Poetry can be more than just words on a page. It is a short amount of writing that displays a story, image, or song using many interesting techniques. Some of those techniques are rhyming, repetition, meter, and alliteration. Poets can use these writing tools to make something amazing and insightful to the person reading it. Two poems that use these approaches well are “Echo”, by Christina Rosetti, and, “The Weary Blues”, by Langston Hughes. Each of these writers have their own style when using these concepts, and their differences help make each of their poems unique. The first technique that each of these poems include is rhyme. When you think of poetry, rhyming usually pops into your head, but not all poetry contains the same type of rhyming.
That means that the A lines rhyme, the B lines rhyme, and the C lines rhyme as well. An example of that is displayed in the first six lines of the poem. “Come to me in the silence of the night; / Come to me in the speaking silence of a dream; / Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright / As sunlight on a stream; / Come back in tears, / O memory, hope, love of finished years” (Rosetti). As you can see, Rosetti rhymes night and bright, dream and stream, and then tears and years. That stanza, as well as all of the others, follow the ABAB CC pattern. When it comes to “The Weary Blues”, Hughes uses a different rhyming sequence. As I read Hughes’ poem, the rhyming pattern was hard to pick up. He doesn’t have a certain arrangement that he follows like Rosetti does. Sometimes he rhymes two lines and then has a line or two that don’t rhyme with anything at all. An example of this is presented during the song that is sang in the middle of the poem. “’Ain’t got nobody in this world, / Ain’t got nobody but ma self. / I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’ / And put ma troubles on the shelf’” (Hughes). In this song, self and shelf rhyme, but
The meter of a poem is basically the rhythm. In “Echo”, Rosetti sets up a meter called iambic pentameter. The entire poem is not in this meter, but a majority is. An example of iambic pentameter is, “Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live / My very life again tho’ cold in death:” (Rosetti). An iamb is when a “foot” is unstressed then stressed. So in the first line, yet is unstressed and come is stressed. That makes one iamb. Since it is an iambic pentameter, that means there are five iambs. Those iambs are, “Yet come”, “to me”, “in dream”, “that I”, and finally, “may live”. Hughes also plays with meter in, “The Weary Blues”. He has a play on iambic pentameter, but his has a bit of a catch. Like Rosetti, he doesn’t keep the same meter the entire time. An example of Hughes’ iambic pentameter is in the first two lines of the poem. “Drowning a drowsy syncopated tune, / Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,” (Hughes). An iamb is unstressed, then stressed, but what about Hughes’ first few words? The word “droning” and the word “Rocking” are actually stressed then unstressed which makes them trochees and not iambs. That is how Rosetti and Hughes’ poems differ. They are both considered iambic pentameters, but Hughes just adds a little twist to his. Having meter alows the author room to play with the rhythm of the poem and how the reader interoperates
An African American, who is singing and playing a blues number who is being observed, and described by the central narrative voice. Hughes uses similes in these two lines. Line 13 says “ The musician can play the piano like a fool”. Hughes describes the musicians playing like fool. “Fool” is a good thing in this context. Line 35 says “ He slept like a rock or a man that 's dead”. This simile means that he was sleeping so deeply he isn 't moving or that he is resting like a dead man. Another literary term Hughes uses in his poem is personification. He uses personification in lines 10 and 18. Line 10 says, “ He made that poor piano moan with melody”. The musician in the poem is making the piano moan, but pianos don 't moan. However, the sound of the piano makes the speaker feel like the piano is moaning. Line 18 says “ I heard that negro sing, that old piano moan-”. Once again Hughes is making the speaker feel like the piano is moaning, but he is just describing the melody of the piano and the musician’s voice ("The Weary Blues
Both poems use repetition of phrases and anaphora to establish a pace for the speaker’s voice. The repeating syllables provide a pseudo-break in
Rhymes are two or more words that have the same ending sound. Songwriters and poets often times use rhymes to help their piece flow better, or keep the audience or readers engaged. Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is filled with rhymes, with a rhyme in almost every single line: “Brando, the King and I, and the Catcher In The Rye / Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new Queen / Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye” (line 6-8). Billy Joel uses the rhymes to move from one topic to the next, and the song is even in chronological order from 1950 to 1989. The rhyme schemes of the song are end rhymes as well as perfect rhymes. On the other hand, the poem is completely free verse, or without a single rhyme. This makes the poem less artistic and harder to remain engaged and interested. In addition to rhyming, allusions are another way of displaying artistic
Dylan Thomas wrote the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” It is about a son’s plea to his father who is approaching death. Two lines are repeated in the poem and addressed directly to the father. These lines structure the first stanza and collaborate as a couplet in the last. They are repeated a lot but each time, they have different meanings: statements, pleas, commands, or petitions. Repetition and rhyme scheme are parts of prosody in poetry. The rhyme scheme is built on two rhymes and forms of a pattern. The two rhymes are night and day and the pattern is aba, and in the last stanza, abaa. Even though the poem seems to have too much repetition, the fascinating imagery is more important and readers pay more attention to that instead.
In the first stanza he used alliteration when he used the words cuffs, cans and crunch. In the third stanza the poet uses alliteration on ‘g’. He also uses rhythmic echo in ‘hands’, ‘bones’ and ‘lungs’ in the second stanza. Repetition and assonance is also used in the second stanza. Sound pattern has been used in the fifth stanza.
In his poem “The Weary Blues” Langston Hughes’ is written in free verse to mimic the patterns of natural speech and music. This poem, as the title suggests, focuses on the blues, a musical style invented for the expression of deep pain; Blues songs are typically performed by individuals to create a feeling of loneliness in the grief-stricken lyrics. Hughes’ verse creates a natural rocking to the somber tune as the musician rocks on his stool; the speaker describes the song as “melancholy”. Interestingly “melancholy” describes the ending of the poem perfectly. As the musician thumps his foot and Hughes repeats that beat the singer sleeps like a dead man. Simply by communicating through music with ...
Rhyme-The last words of line one and line three of each stanza rhyme. The last words of line two and line four of each stanza also rhyme. The rhyming words contribute to the rhythm and flow of the poem.
Poetry is very different. We see this throughout the history of literature. But whether you’re reading Ballads or Concrete poems they all have one thing in common, they’re all poetry. The two poems ‘There Is No Word For Goodbye’ and ‘Casey At The Bat’ are examples of only two out of the five styles of poetry. Analyzing and comparing the two styles is difficult as it’s almost too different to compare. ‘There Is No Word For Goodbye’ is a poem by Mary Tall Mountain –for the purpose of this paper I’ll call her M&M for short- Her writing is an example of a concrete poem. A concrete poem has a shape that suggests its subject and the poet will arrange the letters, words, punctuation, and lines to create an image in the reader’s mind.
“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” –Edgar Allan Poe. Poetry is one of the world’s greatest wonders. It is a way to tell a story, raise awareness of a social or political issue, an expression of emotions, an outlet, and last but not least it is an art. Famous poet Langston Hughes uses his poetry as a musical art form to raise awareness of social injustices towards African-Americans during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Although many poets share similarities with one another, Hughes creatively crafted his poetry in a way that was only unique to him during the 1920’s. He implemented different techniques and styles in his poetry that not only helped him excel during the 1920’s, but has also kept him relative in modern times. Famous poems of his such as a “Dream Deferred,” and “I, Too, Sing America” are still being studied and discussed today. Due to the cultural and historical events occurring during the 1920’s Langston Hughes was able to implement unique writing characteristics such as such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues that is demonstrative of his writing style. Langston Hughes use of distinct characteristics such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues helped highlight the plights of African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance Era.
In any discussion of poetry vs. prose worth it's stanzas, questions regarding such tools as meter, rhyme, and format must come into play. These are, after all, the most obvious distinguishing features of poetry, and they must certainly be key in determining the definition, and in fact nature, of poetry.
To begin, one can scrutinize The Raven and Tell Tale Heart by Poe, and Shakespeare's Sonnet XIX rhyme schemes, and list the similarities and differences of these three inspiring poems. One can agree that they all find a way to make their poems fluent by adding rhymes, but Poe puts in rhyming words all throughout his poems. For example, in sonnet XIX the rhyme scheme is usually every other line rhymes (abab). One may argue that sonnet XIX has more rhymes in it than the end rhymes, but there is still a pattern of rhymes going on throughout the poem. “Devouring Time, blunt thou
Hughes was the first to use rhythms of black music. Everyday observations of black working people was a part of his writing. He helped the movement of jazz and the sound of black speech in poetry. He also experimented with his writing. Most of the Harlem Renaissance writers wrote poems like that of English classic poets, but Hughes wanted to break free with his writing and he changed the outlook on literature. Hughes, a successful writer in 1926, publicated a collection of jazz poems. Hughes enjoyed to write poems in a place of Harlem where blues music was played. “The Weary Blues” was written to be expressed with instruments. The poem showed the ways Hughes combined black music and speech in his poetry.
In the poem Sea Calm by Langston Hughes, the author uses patterns of sound and structure to emphasize the stagnant and unsettling nature described in the piece. Because Hughes chose to put simple words in Sea Calm as opposed to his usual slang, the text is very easy to read and understand. It also makes the poem drier and less rhythmic, attributing to stillness of the water the poem meditates on. In the first half, the number of syllables in each line increase by two. This leads the reader to believe the format of the poem will stay the same like the placid water. However, the last three lines of the poem break the form. The 4th line is four syllables, the 5th line is three, and the final line is six. This break in the pattern is in tune with
Hughes poem is about knowing the difference in rivers. His soul is connected to these river because it is the birth of African Americans. There is no rhyme scheme throughout the poem. Ancient:
...ur lines each. Each line ends with a vertical line that marks the feet. The rhyme isn't but there is rhyme in this poem like "Me" rhymes with "Immortality" and, farther down the poem, with "Civility" and "Eternity." This poem repeated the phrase, "We passed," which is changed a bit in the fifth stanza to, "We paused." This repetition of a word or phrase throughout a poem is called anaphora. The use of these poetic elements allows the words to flow as they describe an event.