The Poetry Page

The Lyrical Voice

A lyric poem is one that expresses the feelings and emotions of the poet. It can be identified most often by the use of the personal pronouns I, me, my, we, our, and us. Eloise Greenfield uses a lyrical voice in her poem

"Aunt Roberta"
What do people think about
When they sit and dream
All wrapped up in quiet
and old sweaters
And don't even hear me 'til I
Slam the door?

The Narrative Voice

The narrative voice tells a story. It may be a story as simple as a nursery rhyme:

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Apostrophe (The Dramatic Voice)

The voice of apostrophe is the voice that addresses something that cannot answer. Karla Kuskin's "Moon" is a good example of this voice:

Moon,
Have you met my mother?
Asleep in the chair there
Falling down hair.

Moon in the sky
Moon in the water
Have you met one another?
Moon face to moon face
Deep in the dark place
Suddenly bright.

Moon
Have you met my friend the night?

Mask (The Dramatic Voice)

This aspect of the dramatic voice can be likened to a mask. It is as though we put on the face or the body of someone or something else and tell about ourselves through our words. Here Geoffrey Scott, in his poem "Frutta di Mare" pretends he is a shell:

I am a sea-shell flung
Up from the ancient sea;
Now I lie here, among
Roots of a tamarisk tree;
No one listens to me.

I sing to myself all day
In a husky voice, quite low,
Things the great fishes say
And you most need to know;
All night I sing just so.

But lift me from the ground,
And hearken at my rim,
Only your sorrow's sound,
Amazed, perplexed and dim,
Come coiling to the brim,

For what the wise whales ponder
Awaking from sleep,
The key to all your wonder,
The answers to the deep,
These to myself I keep.

Conversation (The Dramatic Voice)

Conversation is simply a dialogue between two voices. The clues for who is speaking can be found in the poem itself. Here is John Drinkwater's "Snail":

Snail upon the wall,
Have you got at all
Anything to tell
About your shell?

Only this my child--
When the wind is wild,
Or when the sun is hot,
It's all I've got.

Free Verse

Free verse does not have to rhyme but depends on rhythm or cadence for its poetic form. It may use some rhyme, alliteration, and pattern. It frequently looks different on the printed page, but it sounds very much like other poetry when read aloud. Here is "REVENGE," a sample of free verse poetry by Myra Cohn Livingston:

When I find out
who took
the last cooky

out of the jar
and left
me a bunch of

stale old messy
crumbs, I'm
going to take

me a handful
and crumb
up someone's bed.

Alliteration

This verse is a good example of alliteration, the constant repeating of the same letter at the beginning of a succession of words:

Betty Baker bought some butter,
"But," said she, "this butter's bitter.
If I put it in my batter,
It will make my batter bitter."

Line-breaks

It is the line and where it is broken that helps make the music and rhythm of a poem. Generally, the longer the line, the more like natural speech it will sound.

A good line-break exercise might be to divide the following sentence in three different ways. How does the meaning of the sentence change depending on where the lines are broken? Which words are emphasized in each version?
She loved the sound of the wind in the trees.

Here's another line-break exercise: Read the poem "Red" below and listen to the rhythm of the words. Where does your voice naturally pause? Make slash marks with your pencil to indicate the line-breaks. Try it two or three ways,

All day across the way on someone's sill a geranium glows red bright like a tiny faraway traffic light.

then look at the original:

All day
across the way
on someone's sill
a geranium glows
red bright
like a
tiny
faraway
traffic light.

why did Lilian Moore write the poem to look and sound like this?

Stanzas

Two lines - Couplet
Three lines - Tercet
Four lines - Quatrain
Five lines - Quintet
Six lines - Sextet
Seven lines - Septet
Eight lines - Octave

Tercet possibe rhyming schemes- aaa, aab, abb
Here is an abb example:

This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun

Rhythm and Sound

Onomatopoeia is a term that refers to the use of words that make a sound like the action represented by the word, such as "crack," "hiss," and "sputter." Occasionally, a poet will create an entire poem that resembles a particular sound. David McCord has successfully imitated the sound and the rhythm of hitting a picket fence with a stick in his popular chant "The Pickety Fence":

The pickety fence
The pickety fence
Give it a lick it's
The pickety fence
Give it a lick it's
A clickety fence
Give it a lick it's
A lickety fence
Give it a lick
Give it a lick
Give it a lick
With a rickety stick
Pickety
Pickety
Pickety
Pick.

The Simile

The simile is a figure of speech that compares one thing to another using like or as. Here we find a wonderful example of the use of similes in Judith Thurman's "New Notebook":

Lines
in a new notebook
run, even and fine,
like telephone wires
across a snowy landscape.

With wet, black strokes
the alphabet settles between them,
comfortable as a flock of crows.

The Metaphor

The metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison by telling us that one thing is another, so well that we are able to imagine both things to be linked. By using metaphor, Langston Hughes helps us understand the importance of "Dreams":

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Personification

Personification is a figure of speech that gives a non-living thing human characteristics. In a poem called "Taking Turns" Norma Farber writes:

When sun goes home
behind the trees,
and locks her shutters tight--

then stars come out
with silver keys
to open up the night.

Haiku

Haiku poems originated in Japan and are now everywhere. The subject matter always refers to something in nature. The form is strict; 17 syllables; three lines. The first line contains five syllables, the second seven, and the third five. Here is a winter haiku by Kazue Mizumura:

A lonely sparrow
Hops upon the snow and prints
Sets of maple leaves.

The Cinquain

The Cinquain is a five line poem. There are two syllables in the first line, four in the second, six in the third, eight in the fourth, and two in the fifth. It uses no rhyme. Here's one from Myra Cohn Livingston:

T-shirt,
you're my best thing
though you've faded so much
no one knows what you said when you
were new.

Ubi Sunt

"Ubi Sunt" is Latin for "where are they" and represents an old type of poetry that lamented something in the past. Using the idea of the ubi sunt, David McCord's poem "Where" serves as our contemporary model:

Where is that little pond I wish for?
Where are those little fish to fish for?
Where is my little rod for catching?
Where are the bites I'll be scratching?
Where is my rusty reel for reeling?
Where is my trusty creel for creeling?
Where is the line for which I'm looking?
Where are those handy hooks for hooking?
Where is the worm I'll have to dig for?
Where are the boots that I'm too big for?
Where is my boat for rowing?
Where is …?
Well, anyway, it's snowing.

Found Poetry

The seeds of poems can be found in our students' everyday voices. Students become aware of the beauty and the poetry in their own voices when we point out examples, such as when Michael, while gazing at a piece of coral in a jar of water, says, "It looks like flowers blooming in the water."

We can also "find" poetry in our own writing. Here is a "found" poem from the front page of the Toronto Star (February 18, 1994) in a story by columnist Rosie DiManno about skater Kurt Browning's fall on the ice in the Olympic competition:

in the awful seconds
when it was all over
when the music had just ended
and the ever-after part had just begun

A tremulous smile
a shrug of the shoulders
one final brave posture -
still playing the buoyant clown
even as his heart cracked
and his dream shattered.

Rhyming Student Exemplars

Opposite Poem:

What is the opposite of boring?
It's playing basketball and scoring!!!!

by Anthony Giroux-Tremblay

Synonym Poem:

SAD
Lonely, crying, mad
Go away, I'm feeling bad

by Meri

I Like That Stuff:

You can hike on it
You can bike on it
A trail
I like that stuff.

by Tiffany Dubé

I Hate That Stuff:

They grow on trees
People eat these
Coconuts
I hate that stuff.

by Alexia Corcoran

I Made a Mistake:

I went to the kitchen to bake a cake,
I made a mistake...and baked a rake.

by Yanic Drouin

Books on Teaching Poetry to Young People

This poetry page is due in very large measure to the ideas and information found in these books:
·  WHEN YOU'VE MADE IT YOUR OWN... -Gregory A. Denman
·  POEM-MAKING -Myra Cohn Livingston
·  AWAKENING THE HEART -Georgia Heard
·  FOR THE GOOD OF THE EARTH AND SUN -Georgia Heard
·  HOW TO WRITE POETRY -Paul B. Janeczko
·  POETS IN THE CLASSROOM -League of Canadian Poets
·  PASS THE POETRY, PLEASE! -Lee Bennett Hopkins
·  FAVOURITE POETRY LESSONS -Paul B. Janeczko

Ten Great Poetry Books

·  BING BANG BOING by Douglas Florian
·  LAUGH-ETERIA by Douglas Florian
·  THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK by Jack Prelutsky
·  A LIGHT IN THE ATTIC by Shel Silverstein
·  TALKING LIKE THE RAIN
·  THE RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF POETRY
·  YOU READ TO ME, I'LL READ TO YOU by Mary Ann Hoberman
·  HAILSTONES AND HALIBUT BONES by Mary O'Neill
·  THE 20TH CENTURY CHILDREN'S POETRY TREASURY
·  BISCUITS IN THE CUPBOARD by Barbara Nichol