POETRY EVALUATIONS - PART TWO

 

POETRY EVALUATIONS - PART TWO

 

Dear all,

 

The first seven tips were merely the tip if the iceberg. Here are some more items to consider:

 

 

Poetry Evaluation - Five More Suggestions

 

8. Imagery is often used to enhance poetry. What images are chosen? Are they all related? Is there one overall image or several different images? Are they related? Effective? Why?

 

9. Look at the poet’s choice of words. Determine why the poet used particular words and whether or not these words stand out. How do these particular words contribute to the meaning of the poem? Are words  repeated? Why?

 

10. Sound effects:

a) Does the poet use alliteration? What is the effect?

b) Onomatopoeia?

c) Like alliteration, assonance is the repetition of sounds in multiple words, repeated vowel sounds in the middle of words with different consonant end sounds. You see assonance in the phrase “faded gray waves.”

d) Rhyming words have the same end sound repeated at the end of a line. Free verse poems, don’t use a particular rhyme scheme. Does the rhyme scheme have any significance? Does the rhyme scheme draw attention to certain words or ideas?

e) Rhythm in a poem is its beat, accented syllables as well as the downbeats. You track a poem’s rhythm by its feet and meter.

 

11. Determine the poem’s structure. Is it in regular stanza form (two or more equal clusters of lines) or irregular form? If irregular, why? The form of a poem (how it looks on the page) is often contributes to its meaning.

 

12. Is the poem -

a) lyric, a short, musical verse

b) epic, a long poem about a great person or national hero

c) sonnet, a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes, and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organization

d) narrative that tells a story

e) haiku, an intense, lyrical three-line verse of seventeen syllables

f) confessional, examining personal memories and experiences? Be careful with these as they can become trite or puerile like moaning over a high school lost love.

g) villanelle, which has even more specific rules than sonnets

h) concrete, designed to take a particular shape or form on the page

i) elegy, written in mourning following a death

j) epigram, short, witty, often satirical poems in the form of a couplet or quatrain (2-4 lines in length).

k) limerick, humorous poems with a distinct rhythm, their subject matter sometimes crude

l) ballad, a narrative form to tell stories, often arranged in quatrains

m) epitaph, much like an elegy, only shorter

n) ode, addressing a specific person, thing, or event

o) free verse, exactly what its name implies; no rules, and writers can do whatever they choose: to rhyme or not, to establish any rhythm, often used in contemporary poetry

 

What is the significance of the type of poem chosen?