Poetry, Chapter 11 and reading from Debra Marquart

LANGUAGE
Precision and Ambiguity
Particular meanings and implications of individual words are what drives poetry. Using only "essential words," carefully placed and used to just barely communicate in the most "elemental signs" to tell a concentrated story with the least possible words. The word choice of the poet, the "diction" determines the "meaning and every effect the poem produces."
Sometimes, the use of a single word can create "multiple meanings or shiftiness."
"Dramatic irony": an "incongruity between what we expect to happen and what actually dies happen."
Furthermore, when a word "denotes" a meaning it goes beyond a simple dictionary description to what other meanings a specific word can mean. I.e. "Terminal"...an airport station...or a boundary, or a terminus, an extremity...and/or something that is limited, a junction, a place where a connection may be made.
Words have a "personal side" that carry "emotions and shades of suggestion."
"Connotations": suggestions of emotional coloration that imply one's attitude and invite a similar one from the reader.
"Word order": the way the words are put together, using rhyme and meter to construct sentences that allow subtlety and force of a word to create a particular emphasis.
Visual applications of words may "represent" can help the reader of poem see a specific image that lies within the poet's mind. An artist uses paint and canvas to create a visual idea...and a poet uses words to express a visual experience.
"Metaphor": when a comparison is implicit, with something described as if it were something else.I.e. "her lap was a big comfy couch.."
"Simile": when a comparison is explicit,when one thing is compared directly to something else.I.e. "his eyes were as blue as the sky."
The above are figures of speech, and figurative language uses words to communicate and insist upon the reader to see in their mind what the poet is imagining.
"Extended metaphors" are metaphors which extend over a long section of a poem.
"Controlling metaphors" are metaphors which are present for the entirety of the poem.
"Symbol" use of a word that gets "beyond what words signify and makes larger claims about meanings in the verbal world." A word that stands for something else. I.e. flag, a rose, a logo, a trademark.
"Symbolic poem" is when the symbol becomes the whole poem, written to not only use the symbol, but it becomes the symbol.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", by William Shakespeare
The title gives me a "heads up" that he is about to describe his love for another and compare it to a summer's day. And, then in the poem the poet makes statements about how much better his love is than summer, "thou art more lovely and more temperate." and "But thy eternal summer shall not fade" as if summer as a season comes to an end, yet his love's wonderful qualities shall always remain. And, wow...as long as this poem exists, so will his love and her fairness, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee." So beautiful and short. Like it was a quick jot down of a poem while he sat a Starbucks drinking coffee and thinking about the one he loves. While the language denotes a more formal time and the tone of the poem is love, I think it is timeless because the way the figures of speech are used make it so easy for any reader to visualize a summer day in their own memory and then apply these good memories to how a man loved this woman and how he saw her as timeless and beyond the goodness of summer...forever. Is there a controlling metaphor of summer? And, the word order flows with his feelings and keeps the rhythm without needed the rhyme.
Excerpts from "From Sweetness", poems by Debra Marquart
"Older Sister"
I enjoyed most of her poems, and this one really struck a personal chord with me.
"Forever, she rides in front of me on the school bus,"...yes, even though the school bus may be a bus, it also symbolizes the sister's order through life...her sister will always be in front of her. "No sweaty back seats on her conscience, no cigarettes in her drawers"...as if her sister lived a "good girl" kind of life. The kind of life that makes it hard for a younger sister to live up to. The older sister word the right respectful clothes and always got a recipe right. Touche! How much we love our older sisters and yet how hard they can make it for us to meet the standards they set. The younger sister doesn't discuss what the older sister might be feeling inside, and how could she know? Maybe there is some fear for the older sister as she grows up, maybe tons of pressure to be a good role model and meet the requirements her parents expect. The older sister breaks through the barriers first, without the benefit of seeing someone else in the household do it first. And, the younger sister sees all this external accomplishment from her older sister and probably feel like "how can I live up to this or even exceed it?"
I loved the imagery the poet uses and the word order doesn't rely on rhyme, but wonderful concrete items to bring the reader into the world of what she sees of her older sister. I think the tone of the poem is love and sarcasm. The younger sister looks up to her sister, yet seems to be almost stacking a deck of all these qualities her older sister has and how "perfect" the older sister seems. Of course, the older sister has to have some skeletons, if only emotional or academic. Yet, the younger sister will always be younger and the older sister will always hold that image in the younger sister's mind of riding in front on the school bus of life.