a g e
And before the laughter can escape me,
I shake my head at him
and squeeze his hand.
Eight-million, two-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-four.

30 | P a g e
Letter to the Girl I Used to Be
By Ethan Smith, 2015

Dear Emily,
Every time I watch baseball a voice I no longer recognise whispers
"Ethan, do you remember? When you were going to be the first girl
To play in the major league Seattle mariners rally cap?"
But to honest Emily I don't
Dad told me that like it was someone else's bedtime story
But I do know you had that drive
Didn't let anyone tell you to wear shorts above your knees
Didn't care if boys thought your hair fell on your shoulders just right
But with girls, sleepovers meant the space between your shoulder and hers
Was a 6-inch fatal territory
The year you turned eleven
Was the first time you said out loud that you didn't want to live anymore
In therapy you said you wouldn't make it to 21
On my 21st birthday I thought about you
You were right
At 19 you started to fade
I tried to cross you out like a line in my memoir
I wished I could erase completely
And maybe I'm misunderstanding the definition of death
But even though parts of you still exist
You are not here
Most of my friends have never heard your name until now
I've been trying to write this letter for 6 months
I still can't decide if it should be an apology or not
But now you will never hear "Emily Smith" announced at a college graduation,
Get married, give birth
When the prescribed testosterone started taking effect
My body stopped producing the potential for new life every month
I thought about your children, how I wanted them too
I let a doctor remove your breasts so I could stand up straighter
Now even if I somehow had those children I wouldn't be able to nourish them
My body is obsolete

31 | P a g e
Scarred cosmetic but never C-section
I was 4 days late
There will never be grandparents
I was one week late
They will never hold their lover's sleeping figure
I was 11 days late
They will never breathe in a sunset and a sunrise in the same night
I was 2 weeks late
They will never learn to jump rope
I was 3 weeks late
They will never shout "Watch mummy, watch me on the slide"
I was 2 months late
A piece of us will never wrap their arms around our legs for comfort
Just to keep them from falling down
And I am sorry that this process is so slow and all you can do is wonder if you ever had a
place
You did
You still do
Don't forget that
Yours, Ethan
P.S. I never hated you

32 | P a g e
 When Love Arrives
By Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, 2012

I knew exactly what love looked

Like in seventh grade

Even though I hadn’t met love yet

If love had wandered into my homeroom
I would’ve recognized him at first glance
Love wore a hemp necklace

I would’ve recognized her at first glance

Love wore a tight French braid
Love played acoustic guitar and knew all my favorite Beatles songs
Love wasn’t afraid to ride the bus with me

And I knew, just must be checking the wrong classrooms

I just must be searching the wrong hallways
She was there, I was sure of it

If only I could find him

But when love finally showed up, she had a bow cut
He wore the same clothes every day for a week
Love hated the bus

Love didn’t know anything about The Beatles

Instead, every time I try to kiss love
Our teeth got in the way
Love became the reason I lied to my parents
I’m going to Ben’s house

Love had terrible rhythm on the dance floor

But made sure we never missed a slow song
Love waited by the phone because she knew
If her father picked up it would be: Hello? Hello? I guess they hung up

And love grew, love stretched like a trampoline

Love changed. Love disappeared

33 | P a g e
Slowly, like baby teeth, losing parts of me I thought I needed

Love vanished like an amateur magician

And everyone could see the trapdoor but me
Like a flat tire, there were other places I planned on going
But my plans didn’t matter

Love stayed away for years

And when love finally reappeared
I barely recognized him/her
Love smelt different now, had darker eyes
A broader back, love came with freckles I didn’t recognize

New birthmarks, a softer voice

Now there were new sleeping patterns, new favorite books
Love had songs that reminded him of someone else
Songs love didn’t like to listen to, so did I

But we found a park bench that fit us perfectly

We found jokes that make us laugh
And now, love makes me fresh homemade chocolate chip cookies
But love will probably finish most of them for a midnight snack

Love looks great in lingerie but still likes to wear her retainer
Love is a terrible driver, but a great navigator
Love knows where she’s going
It just might take her two hours longer than she planned

Love is messier now, not as simple

Love uses the words boobs in front of my parents
Love chews too loud
Love leaves the cap off the toothpaste

Love uses smiley faces in her text messages

And turns out, love shits!
But love also cries
And love will tell you you are beautiful and mean it
Over and over again, you are beautiful

When you first wake up, you are beautiful

When you’ve just been crying, you are beautiful
When you don’t want to hear it, you are beautiful
When you don’t believe it, you are beautiful

34 | P a g e
When nobody else will tell you, you are beautiful

Love still thinks you are beautiful

But love is not perfect and will sometimes forget
When you need to hear it most, you are beautiful, do not forget this
Love is not who you were expecting
Love is not who you can predict

Maybe love is in New York City, already asleep

You are in California, India, Australia, wide awake
Maybe love is always in the wrong time zone
Maybe love is not ready for you
Maybe you are not ready for love
Maybe love just isn’t the marrying type

Maybe the next time you see

Love is twenty years after the divorce
Love is older now, but just as beautiful as you remembered

Maybe love is only there for a month

Maybe love is there for every firework
Every birthday party, every hospital visit
Maybe love stays- maybe love can’t
Maybe love shouldn’t

Love arrives exactly when love is supposed to

And love leaves exactly when love must
When love arrives, say, welcome, make yourself comfortable

If love leaves, ask her to leave the door open behind her
Turn off the music, listen to the quiet, whisper
Thank you for stopping by

35 | P a g e
 The Ballad
The Ballad at a Glance

The ballad is a poem that is typically arranged in quatrains with the rhyme scheme
ABAB. Ballads are usually narrative, which means they tell a story. Ballads began as folk songs and
continue to be used today in modern music.

1. It is a short narrative, which is usually—but not always—arranged in four-line stanzas with a

distinctive and memorable meter.

2. The usual ballad meter is first and third line with four stresses—iambic tetrameter— and then

a second and fourth with three stresses—iambic trimeter.

3. The rhyme scheme is abab or abcb

4. The subject matter is distinctive: almost always communal stories of lost love, supernatural

happenings, or recent events.

5. The ballad maker (the balladeer) uses popular and local speech and dialogue often and vividly

to convey the story. This is especially a feature of early ballads.

36 | P a g e
 The Host of the Air
By William Butler Yeats, 1899

O'driscoll drove with a song

The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and the tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.

And he saw how the reeds grew dark

At the coming of night-tide,
And dreamed of the long dim hair
Of Bridget his bride.

He heard while he sang and dreamed

A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

And he saw young men and young girls

Who danced on a level place,
And Bridget his bride among them,
With a sad and a gay face.

The dancers crowded about him

And many a sweet thing said,
And a young man brought him red wine
And a young girl white bread.

But Bridget drew him by the sleeve

Away from the merry bands,
To old men playing at cards
With a twinkling of ancient hands.

The bread and the wine had a doom,

For these were the host of the air;

37 | P a g e
He sat and played in a dream
Of her long dim hair.

He played with the merry old men

And thought not of evil chance,
Until one bore Bridget his bride
Away from the merry dance.

He bore her away in his arms,

The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.

O'Driscoll scattered the cards

And out of his dream awoke:
Old men and young men and young girls
Were gone like a drifting smoke;

But he heard high up in the air

A piper piping away,
And never was piping so sad,
And never was piping so gay.

38 | P a g e
 Her Immortality
By Thomas Hardy, 1898

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through

A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
My dead Love’s living smile.

And sorrowing I lay me down

Upon the heated sod:
It seemed as if my body pressed
The very ground she trod.

I lay, and thought; and in a trance

She came and stood me by--
The same, even to the marvellous ray
That used to light her eye.

“You draw me, and I come to you,

My faithful one,” she said,
In voice that had the moving tone
It bore in maidenhead.

She said: “‘Tis seven years since I died:

Few now remember me;
My husband clasps another bride;
My children mothers she.

My brethren, sisters, and my friends

Care not to meet my sprite:
Who prized me most I did not know
Till I passed down from sight.”

I said: “My days are lonely here;

39 | P a g e
I need thy smile alway:
I’ll use this night my ball or blade,
And join thee ere the day.”

A tremor stirred her tender lips,

Which parted to dissuade:
“That cannot be, O friend,” she cried;
“Think, I am but a Shade!

“A Shade but in its mindful ones

Has immortality;
By living, me you keep alive,
By dying you slay me.

“In you resides my single power

Of sweet continuance here;
On your fidelity I count
Through many a coming year.”

--I started through me at her plight,

So suddenly confessed:
Dismissing late distaste for life,
I craved its bleak unrest.

“I will not die, my One of all!--

To lengthen out thy days
I’ll guard me from minutest harms
That may invest my ways!”

She smiled and went. Since then she comes

Oft when her birth-moon climbs,
Or at the seasons’ ingresses
Or anniversary times;

But grows my grief. When I surcease,

Through whom alone lives she,
Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,
Never again to be!

40 | P a g e
The Tale of Custard the Dragon
By Ogden Nash, 1936

Belinda lived in a little white house,

With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.
Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,

And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,

And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,

Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagon
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,

And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

41 | P a g e
Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,

And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!

But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,
And little mouse Blink was strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,

Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda’s dragon,

And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets but they didn’t hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,

No one mourned for his pirate victim
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pyrate.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,

With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,

And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

42 | P a g e
 The Cherry-Tree Carol
By Anonymous, 1882

Joseph was an old man,

And an old man was he,
When he wedded Mary
In the land of Galilee.

Joseph and Mary walked

Through an orchard good,
Where was cherries and berries
So red as any blood.

Joseph and Mary walked

Through an orchard green,
Where was berries and cherries
As thick as might be seen.

O then bespoke Mary

So meek and so mild:
‘Pluck me one cherry, Joseph,
For I am with child.’

O then bespoke Joseph

With words most unkind:
‘Let him pluck thee a cherry
That brought thee with child.’

O then bespoke the Babe

Within his mother's womb:
‘Bow down then the tallest tree
For my mother to have some.'

Then bowed down the highest tree

Unto his mother's hand;
Then she cried ‘See, Joseph,

43 | P a g e
 I have cherries at command.’

O then bespake Joseph

‘I have done Mary wrong;
But cheer up, my dearest,
And be not cast down.'

Then Mary plucked a cherry

As red as the blood,
Then Mary went home
With her heavy load.

Then Mary took her Babe

And sat him on her knee,
Saying, ‘My dear son, tell me
What this world will be.’

‘O I shall be as dead, Mother,

As the stones in the wall;
O the stones in the streets, Mother,
Shall mourn for me all.

Upon Easter-day, Mother,

My uprising shall be;
O the sun and the moon, Mother,
Shall both rise with me.'

44 | P a g e
 The Villanelle
The Villanelle at a Glance

A villanelle is a poetic form with nineteen lines and a strict pattern of repetition and a rhyme
scheme. Each villanelle is comprised of five tercets (i.e., a three-line stanza) followed by one
quatrain (a stanza with four lines). The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated in
an alternating pattern as the final line of each next tercet; those two repeated lines then form the
final two lines of the entire poem. The rhyme scheme calls for those repeating lines to rhyme, and
for the second line of every tercet to rhyme. Thus, the rhyme scheme looks like this: A1 b A2 / a b
A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2. Though the structure may sound complicated, in practice
it is easy to see how the rules work.

The word villanelle comes originally from the Italian word villano, meaning “peasant.”
The villanellas and villancicos of the Renaissance period were Italian and Spanish songs made for
dancing, which featured the pastoral theme appropriate for peasant dances.

1. It is a poem of nineteen lines.

2. It has 5 stanzas, each of three lines, with a final one of four lines.

3. The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas.

4. The third line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas.

5. These two refrain lines follow each other to become the second-to-last and last lines of the

poem.

6. The rhyme scheme is aba. The rhymes are repeated according to the refrains.

45 | P a g e
 The Waking
By Theodore Roethke, 1953

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

46 | P a g e
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
By Dylan Thomas, 1937

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

47 | P a g e
 The World & The Child
By James Merrill, 1960

Letting his wisdom be the whole of love,

The father tiptoes out, backwards. A gleam
Falls on the child awake and wearied of,

Then, as the door clicks shut, is snuffed. The glove-

Gray afterglow appalls him. It would seem
That letting wisdom be the whole of love

Were pastime even for the bitter grove

Outside, whose owl's white hoot of disesteem
Falls on the child awake and wearied of.

He lies awake in pain, he does not move,

He will not call. The women, hearing him,
Would let their wisdom be the whole of love.

People have filled the room he lies above.

Their talk, mild variation, chilling theme,
Falls on the child. Awake and wearied of

Mere pain, mere wisdom also, he would have

All the world waking from its winter dream,
Letting its wisdom be. The whole of love
Falls on the child awake and wearied of.

48 | P a g e
 By the Sound
By John Hollander, Unknown

Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound

And gulls shrieked violently just out of sight.
That was when I was living by the sound.

The silent water heard the light resound

From all its wriggling mirrors, as the bright
Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound.

Each morning had a riddle to expound;

The wrong winds would blow leftward to the right,
In those days, I was living by the sound:

The dinghies sank, the large craft ran aground,

Desire leapt overboard, perhaps in fright.
Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound.

But seldom, in the morning’s lost-and-found

Would something turn up that was free of blight.
In those days I was living by the sound

The sky contrived, whose water lay around

That place that I was dreaming by the light
(Dawn rolled up slowly) what the night unwound
In those days. I was living by the sound.

49 | P a g e
 One Art
By Elizabeth Bishop, 1983

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

50 | P a g e
 The Ode
The Ode at a Glance

A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person,
place, thing, or idea. Its stanza forms vary. The Greek or Pindaric (Pindar, ca. 552–442
B.C.E.) ode was a public poem, usually set to music, that celebrated athletic victories.
English odes written in the Pindaric tradition include Thomas Gray’s “The Progress of
Poesy: A Pindaric Ode” and William Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from
Reflections of Early Childhood.” Horatian odes, after the Latin poet Horace (65–8 B.C.E.),
were written in quatrains in a more philosophical, contemplative manner; see Andrew
Marvell’s “Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland.” The Sapphic ode consists
of quatrains, three 11-syllable lines, and a final five-syllable line, unrhyming but with a
strict meter.

The odes of the English Romantic poets vary in stanza form. They often address an
intense emotion at the onset of a personal crisis or celebrate an object or image that
leads to revelation

51 | P a g e
 To Autumn
By John Keats, 1820

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Aye, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

52 | P a g e
 Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

53 | P a g e
Perhaps the World Ends Here
By Joy Harjo, 1994

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat

to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table.
So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the

corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to

be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our
children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves
and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the
shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents
for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering

and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are
laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

54 | P a g e
 Glossary
Glossary of Poetic Terms

• Accentual Verse: Verse whose meter is determined by the number of stressed (accented) syllables—
regardless of the total number of syllables—in each line. Traditional nursery rhymes, such as “Pat-
acake, pat-a-cake,” are often accentual.

• Alliteration: The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or
verse line. Alliteration need not reuse all initial consonants; “pizza” and “place” alliterate. Example:
“With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim” from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Pied Beauty.”

• Anapest: A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. The
words “underfoot” and “overcome” are anapestic.

• Anaphora: Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry, anaphora is the
repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic
effect.

• Assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel
rhyme.

• Cacophony: Harsh or discordant sounds, often the result of repetition and combination of consonants
within a group of words. The opposite of euphony. Writers frequently use cacophony to express energy
or mimic mood.

• Cadence: The patterning of rhythm in natural speech, or in poetry without a distinct meter (i.e., free
verse).

• Caesura: A stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary,
such as a phrase or clause. A medial caesura splits the line in equal parts, as is common in Old English
poetry. Medial caesurae (plural of caesura) can be found throughout contemporary poet Derek
Walcott’s “The Bounty.” When the pause occurs toward the beginning or end of the line, it is termed,
respectively, initial or terminal.

55 | P a g e
• Chiasmus: Repetition of any group of verse elements (including rhyme and grammatical structure) in
reverse order, such as the rhyme scheme ABBA. Examples can be found in Biblical scripture (“But many
that are first / Shall be last, / And many that are last / Shall be first”; Matthew 19:30).

• Conceit: From the Latin term for “concept,” a poetic conceit is an often unconventional, logically
complex, or surprising metaphor whose delights are more intellectual than sensual. Petrarchan (after
the Italian poet Petrarch) conceits figure heavily in sonnets, and contrast more conventional sensual
imagery to describe the experience of love.

• Consonance: A resemblance in sound between two words, or an initial rhyme (see also Alliteration).
Consonance can also refer to shared consonants, whether in sequence (“bed” and “bad”) or reversed
(“bud” and “dab”).

• Couplet: A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length. A couplet is “closed” when the
lines form a bounded grammatical unit like a sentence.

• Dactyl: A metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables; the
words “poetry” and “basketball” are both dactylic.

• Dimeter: A line of verse composed of two feet. “Some go local / Some go express / Some can’t wait /
To answer Yes,” writes Muriel Rukeyser in her poem “Yes,” in which the dimeter line predominates.

• Dissonance: A disruption of harmonic sounds or rhythms. Like cacophony, it refers to a harsh collection
of sounds; dissonance is usually intentional, however, and depends more on the organization of sound
for a jarring effect, rather than on the unpleasantness of individual words.

• End-stop: A metrical line ending at a grammatical boundary or break—such as a dash or closing

parenthesis—or with punctuation such as a colon, a semicolon, or a period. A line is considered
endstopped, too, if it contains a complete phrase.

• Enjambment: The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without
terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped.

• Foot: The basic unit of measurement of accentual-syllabic meter. A foot usually contains one stressed
syllable and at least one unstressed syllable. The standard types of feet in English poetry are the iamb,
trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, and pyrrhic (two unstressed syllables).

• Heptameter: A meter made up of seven feet and usually 14 syllables total

56 | P a g e
• Hexameter: A metrical line of six feet, most often dactylic, and found in Classical Latin or Greek poetry,
including Homer’s Iliad. In English, an iambic hexameter line is also known as an alexandrine.

• Iamb: A metrical foot consisting of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable. The words
“unite” and “provide” are both iambic. It is the most common meter of poetry in English (including all
the plays and poems of William Shakespeare), as it is closest to the rhythms of English speech.

• Meter: The rhythmical pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse.

• Onomatopoeia: A figure of speech in which the sound of a word imitates its sense (for example,
“choochoo,” “hiss,” or “buzz”).

• Pentameter: A line made up of five feet. It is the most common metrical line in English.

• Prosody: The principles of metrical structure in poetry.

• Quatrain: A four-line stanza, rhyming.

• Reader Response Theory: A theory, which gained prominence in the late 1960s, that focuses on the
reader or audience reaction to a particular text, perhaps more than the text itself. Reader-response
criticism can be connected to poststructuralism’s emphasis on the role of the reader in actively
constructing texts rather than passively consuming them. Unlike text-based approaches such as New
Criticism, which are grounded upon some objective meaning already present in the work being
examined, reader-response criticism argues that a text has no meaning before a reader experiences—
reads—it. The reader-response critic’s job is to examine the scope and variety of reader reactions and
analyze the ways in which different readers, sometimes called “interpretive communities,” make
meaning out of both purely personal reactions and inherited or culturally conditioned ways of reading.
The theory is popular in both the United States and Germany; its main theorists include Stanley Fish,
David Bleich, and Wolfgang Iser.

• Refrain: A phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem, especially at the end of a stanza.

• Rhyme: The repetition of syllables, typically at the end of a verse line. Rhymed words conventionally
share all sounds following the word’s last stressed syllable. Thus “tenacity” and “mendacity” rhyme, but
not “jaundice” and “John does,” or “tomboy” and “calm bay.” A rhyme scheme is usually the pattern of
end rhymes in a stanza, with each rhyme encoded by a letter of the alphabet, from a onward (ABBA
BCCB, for example). Rhymes are classified by the degree of similarity between sounds within words,
and by their placement within the lines or stanzas.

• Rhythm: An audible pattern in verse established by the intervals between stressed syllables.

57 | P a g e
• Scansion: The analysis of the metrical patterns of a poem by organizing its lines into feet of stressed
and unstressed syllables and showing the major pauses, if any. Scansion also involves the classification
of a poem’s stanza, structure, and rhyme scheme.

• Spondee: A metrical foot consisting of two accented syllables. An example of a spondaic word is
“hogwild.”

• Stanza: A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the stanza, like a
prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought.

• Stress: A syllable uttered in a higher pitch—or with greater emphasis—than others. The English
language itself determines how English words are stressed, but sentence structure, semantics, and
meter influence the placement and perception of stress.

• Synesthesia: In description, a blending or intermingling of different sense modalities.

• Tetrameter: A line made up of four feet.

• Trimeter: A line of three metrical feet.

• Trochee: A metrical foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable.

Examples of trochaic words include “garden” and “highway.”

• Volta: Italian word for “turn.” In a sonnet, the volta is the turn of thought or argument: in Petrarchan or
Italian sonnets it occurs between the octave and the sestet, and in Shakespearean or English before the
final couplet.

58 | P a g e