Poem 1: dramatic monologue and sonnet on any subject
PLEASE NOTE: There is an error on p. 4 of the course schedule (syllabus) for Wed. March 25 for 11:45-12: It speaks of "Poem 1" post, but it should read "Poem 2" post. Sorry for my error.
Examples of Dramatic Monologue:
Lucille Clifton, "1994"
-Repetition of "my fifty-eighth year" which is also the only time there is mention of an "I"
-The "you" she addresses throughout the poem seems to be other black women.
-She uses winter/cold as a group of tropes.
-No punctuation until the end of the poem.
-Does not use uppercase letters.
-Uses body parts such as: "nipple" "breasts" skin" for imagery.
-First few stanzas have three lines (tercets) until the end of the poem where the last three stanzas have two lines (couplets).
As a practitioner of free verse, Clifton uses a lot of enjambment here--for example, in the first tercet (three line stanza). The Poetry Workshop Textbook describes different ways that poets who use free verse approach enjambment, and perhaps Clifton uses it to mark breath pauses OR to emphasize words that are highly significant to her theme of vulnerability because of breast cancer, etc. Unlike Willliam Carlos Williams in such poems as the famous "The Red Wheelbarrow," the poet is not trying to spotlight words that are usually neglected, like prepositions or articles.
Louise Bennett, "No Lickle Twang"
-"It feels very sassy , I feel like she is yelling at someone and I just so happen to be in the room"
yelling because he (the addressee) Left Jamaica for the U.S. for six months and didn't fulfill her expectations
-Seems as if he wasted time
-Lot of punctuation--including question-mark and exclamation point.
-Her use of the transcription of a Jamaican accent makes it seem like the person she is speaking to is being belittled. Tone is scolding, ironic, maybe sarcastic.
-Compares the son to the father
-Conveys discrimination in the sixties
-Second and fourth lines rhyme except in the fourth and seventh stanza
Bennett's (traditional European) meter, which clashes with the patois and the subject matter in an interesting way, is an alternation of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter twice in each four-line stanza (quatrain). An iamb is a unit of measurement that has a weak or unstressed syllable and a strong or stressed syllable. Tri means "three" (strong syllables), tetra means "four," and pent means "five." (These prefixes are based on the Greek. We will soon see this four/three combination in Emily Dickinson's poetry.
If you want to use a single word for all different kinds of figurative language, trope is the best word to use. In the dramatic monologue or the sonnet assignment, you will need to use one trope (for example, metaphor or simile) and one image. Of course, sometimes a group of words that be both a trope and an image at the same time.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Tropes include: "bending" of love, "mark" of love (the physical to represent the psychological or spiritual)
"Compass" is both an image and a trope.
To write a traditional sonnet, use iambic pentameter-- 10 syllables, in each unit of two (iamb) the second syllable is stressed. So you have 5 of those units.
Shakespearean / Elizabethan: abab cdcd efef gg
Italian/Petrarchan: abbaabba cdecde
" cdccde
Examples of Dramatic Monologue:
Lucille Clifton, "1994"
-Repetition of "my fifty-eighth year" which is also the only time there is mention of an "I"
-The "you" she addresses throughout the poem seems to be other black women.
-She uses winter/cold as a group of tropes.
-No punctuation until the end of the poem.
-Does not use uppercase letters.
-Uses body parts such as: "nipple" "breasts" skin" for imagery.
-First few stanzas have three lines (tercets) until the end of the poem where the last three stanzas have two lines (couplets).
As a practitioner of free verse, Clifton uses a lot of enjambment here--for example, in the first tercet (three line stanza). The Poetry Workshop Textbook describes different ways that poets who use free verse approach enjambment, and perhaps Clifton uses it to mark breath pauses OR to emphasize words that are highly significant to her theme of vulnerability because of breast cancer, etc. Unlike Willliam Carlos Williams in such poems as the famous "The Red Wheelbarrow," the poet is not trying to spotlight words that are usually neglected, like prepositions or articles.
Louise Bennett, "No Lickle Twang"
-"It feels very sassy , I feel like she is yelling at someone and I just so happen to be in the room"
yelling because he (the addressee) Left Jamaica for the U.S. for six months and didn't fulfill her expectations
-Seems as if he wasted time
-Lot of punctuation--including question-mark and exclamation point.
-Her use of the transcription of a Jamaican accent makes it seem like the person she is speaking to is being belittled. Tone is scolding, ironic, maybe sarcastic.
-Compares the son to the father
-Conveys discrimination in the sixties
-Second and fourth lines rhyme except in the fourth and seventh stanza
Bennett's (traditional European) meter, which clashes with the patois and the subject matter in an interesting way, is an alternation of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter twice in each four-line stanza (quatrain). An iamb is a unit of measurement that has a weak or unstressed syllable and a strong or stressed syllable. Tri means "three" (strong syllables), tetra means "four," and pent means "five." (These prefixes are based on the Greek. We will soon see this four/three combination in Emily Dickinson's poetry.
If you want to use a single word for all different kinds of figurative language, trope is the best word to use. In the dramatic monologue or the sonnet assignment, you will need to use one trope (for example, metaphor or simile) and one image. Of course, sometimes a group of words that be both a trope and an image at the same time.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Tropes include: "bending" of love, "mark" of love (the physical to represent the psychological or spiritual)
"Compass" is both an image and a trope.
To write a traditional sonnet, use iambic pentameter-- 10 syllables, in each unit of two (iamb) the second syllable is stressed. So you have 5 of those units.
Shakespearean / Elizabethan: abab cdcd efef gg
Italian/Petrarchan: abbaabba cdecde
" cdccde
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