POETRY
Concreteness vs Abstraction
Concrete Words
• Exists in material or
physical form, real or solid
• Perceivable, tangible,
refers to things or objects
that are physically real
• Examples: names of plants
and animals, parts of the
body, clothing, pieces of
furniture, vehicles
Abstract Words
• Refers to ideas, concepts,
thoughts, feelings,
emotions, traits, qualities,
aspects or states of being
• Does not evoke images, or
pictures
• Examples: beauty,
corruption, dream, family,
freedom, friendship
generosity, poverty, truth
 Concreteness vs Abstraction
The Golf Links The Two-Headed Calf
Sarah N. Clegham Laura Gilpin

The golf links lie so near the mill Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
That almost everyday freak of nature, they will wrap his body
The laboring children can look out in newspaper and carry him to the
And see the men at play. museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north

field with his mother. It is perfect
summer evening; the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as many stars as usual.
 a. The breaking of the
Activity dawn

A b. A throbbing heart

• Love c. A pair of weighing

• War scales
• Friendship
• Hope d. A firm handshake
• Justice
e. Marching soldiers
Particular vs Universal

Generic Words Specific Words

•Conjures a •Singular or
wide variety unique image
of images
 Bonsai (Edith L. Tiempo, National Artist for Literature)

All that I love

I fold over once It’s utter sublimation
And once again A feat, this heart’s control
And keep in a box Moment to moment
Or a slit in a hollow post To scale all love down
Or in my shoe. To a cupped hand’s size,
All that I love? Till seashells are broken pieces
Why, yes, but for the moment -- From God’s own bright teeth.
And for all time, both. And life and love are real
Something that folds and keeps Things you can run and
easy, Breathless hand over
Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy To the merest child.
tie,
A roto picture of a young queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.
Activity

 Beauty Queen
 Odysseus
 Greek goddess
 Horned animal
 Pink
 Bird
 Rose
 Strawberry
 Mahogany
 Fictional Monster
Figurative vs Literal
Language
Figurative or Symbolic Literal 0r Ordinary
Language Language
• Words, phrases, and • Denotative
expressions that definitions of words
transcend their literal
or ordinary meaning
• Connotative meaning
of words, phrases and
expressions
The Look (Sara Teasdale)
Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,

Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.
Activity

The Parable of Stones, Between Living,

Gemino H. Abad Edith L. Tiempo
• You cannot see them
• When we love a
Where my hands close wanderer
And all my days bleed. We wait for footsteps
That may, or may not,
come

The Sorrow of Distances, Leaving Muddas,

Jaime An Lim Anthony L. Tan

• I clear the table, I blow • To stand astern a

my nose.
I turn the radio on. I let
the hot water run.
How I miss you.
departing boat
And watch your home
drift away,
scrawny stilts, roofs and
crooked windows.
 Simile

Metaphor
Figures of Speech

Tropes Image

Symbol
Others: Allusion, Epithet, Eponym,
Hyperbole, Metonymy, Oxymoron,
Paradox, Personification, Pun,
Paranomasia, Synecdoche

Alliteration, Anaphora, Anastrophe,

Assonance, Chiasmus, Climax, Ellipsis,
Rhetorical Figures Euphemism, Irony, Litotes,
Onomatopoeia, Rhetorical Question
Figures of Speech
 Forms of expression that depart from normal word or
sentence order or from the common literal meaning of
words, for the purpose of achieving a special effect

 Functions:
 To clarify a vague idea or thought
 To furnish striking examples
 To highlight an important point
 To stimulate unlikely associations
 To evoke powerful feelings and emotions
 To breathe life into inanimate objects
 To personify and give voice to non-sentient beings
 To delight the reader with linguistic inventiveness
 To embellish dull paragraphs or stanzas
Tropes vs Rhetorical Figures
Tropes
• Figures of speech that involve
basic shifts or radical turns in
the meaning of the words
that comprise them
• Simile, Metaphor, Image and
Symbol
• Others: Allusion, Epithet,
Eponym, Hyperbole,
Metonymy, Oxymoron,
Paradox, Personification, Pun,
Paranomasia, Synecdoche
Rhetorical Figures
• Figures of speech whose
special effects are achieved
for the most part through
unusual sequencing of words
or sentence structure
• Alliteration, Anaphora,
Anastrophe, Assonance,
Chiasmus, Climax, Ellipsis,
Euphemism, Irony, Litotes,
Onomatopoeia, Rhetorical
Question
 • Directly compares two objects
belonging to different classes
1. • Connected through the use of
“like” or “as”

Simile • Antonio Luna is as brave as Andres

Bonifacio
vs
Antonio Luna is as brave as a lion.
Pisces (Ralph Semino Galan)
The ocean is deep and vast like my love.
I am often blue as the sky above

or the waters below. I dream of trees

and hummingbirds, flowers and honeybees.

I yearn for peace amidst the storms of life.

I disdain the pistol, the bomb, the knife.

Like the Little Mermaid beneath the sea,

I desire to be more than I can be:

to cleave my tail into a pair of legs

and drink the vintage of life to its dregs.

I sing with my heart, I dance and I grieve.

I swim in the sea of faith. I believe.
 • Indirectly compares two things
belonging to different classes
• To parts: the tenor and the vehicle
2. • Tenor – the concept, idea or thought
being expressed by the poet
Metaphor • Vehicle – the means by which the
poet conveys the concept, idea or
thought to the reader
• Antonio Luna is lionhearted.
To The Man I Married (Angela Manalang-Gloria)

You are my earth and all the earth implies:

The gravity that ballasts me in space,
The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries
For food and shelter against devouring days.
You are the earth whose orbit marks my way
And sets my north and south, my east and west,
You are the final, elemented clay
The driven heart must turn to for its rest.

If in your arms that hold me now so near

I lift my keening thoughts to Helicon
As trees long rooted to the earth uprear
Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun,
You who are earth, O never doubt that I
Need you no less because I need the sky!
 • A concrete representation
of an object or sensory
3. experience
• An image reflects the real
Image world, serves as the raw
material of most figures of
comparison
 I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
(William Wordsworth)
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
 • Embodies both a literal and a
concrete attribute
4. • Refers to a real object that
connotes further meaning
Symbol • Cross: crucifixion of Jesus,
God’s love, protection from
evil, penance and redemption
Ah! Sunflower (William
Blake)
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
Other Tropes
Allusion
 Reference, usually brief
and typically indirect, to a
mythical, biblical,
historical, cultural or
literary character, event,
place or object.
Perched upon a bust
of Pallas just above my
chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing
more
Is there—is there balm in
Gilead?—tell me—tell
me, I implore!
-The Raven (by Edgar Alan Poe)
Epithet
 Use of an adjective or
descriptive phrase that is
deployed to point out the
distinctive characteristics
of a deity, animal or thing
 Sen. Miriam Defensor
Santiago, the Iron Lady of
Asia
 “gray eyed” Athena
 rosy-fingered Dawn
 Richard the Lion-Hearted
Eponym
 Name of a person or deity  Pandora for curiosity
commonly associated with  Hercules for strength
some widely recognized
 Achilles’ heel
trait or characteristic
 Ms. Colombia / Colombia-
 The name has become the
zoned
subsitute for the trait or
charcteristic
Hyperbole
 Deliberate exaggeration of
a fact or truth for the sake
of emphasis and rhetorical
effect
 Overstatement
 I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the
mountain
And the salmon sing in the
street,
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry.
- As I Walked One Evening (By W.
H. Auden)
Metonymy
 Substitution or  The pen is mightier than the
replacement of the name sword.
of a concrete object or - Richelieu, Edward Bulwer
Lytton
thing that is closely
associated or connected
with the word or concept  As he swung toward them
holding up the hand
for the word or concept Half in appeal, but half as if to
itself keep
The life from spilling
- Out, Out by Robert Frost
  Open secret
Oxymoron  Original copies
 Liquid gas
 Juxtaposition or  Why, then, O brawling love! O
combination of adjacent loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
words that have meanings O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!
that are diametrically Misshapen chaos of well-seeming
forms!
opposite, contradictory or Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold
incongruous fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what
it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in
this.
Dost thou not laugh?
- Romeo and Juliet (By William
Shakespeare)
  Wheels for cars
Synecdoche
 Tell that its sculptor well
 Naming of a part to signify those passions read
the whole or inversely Which yet survive, stamped
naming the whole to on these lifeless things,
signify the part The hand that mocked
them.
- Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe
Shelley
  Truth is honey, which is
Paradox
bitter.
 Statements that appear to
be self-contradictory or
 I must be cruel to be kind.
even illogical but which can
actually be true - Hamlet, William
Shakespeare

 The child is father of the

man
- My Heart Leaps Up When I
Behold, William Wordsworth
  The flowers danced in the
Personification gentle breeze.
 Endowment of imaginary
 Because I could not stop for
creatures, animals, Death –
abstract concepts, and He kindly stopped for me –
inanimate objects with The Carriage held but just
Ourselves –
human form, And Immortality.
consciousness, We slowly drove – He knew no
intelligence, sensibility and haste
And I had put away
emotions My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
- Because I Could Not Stop for
Death, Emily Dickinson
  Launce: “It is no matter if
Pun or Paranomasia the tied were lost; for it is the
unkindest tied that ever any
 Wordplay anchored on the man tied.”
similarity of sound  Richard: “Now is the winter of
between two words with our discontent … made glorious
summer by this Son of York.”
completely different
- Richard III
meanings
 Romeo: “Not I, believe me. You
have dancing shoes with
nimble soles; I have a soul of lead
… So stakes me to the ground I
cannot move…
- Romeo and Juliet, W. Shakespeare
Rhetorical Figures

 Figures of speech whose special effects are

achieved for the most part through unusual
sequencing of words or sentence structure
 Figures of sound
Rhetorical Figures

Alliteration
 Repetition of initial  A big bully beats a baby
consonant sound boy.
 The fair breeze blew, the
white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever
burst
Into that silent sea.
- Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Rhetorical Figures
Anaphora
 Noticeable repitition of the
same word or expression at
the start of two or more
lines, clauses, phrases or
sentences
 My life is my purpose. My
life is my goal. My life is
my inspiration.
 Five years have passed;
Five summers, with the
length of
Five long winters! and
again I hear these waters
- Tintern Abbey (By William
Wordsworth)
Rhetorical Figures
Anastrophe
 Deliberate inversion or
reversal of the usual
grammatical order of
words to achieve a
rhetorical or poetic effect
 Into the water dove the
boy.
 Deep into that darkness
peering, long I stood there
wondering, fearing.
- The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
 And a small cabin build
there, of clay and wattles
made: Nine bean-ros will I
have there.
- Lake of Innisfree, William
Butler Yeats
 Rhetorical Figures
 He pored upon the leaves, and on the
flowers,
Anticlimax or Bathos And heard a voice in all the winds;
and then
 Rhetorical effect, works He thought of wood-nymphs and
immortal bowers,
against the climax, And how the goddesses cam down
oftentimes a descent from to men:
a noble or elevated tone to He missed the pathway, he forget
one markedly less exalted. the hours,
And when he looked upon his watch
 Sudden intrusion of a trivial again,
He found how much old Time had
or absurd ideal after a been a winner –
series of a more substantial He also found that he had lost his
dinner.
or lofty ideas.
-Lord Byron’s Don Juan, George Gordon
Apostrophe
 A rhetorical figure in which
someone usually absent
(but not necessarily so), a
personified thing, some
abstract quality, or a non-
existent personage, is
directly addressed as
though physically present.
 Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and
through curtains, call on
us?
Must to thy motions lovers’
seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch
- The Sun Rising, John Donne
Assonance  Of princes, shall outlive this
 The repetition of powerful rhyme;
proximate or nearby words But you shall shine more
bright in these contents
whose stressed vowel
sounds are the same or - Sonnet 55, W. Shakespeare
similar.
 Slant rhyme, near rhyme,  Stem end and blossom end,
oblique rhyme And every fleck of russet
showing clear
 Lake – bake (rhyme)
- After Apple-Picking, Robert
Lake – lace (alliteration)
Frost
Lake – fate (assonance)
Chiasmus
 The second part is
counterbalanced by the
first part but with the parts
reversed.
 Never let a Fool Kiss You or
a Kiss Fool You.
 Do I love you because
you’re beautiful?
Or are you beautiful
because I love you?
-Do I Love You Because You’re
Beautiful? (By Oscar
Hammerstein)
Climax
 The organization of lines,  But we glory in tribulations
phrases or sentences in also: knowing that
increasing level or tribulations worketh
ascending order of patience;
importance And patience, experience;
and experience, hope:
And hope maketh not
ashamed.
- Romans 5:3-5
Ellipsis
 Emission of one or several  Where Wigs [strive] with
words that can easily be Wigs, [where] with Sword-
supplied by the reader or knots Sword-knots strive,
listener to complete the [where] Beaus banish
grammatical structure beaus, and [where]
Coaches coaches drive.
- The Rape of the Lockm
Alexander Pope
Euphemism  Our teacher is in the family way.
 When I said
 Replacement of an I have to lay you off
inoffensive word or mold a parallel universe was born
expression for one that in his face, one where flesh
may be potentially harsh, is a loose shirt
blunt, or offensive, or even taken to the river and beaten
politically incorrect to against the rocks. Just
other people. by opening my mouth I destroyed
his faith
 doublespeak
- Dropping the euphemism, Bob
Hicok
Irony
 Utterance of actual  The doctor is as kindhearted
intention in words that as a wolf.
communicate the exact  Water, water, eveywhere,
opposite meaning. And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.
- The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, Samuel Coleridge
Litotes  The ice cream was not too
 A form of understatement bad.
in which something is  No, ‘tis not so deep as a well
asserted by declaring the nor so wide as a church-
negation of its opposite. doorm but ‘tis enough, ‘twill
serve.
Ask for me tomorrow, and
you shall find me a grave
man.
- Romeo and Juliet, W.
Shakespeare
Onomatopoeia
 The deliberate deployment
of a word whose sound
approximates, implies, or is
suggestive of its meaning.
 Hark, hark!
Bow-wow.
The watch-dogs bark!
Bow-wow.
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting
chanticleer
Cry, ‘cock-a-diddle-dow!’
- The Tempest, W. Shakespeare
Rhetorical Question  O Wind,
If winter comes, can Spring be far
 A question that does not behind?
require or expect to - Ode to the West Wind, Percy
generate an answer Bysshe Shelley

 If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge?
- Merchant of Venice, W. Shakespeare
 • The speaking voice of the poem
Persona • The assumed speaker, the source of the spoken
words of the poem

• The attitude of the poet towards the audience

Tone • Intellectual and emotional attitudes of the poet
towards his/her intended audience

• The attitude of the poet towards the subject matter

Mood • Intellectual and emotional attitudes of the poet
towards the subject matter

• The dominant emotional aura of the poem

Atmosphere • The general feeling created in the readers or
audience by a work at any given point
 Crossing the Bar (Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Sunset and evening star,

and one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!
And may there be sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
 Rhyme

The position of the The number of rhyming

rhyming words in the line syllables involved

Masculine
End rhyme
Rhyme

Internal Feminine
rhyme Rhyme

Leonine Triple
Rhyme Rhyme

Beginning
Rhyme
Based on the rhyming words in the line

End Rhyme
 Once upon a midnight dreary,
 Occurs between words at while I pondered weak and
the end of the line and is weary.
the most common rhyme
- The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
in classical and traditional
poetry
 Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night.
- The Tyger, William Blake
 Based on the rhyming words in the line

Internal Rhyme
 The fair breeze blew, the white
 Occurs at some place after foam flew,
the beginning but before The furrow follow’d free;
the end of each line, or We were the first that ever burst
within the line between the Into that silent sea.
middle word and its end
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
word
Samuel Coleridge
 Based on the rhyming words in the line

Leonine Rhyme
 A special kind of internal
rhyming between the last
stressed syllable before the
caesura (the natural pause
or break in a line of verse)
and the last stressed
syllable of the line.
 There’s a whisper down the field
where the year has shot her
yield.
- The Long Trail, Rudyard Kipling
 For the moon never beams
without bringing me dreams
- Anabel Lee, Edgar Allan Poe
 Based on the rhyming words in the line

Beginning Rhyme
 Head rhyme or initial
rhyme
 Occurs in the first syllable
or first few syllables of
several lines
 Why should I have returned?
My knowledge should not fit
into theirs.
I found untouched the desert of
the unknown…
- Noah’s Raven, W.S. Merwin
Based on the number of rhyming syllables
involved

Masculine • The correspondence of sound is limited to the accented or

stressed concluding syllables of the rhyming words
• True rhyme, full rhyme, perfect rhyme
Rhyme • Bold / gold

Feminine • Occurs if the rhyming accented or stressed syllables are

followed by identical unaccented or unstressed syllables
• Double rhyme
Rhyme • Fountain / mountain

Triple • Occurs if the rhyming accented or stressed syllables are

followed by two identical unaccented or unstressed
syllables
Rhyme • Glorious / victorious
 Rhyme Schemes
Alternate Rhyme Enclosed Rhyme

• Open Rhyme or Cross Rhyming • Abba

• Abab
• When I, in love with Folly and
• Gather ye rosebuds while ye may with Pride,
Old Time is still a-flying; Denounced my God and kin with
And this same flower that smiles words of fire,
today Transformed my clean
Tomorrow will be dying surroundings into mire,
Destroyed my idols, threw the
- To the Virgins, Robert Frost Cross aside,

- Repentance, Fransisco Icasiano

 Chain Rhyme Sonnet 75, Edmund Spencer

• Interlocking One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

rhyme or chain But came the waves and washed it away:
verse Again I wrote it with a second hand,
• Abab, bcbc, But came the tide, and made my pains his
cdcd, dede, ff prey.
Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize,
For I myself shall like to this decay.
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
“Not so” (quoth I), “let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where whenas Death shall all the world
subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
 Monorhyme

• All the lines of the poem have an identical rhyme.

The Hardship of Accounting, Robert Frost

Never ask of money spent,

Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.
 Couplet

• A couple of lines in poetry that usually rhyme (aa)

and have the same meter.

 So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

so long lives this and this gives life to thee.
- Sonnet 18, W. Shakespeare
 Triplet

• A tercet in which all three lines follow the same rhyme (aaa, bbb,
ccc)

 Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
the liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see,

That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me!
- Upon Julia’s Clothes, Robert Herrick
 • The variation or alteration of strong and
Rhythm weak (or stressed and unstressed) syllables
or elements in the flow of speech

Foot • The basic rhythmic unit within the line of

poetry

• Regular recurrence or repetition of

Meter rhythmic patterns or the rhythm

established by the consistent occurrence
of similar units of sound.
 Iamb / Iambic Foot

• Unaccented + accented syllable

• (-/)

 She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
- She Walks in Beauty, Lord Byron
 Trochee / Trochaic Foot

• Accented + unaccented syllable

• (/-)

 Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
- A Psalm of Life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Anapest / Anapestic Foot

• Two unaccented + accented syllable

• (--/)

 Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
- The Cloud, Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Dactylic / Dactylic Foot

• One accented + 2 unaccented syllable

• (/--)

 Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.