Titanic poem by david slavitt analysis

Poetry Elements

List of Elements

Mode

Speaker, Tone, and Diction.

Irony

Symbol

Theme

List of Elements Continues

Words

Imagery

Figurative Language

Sound Devices

Rhythm

Form

Mode

Narrative

Dramatic

Lyrical

Speaker, Tone, Diction

Speaker: poet versus persona.

Tone: attitude of the speaker, mood of the work.

Diction: formal, standard, colloquial, or vulgate.

Practice: “I’m Nobody” by E. Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us — don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

Irony

Verbal

Dramatic

Cosmic

Point of view

Practice: “Titantic by” David Slavitt

Who does not love the Titanic?

If they sold passage tomorrow for that same crossing,

who would not buy?

To go down...We all go down, mostly

alone. But with crowds of people, friends, servants,

well fed, with music, with lights! Ah!

And the world, shocked, mourns, as it ought to do

and almost never does. There will be the books and movies

to remind our grandchildren who we were

and how we died, and give them a good cry.

Not so bad, after all. The cold

water is anesthetic and very quick.

The cries on all sides must be a comfort.

We all go: only a few, first class.

Symbol

An object or action that stands for something else and that has a significant meaning within the text.

Personal, cultural, and universal symbols.

Practice: The Road Not Taken by R. Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,

Practice: The Road Not Taken by R. Frost

And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Theme

The main idea or message that the poet is conveying.

There can be more than one theme.

The theme can be stated or implied.

Words

Abstract versus concrete

General versus specific

Connotative versus denotative

Word order may be significant.

Imagery

Words that evoke any of the senses:

See

Touch

Taste

Smell

Hear

Practice: “Preludes” by T.S. Elliot

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

Figurative Language

Metaphor

Simile

Personification

Metonymy

Synecdoche

Understatement or Overstatement

Paradox

Pun

Practice: The Eagle by A.L. Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Sound Devices

Alliteration

Assonance

Repetition of word; repeat and vary techniques.

Parallel construction.

Rhyme.

Words

Imagery

Figurative Language

Practice: “The Raven” by E.A. Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.' Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore - For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore - Nameless here for evermore.

Meter

Iambic: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Trochaic: one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.

Anapest: two unstressed syllables followed by two stressed syllables.

Dactyl: one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.

Meter

Repetition of Feet per line.

Monometer: one foot.

Dimeter: two feet.

Trimeter: three feet.

Tetrameter: four feet.

Pentameter: five feet.

Hexameter: six feet.

Heptameter: seven feet.

Octameter: eight feet.

Forms

Open and Closed

Examples of closed forms:

Sonnet

Sestina

Villanelle

Practice: “Corsons Inlet” by A.R. Ammons

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning

to the sea,

then turned right along

the surf

rounded a naked headland

and returned

along the inlet shore: