Partial Requirement in English - I

Submitted By: Benjamin D. Mari Jr. Submitted to: Mrs. Virginia L. Lopez

Table of Contents
What is Poetry? .................................................................................................................................. 4 What is Poem? ................................................................................................................................... 5 What is Poet?...................................................................................................................................... 6 Features of Poems? ................................................................................................................................. 7 Glossary:................................................................................................................................................ 11

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What is Poetry?
There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing." Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. Homer's epic,The Oddysey, described the wanderings of the adventurer, Odysseus, and has been called the greatest story ever told. During the English Renaissance, dramatic poets like John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, and of course Shakespeare gave us enough to fill textbooks, lecture halls, and universities. Poems from the romantic period include Goethe's Faust (1808), Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you. Poetic definitions of poetry kind of spiral in on themselves, however, like a dog eating itself from the tail up. Let's get nitty. Let's, in fact, get gritty. I believe we can render an accessible definition of poetry by simply looking at its form and its purpose: One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.

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What is Poem?

A poem is an arrangement of words containing meaning and musicality. Most poems take the form of a series of lines separated into groups called stanzas. A poem can be rhyming or nonrhyming, with a regular meter or a free flow of polyrhythms. There is debate over how a poem should be defined, but there is little doubt about its ability to set a mood. Identification A poem is identifiable by its literary and musical elements. For example, metaphor and alliteration are common in many poems. Another hallmark of a poem is its brevity, or ability to say much in few words. This requires layered meaning, as in the use of symbolism. A common example of symbolism is the bald eagle, which is a bird, but in the United States also represents the nation as a whole. A poem need not rhyme or contain a consistent meter to qualify as such, but those elements are also common to many poems. Function The hallmark of a poem is that it says much in few words. It can exist within a framework of prose, or it can exist on its own. Its chief function is to lend insight, poking its nose into unseen corners, sniffing out signs of life where none were detected before. A poem can evoke awe, inspire action or provide food for thought. It can provide an amusing escape (as in humor), or it can command solemnity (as in religious hymns). A poem can also function as an end unto itself.

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What is Poet?
A poet is someone who expresses their thoughts and feelings through poetry. There are many famous poets whose work is extremely influential. Poets may focus on one particular type of poem or they may cover a variety of genres. William Shakespeare produced a number of sonnets which all had similar themes such as love and he also produced a number of other poems. Poetry is usually written in an expressive manner. This particular type of poetry is known as lyric poetry and the American poet Emily Dickinson was well known for her lyric poetry, which was written during the American Civil War. Poets produce poetry for various reasons. Some may write lyric poetry which is more personal and others may write to entertain others and include humour (a number of Shakespeare's sonnets parodied particular themes such as love and beauty). The Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey is a famous place where many dead poets lie (Geoffrey Chaucer was the first poet to be buried there).

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Features of Poems?
Poems have meaning. Poems can describe an interesting placeor person, tell a story or explain feelings.

Poems have sounds. Poems sound different from other typesof writing. Poems may have rhyming words, a regular rhythm like music, words with repeated sounds, or even words that sound like their meaning.

Poems have images. Poems create pictures in our mind, called images. Images often refer to our sense of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. An image may describe something, or it may compare one thing to another. Images help you see something as if it is really there.

Poems have lines. Poems have lines that may be long or short, and can be made up of whole sentences or sentence fragments. Some poems have lines arranged in stanzas. A stanza is a group of lines that are arranged in a definite pattern. In other poems, the lines make a picture or shape to illustrate the topic.

Poems have patterns. Poems have patterns of letters, syllables and words. These patterns often help you to hear the rhythm of a poem. Some types of poems have patterns with a particular number of syllables in each line, and others have words repeated throughout the poem.

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Examples of Philippine Poetry

To the Philippines Rizal wrote the original sonnet in Spanish

Aglowing and fair like a houri on high, Full of grace and pure like the Morn that peeps When in the sky the clouds are tinted blue, Of th' Indian land, a goddess sleeps.

The light foam of the son'rous sea Doth kiss her feet with loving desire; The cultured West adores her smile And the frosty Pole her flow'red attire.

With tenderness, stammering, my Muse To her 'midst undines and naiads does sing; I offer her my fortune and bliss: Oh, artists! her brow chaste ring With myrtle green and roses red And lilies, and extol the Philippines!

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Examples of Philippine Poetry Restless by Cecilia Borromeo

It is that perennial immateriality dwelling between living and dying crouched in the corners and grappling by the hinges only to remain unseen; We weave our web of what we believe we understand of the relationship of our acts and events only to remain misunderstood; From that odd wisp of steam of heated discussions to the urgent hiss of a new page calling; I teeter on that thin ice -That single space of uncertainty -And I ask What am I doing here?.

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Examples of Philippine Poetry

Andy Warhol Speaks to His Two Filipina Maids by Alfred Yuson

Art, my dears, is not cleaning up after the act. Neither is it washing off grime with the soap of tact. In fact and in truth, my dears, art is dead center, between meals, amid spices and spoilage. Fills up the whitebread sweep of life's obedient slices. Art is the letters you send home about the man you serve. Or the salad you bring in to my parlor of elites. While Manhattan stares down at the soup of our affinities. And we hear talk of coup in your islands. There they copy love the way I do, as how I arrive over and over again at art. Perhaps too it is the time marked by the sand in your shoes, spilling softly like rumor. After your hearts I lust. In our God you trust. And it's your day off.

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Glossary:
BALLAD A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. An acrostic (Greek: kros "top"; stchos "verse") is a poem or other form of writing in out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim. In poetry, a nonet is a nine line poem, with the first line containing nine syllables, the next eight, so on until the last line has one syllable. Nonets can be written about any subject, and rhyming is optional. An epitaph (from Greek epitaphion "a funeral oration" from epi "at, over" and taphos "tomb")[1] is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. Derived from the Greek: epigramma "inscription" from epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia. A sonnet is a form of poetry that originated in Europe, mainly Italy: the Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini is credited with its invention.[1] They commonly contain 14 lines.

ACROSTIC

FABLE

NONET

EPITAPH

EPIGRAM

SONNET

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