The ABC's of Poetry: A Dictionary for Children and for Fun

  

[From the Introduction to The ABC’s of Poetry: A Dictionary for Children and for Fun]

Poetry and young people make great friends! Even the youngest child responds to voice, tone, and musicality, delighting in the catchy sounds of rhyme, rhythm, and refrain. As language skills develop, most children also find it's fun to play with words, and poetry lets people of all ages do just that.

To help young readers easily explore the many sides of poetry, this book has easy-to-find-entries, arranged alphabetically. Each A-Z topic includes a pronunciation guide and a brief definition with poetic examples from the works of present-day poets or the public domain. To encourage readers to find more info on unfamiliar terms, small caps in the text point to a related topic or a poetic technique covered somewhere else in the book.

At first one topic may seem harder than another, but most can be understood, enjoyed, and practiced by elementary or middle grade school students in a classroom or home alone on their own.

Besides helping young readers to explore poetry, this book aims to aid lively discussions with your students, children, or neighbor kids. As the text guides this timeless adventure into language, the classics might get clearer, new poems get written, and young artistry get ready to bud! Anything can happen, so don't be surprised if someone you know falls in love with poetry. I did as a young child, and, oh, how I wish I’d had this book waiting for me – as poets of all ages now do, thanks to you!

[Examples of entries]

accent   [Pronounced ACK-sent.] In any language, people place an accent on syllables as they speak. For example, the word, "accent," has an accent or stress on the first syllable but not the second. The pronunciation guide beside each word in a dictionary shows you where the accent goes. That information helps you to speak correctly. It helps you to write poetry too. How? An accent gives a word its beat. Combined with other words on a line, this brings rhythm to your poem. In fact, a big difference between poetry and other types of writing is that a poem usually has more accents, which makes more rhythm on each line.

…

beat   [Rhymes with eat – sweet!] A healthy heart goes tha-THUMP/ tha-THUMP. That beat is good to hear! Poets who want that rhythm use iambs in their poems.

Like a tha-THUMP, an iamb has two syllables. The first syllable has no accent. The second one does. Put several iambs together, and the beat sounds like a heart. You can clap your hands and tap your foot to the beat. But it also sounds like a nursery rhyme! So most poets will change the beat a little bit.

…

cadence   [Pronounced KAY-dense.] As you talk, your voice goes up and down. Some words sound soft. Some sing. Some have a strong beat. In poems the beat makes a kind of music. You can hear it in the Bible. You can hear it in free verse. You can hear it as people talk.

Poems with rhyme have cadence too. But rhymes can get loud! Cadence is easier to hear if words do not rhyme.

…

clerihew   [Pronounced KLURR-eh-HUE.] This humorous verse has two couplets of two lines each. The couplets rhyme in a pattern or a rhyme  scheme of aabb. That means lines one and two make rhyme A. Lines three and four make rhyme B.

The first rhyme includes the name of a person. Often well-known, that name makes an end-rhyme for one of the first two lines.

To write a clerihew, put yourself into it! Think of words that rhyme with your first or last name. Then say something funny about yourself. For example, a name that sounds like "sailor" might make you think of someone who loves to be at sea. Not me!

Mary Sayler

will merrily say her

stomach waves with motion,

sailing on the ocean.

…

iambic pentameter   [Pronounced i-AM-bick pen-TAM-uh-ter.]  In accentual syllabic verse, any five feet on a line make pentameter. If three or more of those feet are iambs, you have iambic pentameter. If all five feet are iambs, you have ten syllables on a line.

The beat then sounds like this:

ta-TUM/ ta-TUM/ ta- TUM/ ta-TUM/ ta-TUM.

Say ta-TUM aloud five times. Of course, it's silly, but here's the thing: Once you hear that cadence coming into a poem, you'll know iambic pentameter by the sound of its footsteps.

…

syllabic verse   [Pronounced suh-LAB-ick.] For this type of poem, count the number of syllables you place on each line. Some poets use a form with a particular number of syllables. For example, haiku has a count of 5, 7, 5 syllables on three lines. A cinquain has 2, 4, 6, 8, 2 syllables on five lines. Follow those patterns. Or design your own. Your syllabic verse can have any number of syllables you choose. That number can change from line to line or stay the same.

…

tongue twister   A tongue twister is alliteration  gone wild! You can write one with vowels. But consonants work better. They get loud! For this example, I used the consonant, "r."

 

Rory writes riddles really well.

Ruby raps rhyme and rhythm.

Ruby writes rap and rhythmic rhymes.

Rory fiddles with riddles.

Read fast. Do the R's trip your tongue? That's half the fun of a tongue twister. The other half comes from playing with sounds. Be silly! Tongue twisters make sense of nonsense!  For example, "Suzy sells sea shells by the sea shore." That's funny when you think about it. Why sell sea shells where people find them, free?

…

vowel   [Rhymes with towel.]  The letters a, e, i, o, u, and, sometimes, y, make vowels. Every other letter in the alphabet is a consonant. In English, you need at least one vowel per word. If you repeat the same vowel sounds on a line of poetry, you get assonance.

This brings a sound echo that's quieter than consonance. To hear this for yourself, read aloud the tongue twister entry. Then meet me back here and say: "Ah!" Eh? I? Oh! You! Why? Heed the soft voice of vowels. That's Y.

…

For more fun with poems, I hope you'll order The ABC's of Poetry: A Dictionary for Children and for Fun - and give it a starry review! Thanks and blessings.

Mary Harwell Sayler

 

 

A Little Book On Form by Robert Hass

A Little Book on Form: An Exploration Into The Formal Imagination Of Poetry, which HarperCollins kindly sent me to review, is the culmination of years of studying, teaching, and writing poetry done by Robert Hass. Besides being a former U.S. Poet Laureate, he’s also won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for poetry.

That information alone lets us know we can surely learn something about poetry from this book, and, since it’s still National Poetry Month, it’s an ideal time to begin.

Although my bookshelves testify to scores of well-written books about poetry from accomplished poets, this book differs in that it doesn’t just discuss the exterior architecture of poems but what forms the form – as in, what causes its formation, resulting in form?

In the opening chapter, for instance, Hass calls attention to the one-line poem, rarely found in English, but common in the “…haiku, a one-line form with a three-part prosodic structure, (which) usually consists of two images. And so you’ll notice that inside what is apparently a single line, there is a play of one, two, or three elements, balanced or unbalanced in various ways that are expressive in relation to what the poem is saying.”

The poet then gives ten examples in English translations of Basho, such as “First snow falling on a half-finished bridge,” which presents the first picture in the early snow and the second in an incompleted bridge. See! We haven’t even gotten beyond the first chapter, and I’ve already learned something!

I’d never given thought to the two images occurring in haiku, but if you’re writing haiku, as I often do, that’s very good to know! Looking over haiku I’ve written, I see each has two images, but now that I know to look for this when I revise, I can.

What we write instinctively without knowing becomes more useful when we do know. With the knowledge of a technique or the words to describe it, we’re more aware and then equipped to incorporate the information into our work – not during the writing process so much as when we revise.

Take the number “three” again, for example. In chapter three, Hass says:

“Two often regarded as an aspect of one, so that with three number as such, the many, begins. And is infinite. Oddness. Not divisible. So that – trinity, for example – mystery begins here.”

During the years in which this book came together, the poet often jotted notes to himself in quick phrases, many of which he scattered throughout these pages. This unique aspect of the book lets us in on his actual thoughts in real time as though we’re passionately engaged in the discussion.

Similarly, Haas’ explanations of forms include more than the “what” but also the “why” or “how.” In a discussion of “Three-Line Stanzas,” for example, the poet says this about the uncommonly used three-line verse, the triplet:

“There is something of imbalance and excess in threes. Especially where rhyme is concerned. About two-based forms something hovers of natural complementarities: binary systems, the bi-lateral symmetries in nature, male and female, lover and beloved. Hence the closing down of two-based rhyme. It seems to secure a completion and emphasizes at once the orderliness of rhyme....”

A passage in a much later chapter “How To Scan A Poem” picks up that thread of orderliness and emphasis in these words:

“Often you will hear what feel like strong irregular emphases in metrical poems. The irregularities are strong, because once a pattern is established, you notice departures from the pattern. So, of course, poets learned that one of the best ways to get emphasis is to establish a meter and then vary it.”

But, how can poets establish a meter unless they know what meter is, why it works as it does, and what it can accomplish?

How can poets emphasize anything in their poems if all parts have the same treatment or monotonous tone?

And, how can poets establish a meter unless they know what meter is, why it works as it does, and what it can accomplish? You can play it by ear and rely on a sense of musicality – as long as nothing goes wrong! If it does, it’s difficult to shape up something nameless.

This book names names. It talks about sonnets and sestinas, genre and georgics, organic form and prose poems. Much more than what might be found in a poetry dictionary, however, this highly recommended book invites us to accompany the poet on “An Exploration Into The Formal Imagination Of Poetry.”

If you care to join Robert Hass and me in this adventure, you’ll find entry through the clickable Amazon ad below.

Mary Harwell Sayler, © 2017, poet-writer reviewer


A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry, hardback



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