The Poetry

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Categoria:	Lingue
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Data:	09.10.2001
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THE POETRY

Before studying and reading poetries, it’s appropriate devoting to the study of the development, the born and the origins of the poetry.
Meaning of the world poetry
The word poetry comes form the greek verb “poiêin” which means “to make, to create”. The the poet is the creator and the language, the words are the material that he moulds.

Origins
The precise origins of poetry are unknown, but we know that poetry is a very ancient art which was born as an oral form and accompanied by music and dance.
People wrote poetries to express what they think, what they need, what they want, or to remember events as wars, disasters, births and deaths, battles, festivals.
What a poem is
Like other literary works, poetry is made up of words. But why is the poetry different form the prose? A poem differs from the prose because it is written in lines, whose length is decided by the author and not the printer; because it has a visual form, that is called lay-out, different from the prose and because a poem use a language, which is carefully chosen and arranged. That words or phrases arouse in the reader emotion and associations of ideas which are different from their primary meaning. Poetic language is often rich in figures of speech like the simile which has the form of an explicit comparison indicated by ‘like’, ‘as’, ‘as if’, or the metaphor which omits the linking word, creating a total identification between the two things being compared or the symbol- a concrete item which represent an idea or feeling.
Guidelines for reading poetry
In approaching a poem you can ask some simple question which shoul help you to understand it:
- What is the poem about?
- Who is the voiche speaking?
- To whom is the poem addressed?
- How is hte poem written?
- Why has the poem been written?
SOUND
RHYTHM
Rhythm is a powerful device that generates musical effects in poetry. It works through stressed and unstressed syllables which alternate in a line in several combination. Rhythm derives from a combination of factors: single line lenght, number of beats, and rhyme.

The rhythm of the language can be meansured, the name of this sience is metrics.
Measure lines
Lines of poetry can be measured by counting the syllabs and counting the stresses (accent or beats)
The Stanza
Lines of poetry are grouped into larger units (2 lines: couplet – 3 lines: tercet – 4 lines: quartin – 8 lines: octave - etc.). Any group makes a stanza. Stanzas can be identify because each one is divided from the others by a blank space. In some poems each stanza is ended by several lines called refrain.
Metrical Istruments
The words, in poetry, aren’t chosen just for their meaning, but also for their sound. There are some metrical istrumets used by the poets: they are called: rhyme, alliteration and assonance.
RHYME
Two words rhyme perfectly when the sound of the last stressed vowel and all succeeding sounds are identical. The rhyme has several functions: it makes the poem easy to memorize, and pleasant to listen to.
ALLITERATION
The alliteration is the use of the same consonant sound.
ASSONANCE
The assonance is the use of the same or similar vowel sound. Assonance often has the effect of a part-rhyme.
FREE VERSE
The modern poets have developed a form of unrhymed verse that can have any numer of syllables in each line, and can be unrhymed. This is consistent with the tendency of modern art, for example painting music and sculputre, to do away with traditional forms. This kind of poetry is called free verse.