Poetry Unit Flashcards
Types of lyrics
sonnet ode elegy haiku free verse blank verse
Types of narratives
ballad (literary, folk)
epic
dramatic poetry
Upon the Burning of Our House
author: Anne Bradstreet
rhyming couplets
content: When she can no longer watch her house burn, she gives thanks to God, who has reduced her house and possessions to dust. It is just, she believes, for those things are His, not hers, and she knows He has the right and ability to take things from humans when He wants
>The house will forever lie in silence.
>She knows that she has a better house waiting for her in Heaven, built by the “mighty Architect” Himself.
>her “hope and Treasure lies above.”
type: dramatic poetry
To My Dear and Loving Husband
author: Anne Bradstreet
rhyming couplets
content: describes compatibility between speaker and husband, speaker describes how much she values her husband’s love, how she will never be able to value her husband’s love, speaker urges herself to persevere in their love for another so that they can live forever
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass
author: Emily Dickinson
fixed meter unrhymed
content: extended metaphor, speaker walks through grass and scares a snake away, the snake reminds the speaker of meeting certain people that take his breath away
Much Madness is Divinest Sense
author: Emily Dickinson
fixed meter unrhymed
content: states that crazy people are sane and sane people are crazy, against conformity, is against people who judge those who are unique and go against the mainstream, states that the people outside the status quo are the ones who see life for what it really is
She Rose to his Requirement
author: Emily Dickinson
fixed meter unrhymed
content: feminist, represents a meek and mild women who has given up everything to please men, describes how women are intimidated in social institutions and fashion themselves to fit societal norms & to be an honorable wife, describes submissive responses society expects from women
>contrasts with men’s freedom
Out, Out
author: Robert Frost
type: blank verse
Birches
author: Robert Frost
type: blank verse
content: This gets him imagining a boy climbing to the top of trees and bending them down until he can let go and fall safely to the ground. He remembers doing this when he was a kid and wishes that when he felt trapped in his adult life he could climb trees.
* *life isn’t a trap, because his youthful imagination can free him at any moment.
Mending wall
author: Robert Frost
type: blank verse, free verse, colloquial, sounds like a story
>promotes the breaking down of barriers, why should be isolate ourselves? , describes neighbor as a savage
neighbor said good fences make good neighbors simply because his father told him so
>costs a lot to build a rock wall –> mending is important
If We Must Die
Claude Mckay
sonnet
stick w/ what we believe in, battle cry, contradicts beauty of most sonnets
Ex Basketball Player
John Updike
free verse
Describes Flick Webb, once a high school basketball star but now he is a gas station attendant whose life appears to have reached a dead end.
message: conveying the possible consequences of failing to acquire valuable skills and knowledge. It serves to persuade people to become more than just a ballin’ G, but rather a ballin’ G with an education.
This is Just to Say
William Carlos William
imagist
free verse
makes something ordinary seem extraordinary
Fog
Carl Sandburg
extended metaphor, free verse
Recuerdo
Edna St. Vincent Millay
rhythm of language makes it feel like they are moving back and forth
languages include elements of city life: ferry, apple
they were falling in love
