I thought you prose people (kinda like ‘Y-M-C-A village people’) might pay more attention to this poetry lesson if I didn’t rhyme anything this time. The math part of poetry, you know, the 3-5-3, 5-7-5. 1-8-1 comes in later lessons. You’ll need to bring your calculators to that class, by the way.

Don’t worry about punctuation. Most poets don’t use any. They’re much too busy finding the big words and doing the ‘oo’ and ‘ah’ thing looking for the words to rhyme with the last line.

Glossary

alliteration–this is when you want some words to have the same startin’ sound in the sentence, like wettin’ your whistle or spittin’ some Skoal.

ballad–sounds kinda like an old Roy Rogers song.

classicism–this is when you dress up your poem with lots of party pictures, music and drawings.

couplet–two authors writing the poem together and havin’ a thing goin’ on the side

elegy–poems they read at funerals. They have to be sad and gloomy even if you’re glad the guy is dead

enjambment–What? What in tarnation does someone rear-ending my car have to do with poetry?

epic–a very long poem for bedtime reading cause it’ll put ‘em to sleep.

epigram–A short,funny poem you take to Western Union and have it sent in a telegram

gypsette–I told you in Lesson one that this is a secret formula, remember?

haiku–short poem about nature, you know, bugs, lizards, and stuff

heptameter–A line of poetry that has seven metrical feet- resembles a caterpillar

hyperbole–poetry that describes a mole somewhere on your body

iambic pentameter–this is a kind of steam locomotive so you won’t need to know this for poetry

limerick–what Englishmen do to their lollipops

metaphor–twice the amount of syllables as a metatwo

meter–Oh, yeah. I know about this. One of those meter maids gave me a ticket last week. She said I was parked in the emergency lane illegally. Well, damn, I was only there a couple minutes and it sure was an emergency. Isn’t ‘about to wet your drawers unless you find a toilet NOW’ an emergency?

pastoral–poem about the guy up front in the church

pentameter–this is the caboose to ‘iambic,’ the locomotive I told you about

personification–this is when you sign your poem after you’re finished

poetry–words written in strange formats challenging people to read them, understand them, and then attempt to review them.

quatrain–Four trains

refrain–a plea from prose people to poets to stop writing this stuff.

romanticism–poetry with a lot of mushy stuff in it

senryu–this is where you can say something really ornery and get a six for it

simile–used by poets that are poor spellers and can’t spell ‘smile’

sonnet-always a great word to rhyme with bonnet

stanza–kinda like a verse, but not sure why they needed another word for it.

stress–what you’re going to have when you try to study for THIS test.

tanka–Japanese knock-off for our Tonka toy trucks

tetrameter–only ‘tetras” are allowed to write these poems, so you don’t have to learn this one.

trope–shorthand version of ‘tightrope’ Circus performers write this kind of poetry.

Now, I want each of you to bring samples of any three of these to the next class to share with the others. Not the enjambment, puleeze.