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Lyric Poetry Slides
Lyric Poetry Slides
3. Narrative
• Narrative tells a story
• Cf. also dramatic verse – Shakespeare, for example
• Presents a story in verse
Robert Frost,
“Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Langston Hughes,
“Subway Rush Hour”
Mingled
breath and smell
so close
mingled
black and white
so near
no room to fear.
“Subway Rush Hour,”
“This is just to say”
a red wheel
barrow
• Rhetorical question:
“What happens to a dream deferred?”
• Exclamation:
“O muse! The causes and the crimes relate”
Figures of Thought (Tropes)
• Metaphor & Simile –assertion that two things are
identical
• Metonymy—one object to stand for another related
object
• Synechdoche –substitute part for whole
• Personification – embodiment
• Irony –Dissimulation
• Paradox – seemingly contradictory statement
• Hyperbole - exaggeration
• Meiosis – lessening, understatement
– Litote – understatement
Sonnet form: Petrarchan
Named for Italian poet Francesco Petrarch
14 lines of iambic pentametre
• Iambic = unstressed syllable followed by
stressed syllable (eg. Ta dum)
• Pentametre = lines of five metrical feet.
Rhyme scheme:
abba
abba
cde
cde
Gentle love,
Draw forth thy wounding dart;
Thou canst not pierce her heart;
For I that do approve
By sighs and tears more hot than are thy shafts
Thy shafts did tempt while she,
For scanty triumphs laughs.