Sinta Jimenez Owens' poetry and fiction slides

1. Poetry
• In Western civilization the oral tradition was how stories
were told and preserved. This is the origin of poetry.
• Poems always have themes. Love has been the preeminent
theme throughout history.
• Poetry in the earlier centuries had very strict conventions
(closed-verse) when it came to rhyme and rhythm
• In the 19th century more open forms of poetry emerged.
• In the 20th century free verse dominated poetry and
continues to today though some poets are returning to
stricter formats.

2. Scansion
• Scansion is the act of scanning a line of poetry
• Each unit of stressed and unstressed syllable is a foot
• The meter (formal rhythm) of a poem is signaled by the
type of foot it employs and the number of feet in each line:
4 (tetrameter), 5 (pentameter), 6 (hexameter), 7
(heptameter) feet are the most common
• Most poems employ a single meter throughout with
specific feet to create emphasis
• Scansion is relevant in the analysis of poems of a certain
genre, by a specific author, from a certain time period as it
is a way of identifying a pattern within a work (as discussed
in the last lesson about Critical Reading)

3. Poetic Rhymes
• Seen often in closed-verse
• Emerged in the Middle Ages. Latin and Greek were based on meter.
• End-rhyme is what we see most often in poems and songs
• Masculine rhyme – Final syllables of an exact rhyme are stressed
and identical
– Short and Sort
– Long and Throng
• Feminine rhyme – Unstressed syllable rhyming with stressed
syllable
– Explicit and Visit
• Triple rhyme – Final three syllables are identical
– Merrily and Verily
• Half or off-rhyme – Only final consonant rhymes exactly
– Ill able and Syllable

4. Other Poetic Rhymes
• Eye rhyme – Appears to rhyme based on spelling but pronounced
differently
– Plow and Blow
• Internal rhyme – Two words in a line rhyming
– I went home to find my comb
• Alliteration – Repetition of initial sounds
– Amazing America
– Incredible India
– Always asleep
• Assonance – Repetition of vowel sounds followed by different consonants
– Coop, comb
• Consonance – Repetition of consonant sound with different vowel sound
– Come to my arms my beamish boys

5. Unrhymed Forms
• Blank verse – epic poetry, mirrors the pattern
of natural speech
• Haiku, Tanka, Japanese poetry – determined
solely by syllables
• Free verse – enormous range of choice
• Prose poem – visual appearance of prose but
has poetic aspects

6. Analyzing Poetry
• Poetic rhythm is identified by the meter of the
lines
• Structure of stanzas (groupings of lines)
• Parse sentences of poem
• Analyze adherence of diversion from poetic
convention
• Meter has a more subliminal effect affecting our
feelings towards the tone of a poem
• Rhyme and repetition can be more obvious and
overt in their aesthetic and oral effect

7. Fiction
• Artistic depiction of facts that may be real or
completely imagined.
• Classified by Genre (science fiction, romance)
and by Length (novel, short story)
• Common forms of fiction
– Short Story
– Novella
– Novel

8. Elements of Fiction
• Plot
– Events which occur, motivation and driving force of the story
• Character
• Narration
– Reliable Narrator
– Unreliable Narrator
– Different Points of View
• First Person
• Second Person
• Third Person
• Setting
– Time period
– Physical location and environment

9. Diction/Word Choice
• Exercise
– Asked vs. Interrogated
– Existence vs. Life
– Said vs. Declared
– Dad vs. Father
• Meaning and context
– Father instead of Dad in a fight scene – what
would that indicate?