Poetry Fundamentals

As far as I know, many elements are woven into a poem for vary effects. Particular structures may be used to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses. Sometimes, such devices as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. In poetry, you’ll find use being made of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic element of poetic diction. These by and large, tend to leave a poem open to multiple interpretations. In poetry, this is very good for it stretches creativity to higher heights, as it were. Now, just look at the way metaphors and similes when they exist in a poem, they create a resonance between otherwise disparate images. Such layering of meanings tends to form connections not perceived previously. We must also recognize that similar forms of resonance may exist between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. These devices are useful plug-ins in the hands of poets. They all have tremendous impact on the poem’s content, voice, image and imagery.

What is Content?

Poetry is a literary genre and the person who writes poetry is the poet. Content is what the poet conveys (facts, ideas, and impressions) in the poem. The arrangement of content is dictated by the particular form or genre used. In order to present this content to the audience or readers the poet must provide a voice.

Provide a voice! What do you mean?

The poet assigns someone who will speak the words written in the poem. The person who elucidates the content of the poem is called the “voice”. Voice can also mean the “aura”. Aristotle referred to aura that is created from the element in the artistic production that induces a perception by the audience or reader of the moral qualities of the speaker or character as the “ethos. In narrative poetry, the persona is the “I” or the implied speaker as in the case of lyrical poems. Sometimes the poet would identify a created character as the speaker. However, in the absence of such a specific attribution, the term persona is applied.

What good does this do?

This allows for no automatic assumption that the creative work done is the expressed experiences or views of the poet. The good thing about the identification of a character or characters by poets is that it prevents any potential ambiguity. It also enables poets to give expression to things they would prefer not to have attributed to themselves.

How does the poet draw in the audience or readers?

The poet uses words arranged artistically to paint “mind-pictures” to the captured audience or readers by using a variety of poetic techniques and devices. Those mental constructs that people come up with after processing the various components of a poem is called the image. These mental constructs are created from the analysis and synthesis of the various components on the poet’s canvas. The poet’s canvas provides a panoramic view of the words, syntax, figurative language, figures of speech (for example, simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, symbol, synecdoche and metonym), trope, style (for example, diction, rhetorical devices, sounds and rhythmic patterns), texture, tone, aesthetics and layout carefully woven into the poem. This canvas or panoramic view that poets create is what we call the imagery and from it, mental images are formulated in the mind of the audience or readers. They in turn (the audience or readers) decide for themselves whether the poem was an enjoyable read by awakening their emotions in the desired direction.

© Paterika Hengreaves