English 20-1 · Poetry
Every break is a decision
Prose fills the line; poetry stops it where the poet chose. Once you notice that the line breaks, the stanza breaks and the sounds are all decisions, a poem becomes something you can analyse rather than something you either get or do not.
- 1. The words, first
- 2. A method for an unseen poem
- 3. Form, line and stanza
- 4. Rhythm and sound
- 5. What costs marks
The words, first
The idea: Speaker is the term to be most careful with: it is not automatically the poet.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Speaker | The voice presenting the poem. Not necessarily the poet, and writing about the speaker is the safer habit. |
| Line | The basic unit of a poem. Where it ends is a choice. |
| Stanza | A group of lines, separated by space. Roughly what a paragraph is to prose. |
| Enjambment | A sentence running past the end of a line without a pause, pulling the reader across the break. |
| End-stopped | A line ending with punctuation and a natural pause. |
| Volta / turn | The point where the thought or feeling shifts direction. |
| Metre | The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. |
| Iambic pentameter | Five iambs per line — ten syllables, unstressed then stressed. Close to natural spoken English. |
| Rhyme scheme | Recorded by assigning a letter to each new end sound: ABAB, AABB, ABBA. |
| Free verse | No regular metre or rhyme. Still shaped by line breaks, rhythm and repetition. |
| Sonnet | Fourteen lines. Shakespearean: three quatrains and a couplet. Petrarchan: an octave and a sestet. |
A method for an unseen poem
The idea: Literal sense first. An analysis built on a misread poem collapses however many terms it contains.
- Read for sense. What is literally happening, and who is speaking? Paraphrase it to yourself in one sentence.
- Find the turn. Where does the thought shift? In a Petrarchan sonnet usually at line nine; in a Shakespearean one at the couplet; in free verse anywhere. Locating it gives you the poem's structure almost for free.
- Ask what the form is doing. Where do the lines break, and why there? Where does the rhythm depart from its own pattern?
- Then name techniques, and only the ones that carry meaning.
Form, line and stanza
The idea: The white space is part of the poem. A line break is a pause the poet installed, and it can hold a word over the edge on purpose.
Enjambment pulls the reader across the break, creating speed or surprise as the phrase completes. It can also create a double meaning: the line read alone says one thing and the completed sentence says another, and the reader experiences both.
Stanza shape. A poem in even quatrains that suddenly gives one line its own stanza has just shouted. Changes in shape are among the loudest quiet things a poem can do.
Free verse is not shapeless. Line breaks, rhythm, repetition and white space are all in play, and they are what the analysis should work with instead of hunting for a rhyme scheme that is not there.
Rhythm and sound
The idea: Departure only registers against a pattern, so establish the pattern before you write about the break in it.
Metre. An iamb is unstressed-stressed, the rhythm of be-LIEVE. Five of them is pentameter — ten syllables, and close enough to spoken English that it can carry a conversation without sounding sung.
Breaking the pattern. A poet who has established a rhythm and then disrupts one line is drawing attention to it. That line is almost always worth quoting.
Sound reinforcing sense. Harsh consonants in a violent line; long vowels in a slow one; clipped monosyllables in a moment of shock. Pointing at sound without connecting it to meaning is the most common empty move in writing about poetry.
Rhyme does work too. A rhyme can bind two ideas together, or land a couplet like a verdict. Recording the scheme is only the first step.
What costs marks
The idea: Two are technical, two are habits.
- Assuming the speaker is the poet. Write about the speaker.
- Hunting for devices before understanding the poem.
- Paraphrasing stanza by stanza and calling it analysis.
- Ignoring the form entirely. The shape on the page is evidence.