Name: Period: Date: Poetry Packet, DUE: First Poem, Prescribed Poem with Parts of Speech and Alliteration (REQUIRED) This is called a prescribed poem, because the structure and subject are prescribed for you. Write a poem with two stanzas, each stanza having four lines. A stanza is a set of lines in a poem set off by white space. In the first stanza, in the first line, write your name. In the second line, write two ADJECTIVES that describe you. In the third line, write two VERBS that describe you or things you like doing. In the fourth line, repeat your name. In the second stanza, in the first line, write your name. In the second line, write two more ADJECTIVES that describe you, but make them ALLITERATIVE (showing alliteration). In the third line, write two more verbs that describe you, but make them ALLITERATIVE. In the fourth line, write your name. Congratulations! You have written your first poem! A Description of Me (Name) (2 adjectives) (2 verbs) (Name) (Name) (2 adjectives) (2 verbs) (Name)
Second Poem: Nonsense Poem with Consonance and Assonance (REQUIRED) In this poem, you may write about anything and it doesn t even have to make sense! Your job is to play with word sounds and make a poem with OBVIOUS consonance and assonance. Look at the example. What sounds are repeated? Jake, the jaded snake, Played with a jaundiced giraffe, Baked a plain cake, Jogged a jazzy jig, Japed a jumpy jaguar, Jaywalked in a cave And finished in a jail. Your nonsense poem needs to be at least five lines (but no more than ten). Anyone who reads it should be able to tell which vowel and which consonant sound you repeated.
Haiku (REQUIRED) 1 If you can count syllables, you can write a haiku. It doesn't rhyme, and it isn't supposed to have a title. The hard part is deciding which words to use! 2 Masaoka Shiki created the modern haiku in the late 1800's to present realistic portrayals of nature and life. Tradition insists that a clue to the season be included. This poem is made up of three lines with only 17 syllables altogether. The pattern of syllables goes like this: five syllables seven syllables five syllables 3 The tricky part is to find a way to express yourself using few words. Example: Yesterday I ate breakfast and grabbed my backpack to hurry to school 5 - Yes/ter/day/I/ate 7 - break/fast/and/grabbed/my/back/pack 5 - To/hur/ry/to/school 4 From the syllable illustration on the right you can see that I used the five-seven-five pattern. I wrote a complete sentence. You can also see that I didn't have anything interesting to share. The "haiku rules" call for a mention of the season too, but I ran out of syllables! I'll have to try a little harder this time. Example 2: Pancakes with syrup Winter's chill delayed awhile The bus driver honks 5 - Pan/cakes/with/sy/rup 7 - Win/ter's/chill/de/layed/a/while 5 - The/bus/dri/ver/honks 5 If the poet has done her work, you can probably imagine yourself enjoying a steaming plate of pancakes, when you are interrupted by a honk that calls you out into the cold weather. By using a few concrete details and leaving out unimportant words, we can create a word-picture and a related feeling! What emotion did the haiku evoke in you? 6 Let's attempt to write a haiku. We'll describe a dark mountain and the stream that flows down it. We ll do this first try together. (For the first line, you will need to provide two syllables, and I'll provide three. You may choose two one-syllable words or one two-syllable word.) dark mountain (For the second line, I'll supply the first four syllables, leaving you to supply three more. Be sure to include a verb and an adverb, and don't go over three syllables.) Rushing waters (verb + adverb) Over muscled rocks. 8. Now write your own. Remember the rules!
Couplets (REQUIRED) 1 A couplet [CUP-let] is the simplest form of poetry. Do you see the word "couple" in couplet? A couple is two of something. A couplet is a poem made of two lines of rhyming poetry that usually has the same meter. Two words that rhyme can be called a couplet. Do you know what the pioneers ate when they got desperate? Snake Steak 2 Seriously though, most poems will consist of more than two words. The rule to remember is that each line in a couplet has an end rhyme. My friend has eyes like mud. He always chews his cud. 3 The words mud and cud are end rhymes. We can string couplets together to make a longer poem, so now I'll join that couplet with another: His hair looks like burnt hay. At full moons he will bay. 4 Here is the complete poem with the rhyme scheme marked: Still Friends? My friend has eyes like mud. He always chews his cud. His hair looks like burnt hay. At full moons he will bay. He's skinny as a pole, He thinks my jokes are droll. He likes to lope along And sing a silly song. I call this guy my friend. My poem's done. The end. A A B B C C D D E E 5 How many couplets are strung together to create this silly poem? 6 NOW try your own poem made up of 3 couplets (6 lines).
Sonnet There are two types of sonnets, but we will concentrate on the Shakespearean sonnet. Themes for sonnets are often love or philosophy, but modern sonnets can cover almost any topic. Sonnets are divided into two sections, although there is no spacing between sections. The first section sets the stage and presents the situation or thought; the second section is a type of conclusion or climax. The sonnet is constructed of three quatrains, which means three stanzas of four lines each. The quatrains are each 10 syllables with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefef. The last section is a couplet, so your complete rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg. Look at the example, Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare. Can you explain the joke? SONNET 130 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare. Now you try it. Write your sonnet on a separate sheet of paper and attach it to this packet.
Limericks 1 If it's humor that you crave, you will probably find it in a limerick! Edward Lear popularized limericks in the 1800s when he published his "Book of Nonsense," which was filled with silly limericks he had written for the children of a friend. We know this form of poetry dates back to the 1700s at least, because the nursery rhyme, "Hickory, Dickory, Dock," was first printed in 1744; it follows the rhyming pattern of limericks. There is a city in Ireland named Limerick. Perhaps this form of poetry was born there, or maybe the city's name was used in the first poem. 2 A limerick is a five-line poem made up of one couplet and one triplet. A triplet is a three-line rhymed poem. The poem begins with the first two lines of the triplet, followed by the couplet, and finished with the final line of the triplet. The rhyme pattern looks like this: aabba. 3 Lines 1, 2, and 5 contain 3 stressed syllables, while lines 3 and 4 contain just 2 stressed syllables. Counting stressed and unstressed syllables, each of the triplet lines will have 8 or 9 syllables, and each of the couplet lines will have 5 or 6. 4 The last line of a well-written limerick contains the punch line, or joke, of the poem. In spite of that, many of Lear's limericks simply repeated the rhyme from the first line. He was known to sometimes create a nonsense word to fit the rhyme. This is known as "pulling a Lear!" As an example, read the following limerick by Edward Lear, the stressed and unstressed syllables are listed under each line to help you learn the rhythm: 6 We're going to work our way up to writing an original limerick. But first, look at the following limerick. Where have the rhyming words gone? They've been replaced by synonyms! See if you can replace the underlined synonyms with words that rhyme. There once was a lady from Koo, Who woke up all covered in adhesive. Cried she, "What a scare! I've been sticky all night! I thought 'twas a dream, but it's real!" 7 Now write your own Limerick. (it must be clean.)
Cinquain 1 American poet Adelaide Crapsey created the cinquain [sing-kane]-based on the Japanese haiku- around one hundred years ago.. 2 This form of poetry is written using a pattern rather than rhyme and rhythm. "Cinq" [pronouncedsink] is French for the number 5. A cinquain, then, is a poem of five lines! Each line follows a specific pattern. Line 1- one word title Line 2- two words that describe the subject of the title Line 3- three action words related to the subject (think verbs) Line 4-4 or 5 words that express your feelings about the subject (Not a complete sentence) Line 5- the same word as in Line 1, a synonym, or a similar word. 3 This is easy! To write a cinquain, all you have to do is remember these numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4-5, 1 4 Here is an example of a cinquain. Note that the first and last lines are the same thing; the last line is specific, where the first line was general. Tree Sturdy, Tall Climbing, swinging, playing Fun among the branches Maple 5 Here is another cinquain. As you read it, do you see the animal in your mind's eye? Cat Black, stealthy Crouching, watching, waiting Must you hunt small animals? Feline 6 Line 4 represents the author's feelings about what this cat is doing. What word would you use to describe the author's feelings? 7 Let's work on a cinquain together. Fill in the blanks of the following cinquain. (Fruit) Round, (choose a color) Plucking, biting, chewing, Tastebuds savor nature's candy (name a specific fruit) 8 Does your poem make you hungry? Find out how many different fruits your classmates chose to describe.
POETRY TERMS: As we work through the lectures and class activities on poetry, fill in the definitions for the following terms. You may seem them on the AIMS. When you turn in your packet, keep this page. 1. Rhyme 2. Meter 3. Stanza 4. Lines 5. Rhyme Scheme: a way of marking the pattern of the end-rhymes in the poem. *All rhyme schemes use (case) letters. *All rhyme schemes begin with the letter. *Every change in end-rhyme gets another letter of the alphabet. 6. Alliteration 7. Assonance 8. Consonance 9. Personification 10. Simile 11. Metaphor 12. Hyperbole 13. Onomatopoeia
Poetic Forms (8 th Grade). In addition to the poetry techniques described on the previous page, you need to know the following forms of poetry for the EQTS. As we discuss them in class, take notes. Keep this page for your study. 1. Ballads 2. Odes 3. Epics 4. Lyric Poems 5. Free verse 6. Limericks 7. Haiku 8. Sonnets