Year 11 English OzPoetry Site

Teaching Programme

Resources

Devices

Model assessments

Extension Tasks

Uplift to teacher

RESOURCES/ commentaries following the format of Salmon K., Year 11 Poetry Course Book 2002 (yellow book) with our additions:

Relevant links (active 31 August 2002)   Oz poets' sites OzLit Poetry site A-Z Poetical terms Poetic Terminology Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 More great sites The Poetry Resource (Aust.) Landscape poetry Sandburg Wilderness Judith Wright Three prose poems Irreverence in Australian religious verse

 

Lesson 1: Encountering poetry

See also The Australian Magazine May 10/11 1997 p. 16 Who reads poetry anyway?

A definition "reflections in tranquillity" (Wordsworth) implies art, elaboration, self consciousness

Poetry is written for special occasions. Commemorative Poetry: ode, sonnet, coronation, death, marriage, love, anthem.

Is oldest of all media: Homer Iliad and Odyssey

Poetry as public communication:

• commentary on behaviour, attitudes and society
• criticism: satire, irony
• agenda of poet
• celebration

Poem as an argument:

• where is the hook of insight here?
• what point does it make?
• Observe how it uses evidence to draw a conclusion.
• How it proposes a new alternative viewpoint.

Poetry has humour, ambiance, freedom, is art.

Examples of personal voice:

• suppressed generalised persona of later poetry e.g., Dawe
• Yeats being autobiographical taking sides in Easter 1916.
• Jabez Dawes The boy who met Santa Claus: poem with a implied point: don't crack other people's beliefs.

WRITING ANALYSIS OF POETRY

1. Summary and sourced

2. Use of devices and effectiveness

3. Appreciation/ Evaluation/ Response

Use of biographical information can be helpful

Knowing the social/cultural/ political context can be very useful but not essential

Knowing a poet's favourite/ usual themes/ preoccupations is useful.

Deal with your emotions in this study:

WHAT I HATE ABOUT POETRY:

• it's hard
• it's too personal
• it's about things I'm not interested in
• it's like a trick on readers
• experts are needed to read it
• it is dry, remote, by dead people, about closed issues
• celebrates a culture I'm not a part of
• It's done in schools and I hate school.

Contact author. Page devised 15 August 2002.

Three prose poems analysed:

Dawe: "The Not-So-Good Earth",

Porter: "Your Attention Please" and

Murray: "The Burning Truck."

1. simile/metaphor

2. hyperbole

3. personification

4. ribbon = metaphor

5. glass of blessings = metaphor

6. wind-worried = alliteration

7. bright bubbles bursting = alliteration

8. murmuring of innumerable =assonance

9. "load of links" = metaphor "with pant and puff" = alliteration

10. "Tonight it doth inherit the vasty Hall of Death = onomatopoeia

11. ghosts of ghosts, ghostly = repetition for effect

12. "like dumb tongues" = simile "that loll and gasp for air" = personification

13. "Thou art my life" = apostrophe The very eyes of me = metaphor

14. "Ring out, wild bells" = apostrophe

15. dead smile = oxymoron, we stood in Hell = slight hyperbole

16. bird, as old and wise as Time = similes, falling cadence

17. "the curious bird, his cynic eyes half closed" transferred epithet = cynic

18. "Hail to thee bright spirit!" = apostrophe

19. "The evil that men do lives after them/ The good is oft interred with their bones." = couplet, antithesis

20. "Where are the songs of Spring? Ay where are they?" = echo

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Website © G. Smith 4-Sept-98 written and revised 10/8/06. Maintained in Brisbane Australia by G. Smith Acknowledgements retained and shown wherever possible.Your comments, suggestions and additions are welcome.