Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Short note on elements of poetry
Basic elements of poetry
Basic elements of poetry
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Hallelujah For many, poems are thought of as words on a page that rhyme or have different poetic elements. Most do not think of a song when they hear “poem.” Although many think this way, I’ve decided to show that songs are poems and one song in particular. Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. I'll be explaining that because it has historical allusions, biblical allusions, figurative language, and imagery, it is a great example of a poem. The only difference here is that it has music. First, the song Hallelujah makes a reference to David and the Lord. It says,” I've heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord.” It is referencing David and The Lord from the Bible. This is a biblical allusion. A biblical allusion is anything that makes reference to something in the Bible or any sort of religious topic. A biblical allusion is a part of many poems. So because the song Hallelujah has a biblical allusion, in fact it has more than one, it is a great example of a poem. …show more content…
Secondly, Hallelujah uses figurative language.
It says, “cold and broken Hallelujah.” That is a oxymoron. An oxymoron (also known as a type of figurative language) is two opposite meanings put together to make a phrase. Some common ones that we use are “alone together” and “deafening silence.” “A cold and broken hallelujah” is an oxymoron because hallelujahs are supposed to happy, not cold and broken. This is a very well known element when writing poems. Figurative language is crucial to having a well written
poem. Lastly, Hallelujah uses imagery. Imagery is when you can see, hear, smell, taste, or feel something that is written in the poem. Almost like a snapshot in your mind that appeals to our senses. In Hallelujah, it is written, “It goes like this, the fourth the fifth, the minor falls and the major lifts..” This is imagery (especially to me) because when you actually play this song on the piano, it is the actual chords. If you know what it is referencing to, (a piano) it is almost impossible to not picture a piano in your mind. In conclusion, I have stated my reasoning to why the song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen is a great example of a poem. Poems come in many forms. Some with music, without music, short, long, good, not-so-good, you get the point. But the song Hallelujah uses biblical allusions, figurative language, and imagery so it is a very well written poem in my point of view.
Art is always a highly debated topic. What is art? What is artistic? Which is better poem or song? Music and poetry are both great ways to express artistic passion, and each have something a little different to from the other. Two greatly artistic pieces is the song “Chicken Fried” by Zac Brown Band, and the poem “Living Room” by david Yezzi. In this case, though it is a great piece, the song “Chicken Fried” by Zac Brown Band is not as artistic as the poem “Living Room” by David Yezzi. The use of similes, rhyme scheme, diction, symbolism, and just overall theme, truly makes “Living Room” the more artistic piece. Each have their pro’s and con’s, and each have powerful poetic devices, some more than others. Though both pieces have artistic grounds,
When I read poetry, I often tend to look first at its meaning and second at how it is written, or its form. The mistake I make when I do this is in assuming that the two are separate, when, in fact, often the meaning of poetry is supported or even defined by its form. I will discuss two poems that embody this close connection between meaning and form in their central use of imagery and repetition. One is a tribute to Janis Joplin, written in 1983 by Alice Fulton, entitled “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” The second is a section from Walt Whitman’s 1,336-line masterpiece, “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855. The imagery in each poem differs in purpose and effect, and the rhythms, though created through repetition in both poems, are quite different as well. As I reach the end of each poem, however, I am left with a powerful human presence lingering in the words. In Fulton’s poem, that presence is the live-hard-and-die-young Janis Joplin; in Whitman’s poem, the presence created is an aspect of the poet himself.
“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when in the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight.” This quote ties to the challenges Janie faces when trying to achieve her goal of finding the true meaning of love. In today’s society divorce has been higher than ever. About 40 to 50 married couples in the United States get divorced. After all the cruel experiences Janie’s gone through she still managed to
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
In the first stanza, the speaker sets the scene with "Damp earth of the cemetery," "City of winter," "mordant crusade." Especially when the speaker speaks of "the fragrance of the precious blood," we feel coldness, loneliness and death. All through this poem, the speaker uses symbols to connect us with Jesus. The "precious blood" is a symbol of Jesus giving his life for us. If you look at it in a different way, the precious blood is the blood that drips down from Jesus' forehead from the crown of thorns. The phrase "and emotion of fasting that cannot get free" represents hunger and death.
The poem begins with the speaker addressing God as “Our Father who art in heaven” (1.1). If this prayer is a metaphor for writing, it would seem that the he is actually speaking to the audience, the group of people who will ultimately judge his writing and his ideas. The casual nature of the prayer is partly based on the fact that the speaker is admittedly drunk on red wine, but also because the writer is trying to establish a relationship with his audience: A rapport with his readers is important to a writer’s success. He thanks his readers for the red wine, because it is they who have made it possible for him to maintain a lifestyle wherein he can afford the wine, and this wine acts as the liquid courage he needs to write in the first place.
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by the name of Langston Hughes. A well-known writer that still gets credit today for pomes like “ Theme for English B” and “Let American be American Again.”
A metrical composition; a composition in verse written in certain measures, whether in blank verse or in rhyme, and characterized by imagination and poetic diction; contradistinguished from prose; as, the poems of Homer or of Milton. This is but one of Webster 's definitions of a poem. Using this definition of “poem,” this paper will compare and contrast three different poems written by three different poets; William Shakespeare 's Sonnets 116, George Herbert’s Easter Wings and Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Whoso List to Hunt.
Alliteration is a key aspect to how the reader experiences the poem; it especially gives interest toward alliteration of the letter T. This alliteration begins in the very first line “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-” (1.1). The alliteration on the T is used three times within the first line; however, it does not stop there. Dickinson uses the “T” sound to continually draw back to the theme of truth. Dickinson, through the use of two stanzas, four lines each, uses quite a distinct rhyme scheme to organize her poem. The second and fourth lines of each stanza are clearly examples of end rhyme, by using words such as “lies” (1.2) and “surprise” (1.4). However, every single line is not an example of end rhyme. The first and third lines rhyme words such as “slant” (1.1) and “delight” (1.3); which can be described as near rhymes for they give a small sensation of rhyming. This rhyming pattern continues for the second stanza as well. The sequence of rhyming is not arbitrarily put into practice, rather, it also adds on to the truth theme. The near rhymes Dickinson stresses to not tell the truth in its entirety, but rather, convey a little bit of truth. This is being directly compared to the almost rhyming sensatio...
Leonard Cohen’s life has been a bohemian enigma of a ravenous lover, the “poet laureate of pessimism” who is not afraid to color the world with reality and present his painting as it is: naked and true (Nadel 1). The depth of his voice accompanying his “music to slit your wrists by” makes his unbearable charm of a Byronic hero all the more appealing (Nadel 1). And what is it that heroes always lament about? A fair lady.
In the first stanza, first line; I saw two trees embracing, this means that there is a couple that is in love. In the second and third line we see that the male is weaker “one leaned on the other, as if to throw her down” and in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh line we notice that the female has the strength, willpower and is dominating. In the second stanza, line one, two and three we see that the female being dominant makes the male feel broken and intimidated. In line four “the most wind-warped, you could see”, hear we see that there is a major problem between the two.
Written in iambic form, the meter alternates from tetrameter to trimeter, which when incorporated with quatrain creates the same form and verse as that in “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, / that saved a wretch like me.” Although the poem lacks much rhyme, the speaker rhymes “me”, “immortality”, and “eternity” to reinforce her description of life after death. In the fourth stanza, the speaker seems to stumble or have a lapse in concentration, realizing that she is in the process of dying, as she uses slant rhyming, reverses the meter, and has a misstep in form, such as in, “The Dews drew quivering and chill—,” (line 14). The meter and form returns to normal in the next stanza as the speaker recovers from this realization and it remains normal
C. Connotations:The poem is written in free verse with no rhyme or rhythm to be
Leonard Cohen illustrates some incredibly deep and powerful perspectives on life in this poem. He makes clear connections between his metaphors and the overall theme of the poem. Each tenor represents another metaphor that is open to scrutinizing interpretation. The theme of life and living is a powerful one. Cohen has provided effective examples of tenors within the text of a profound poem.
From the first stanza of this song, you get put into a scene. You know almost immediately that it is about someone, and it is the middle of December, but without stating the obvious, it paints a more illustrated picture for you. The first line states, “A winters day, in a deep and dark December” and I could almost immediately feel a cool breeze around me. When I normally think of a winter’s day, I think of people playing in the snow, and having a good time. This may be because I grew up in Southern California where there has been a lack of snow, but in my head, that is what I imagine. Having them state, in a deep and dark December, turns my attitudes to the more pessimistic way of looking at things. The image of children playing in the snow in my head has now turned to cold and dark emptiness. Reinstating my idea of emptiness, the next line follows with the simply statement, “I am alone”. Personally, I hate being alone. So to have the opening words place us in a deep and dark setting, and then state that you are alone, automatically puts me in a negative mindset.