The GED Language Arts, Reading Exam - Poetry

Because there are so few words in a poem, every word counts, and poems are often layered with meaning.. Line Breaks and Stanzas Because poems are written in verse, poets must decide how

P o et ry i s o f te n easy to recognize but not as easy to define Poems are usually short, and often

rhyme, but not always The beauty (and, for many, the difficulty) of poetry is its brevity The writer has to convey an idea or emotion in a very short space Because there are so few words in a poem, every word counts, and poems are often layered with meaning That’s where a poem gets its power

One fundamental difference between poetry and prose is structure Poems, of course, are written in verse They

are meant to be heard as well as read The meaning in a poem comes not just from the words, but also from how the words sound and how they are arranged on the page.

 Ty p e s o f P o e m s

While poems are often categorized by structure (e.g., sonnets or ballads), a more fundamental way to classify poems is by their general purpose Poems can be emotive, imagistic, narrative, and argumentative They can also mourn or celebrate

An emotive poem has as its goal to capture a mood or emotion and to make readers feel that mood or

emo-tion On the next page is an untitled poem by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin

Poetry

POETRY SHARES many of the same elements as fiction, but

poetry is a unique genre with its own styles and conventions This chapter explains what makes poems different from stories and how to read and understand poems

35

I have loved you; even now I may confess,

Some embers of my love their fire retain

but do not let it cause you more distress,

I do not want to sadden you again

Hopeless and tonguetied, yet, I loved you dearly

With pangs the jealous and the timid know;

So tenderly I loved you—so sincerely;

I pray God grant another love you so

An imagistic poem aims to capture a moment and

help us experience that moment sensually (through our

senses) Here is a powerful two-line imagistic poem by

Ezra Pound:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough

Narrative poems tell stories, while argumentative

poems explore an idea (such as love or valor) Here’s a

poem by Robert Frost that does both:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the

one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference

Elegies and odes are two other common types of

poems An elegy is a poem that laments the loss of

some-one or something An ode, on the other hand, celebrates

a person, place, thing, or event Here are a few lines from John Keats’ (1795–1821) famous poem “Ode on a Gre-cian Urn”:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young;

Word Choice in Poetry

Because of their brevity, poets are especially careful about word choice They often rely on figurative language to convey larger ideas, allowing images to convey ideas rather than sentences Poets will also often use words that can have multiple meanings or associations

 E l e m e n t s o f S o u n d

Though not all poems use rhyme, this is the most

recog-nized element of sound in poetry A rhyme is the repeti-tion of identical or similar stressed sounds at the end of

a word Rhymes create rhythm and suggest a relationship between the rhymed words

There are several different types of rhymes:

■ Exact rhymes share the same last syllables (the

last consonant and vowel combination) For example:

cat, hat laugh, staff refine, divine

■ Half-rhymes share only the final consonant(s)

cat, hot adamant, government

– P O E T R Y –

■ Eye rhymes look like a rhyme because the word

endings are spelled the same, but the words don’t

sound the same

bough, through

enough, though

Alliteration is another important element of sound,

and one that is often used in prose as well Alliteration is

the repetition of sounds The sound is most often found

at the beginning of words but can also be found

throughout words For example, the words pitter patter

use alliteration at the beginning (repetition of the p

sound), in the middle (repetition of the t sound), and at

the end (repetition of the r sound) Notice the

allitera-tion of the k sound in the first line and the l sound in the

second line of “The Eagle”:

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Some sounds, such as l, s, r, m, n, and vowel sounds (a,

e, i, o, and u) are soft and create a pleasant, musical effect.

Other sounds, such as b, g, k, and p, are much harder

sounds, less pleasant and more forceful Writers will use

sound to help create the right tone and reflect the theme

of the poem By using the k and l sounds together in the

first two lines, Tennyson suggests the duality of the eagle:

its serene beauty and its awesome power

Onomatopoeia is another element of sound An

ono-matopoeia is a word that is how it sounds; the sound is

the definition of the word Buzz, hiss, moan, and screech

are a few examples These two lines from Robert Frost’s

1916 poem “Out, Out” for example, use onomatopoeia:

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and

rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load

Rhythm

One of the most important ways poets establish rhythm

in their poems is through meter Meter is the number of

syllables in a line and how the stress falls on those

sylla-bles In iambic meter, one of the most common metrical

patterns, the stress falls on every other syllable, creating

a steady da-dum, da-dum, da-dum rhythm to the poem.

Each “drum beat” (da-dum) is called a foot Here is Robert Frost again to demonstrate iambic tetrameter

(four feet per line) Read these lines from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” out loud to hear how the rhythm works:

Whose woods these are I think I know

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow

 E l e m e n t s o f S t r u c t u r e

You won’t find a GED question asking you to identify the rhyme scheme or meter of a poem, and you won’t be asked to determine whether a poem is free verse or a son-net But knowing these poetic forms and techniques can help you better understand the poems you read In

poetry more than any other type of literature, form is

part of the poem’s meaning

Line Breaks and Stanzas

Because poems are written in verse, poets must decide how much information belongs on each line and when

those lines should be broken into stanzas (poetic

“para-graphs”) First, it’s important to remember that when you read a poem out loud, you should pause only when

punctuation tells you to pause Do not pause at the end

of each line or even at the end of a stanza unless there is

a comma, period, or other punctuation mark that requires pause That way, you can hear the flow of the words as the poet intended

When you look at a poem, however, you need to take

into consideration the important visual elements of line breaks and stanzas Line breaks and stanzas have two purposes: to call attention to the words at the end of each line and to set aside each group of words as a distinct idea Thus, while poetic sentences sometimes cut across line breaks and even sometimes stanzas, the visual sepa-ration of words within those sentences helps poets set off particular words and ideas for emphasis Any word at the end of a line, for example, will stand out And poets can space words all across the page, as in the example on the next page

Sleeping, and it was

dark outside Inside,

I was

wondering alone,

wandering

in a dream

of you

Notice how the spacing here ties the words dark,

won-dering, and wandering together, pairs the words inside

and outside, and sets off alone.

Rhymed and Metered Verse

Poems can be written in rhymed verse, metered (or blank)

verse, or free verse Rhymed and metered/blank poems

are very confined by their structure; the lines must follow

a rhyme scheme or metrical pattern (or both, if the poem

is both rhymed and metered) Word choice (diction) is

especially controlled by rhyme scheme and metrical

pat-tern Poets must find words that both convey just the

right idea, have the right ending to fit the rhyme scheme,

and have the right number of syllables and the right

stresses to fit the metrical pattern

Three common types of rhymed and metered verse

include the sonnet, the ballad, and the villanelle These

forms all have specific rhyme schemes and metrical

pat-terns that poets must follow A sonnet, for example, is

composed of fourteen lines usually written in iambic

pentameter (five feet per line) The rhyme scheme will

vary depending on the type of sonnet An Italian sonnet,

for example, will divide the poem into two stanzas, one

with eight lines, the other with six, using the following

rhyme scheme: abbaabba cdcdcd (or cdecde or cdccdc) A

Shakespearian sonnet, on the other hand, separates the

lines into three quatrains (a quatrain is a stanza of four

lines) and ends with a couplet (a pair of rhyming lines)

with the following rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg.

A ballad is a poem that usually tells a story and is often

meant to be sung The rhyme scheme is typically abcb

defe ghih, etc Ballads typically emphasize action rather

than emotions or ideas and often have a steady,

sing-songy meter

One of the most complex rhyme schemes is the

vil-lanelle A villanelle has five three-line stanzas with an aba

rhyme scheme and a final quatrain with an abaa rhyme.

There are only two rhymes in the poem, and line one must be repeated in lines six, twelve, and eighteen, while line three must be repeated in lines nine, fifteen, and nineteen

Blank or metered verse is guided only by meter, not rhyme Thus, the lines have a set number of syllables

without any rhyme scheme A haiku is an example of

blank verse Haikus are unrhymed poems of three lines and 17 syllables Line one has five syllables; line two has seven; and line three has five Here is an example:

The Falling Flower

What I thought to be Flowers soaring to their boughs Were bright butterflies

—Moritake (1452–1540)

Free Verse

Free verse is poetry that is free from the restrictions of

meter and rhyme But that doesn’t mean that free verse poems are haphazard or simply thrown together Rather than fitting a traditional metrical pattern or rhyme scheme, free verse poems often use a thematic structure

or repetitive pattern “Sleeping” is one example, setting off words to isolate some and associate others A more structured free verse poem is Kenneth Fearing’s 1941 poem “Ad.” The poem is structured like a help-wanted ad designed to recruit soldiers for World War II It begins like this:

Wanted: Men;

Millions of men are wanted at once in a big new

field

The last line of the poem sums up the compensation for the soldiers:

Wages: Death.

Thus, the structure of the poem helps reflect its theme: The absurdity of running an advertisement for men to kill and be killed, of calling war “a big new field”

to make it sound exciting, reflects the poet’s feelings about the war—that it, too, is absurd, and that it is absurd to ask people to kill each other and to die

– P O E T R Y –

Be f o re b o o k s a n d movies, even before language, people were acting out their experiences.

Drama is the oldest form of storytelling and one of the oldest ways of making sense of the human

experience

 H o w D r a m a I s D i f f e r e n t

Drama has the same elements of fiction: plot, character, setting, point of view, tone, language and style, symbolism, and theme However, drama differs from poetry and prose in a number of significant ways The most obvious and important difference is that drama is meant to be performed; it is literature that is designed for a live audience (The exception is a small minority of plays called closet dramas, which are plays meant only to be read, not

per-formed.) This makes plays the most immediate and energetic genre of literature, because there is an active exchange of energy and emotion during the performance

In drama, action is the driving force of the plot “The essence of a play is action,” said Aristotle, the first

liter-ary critic of the Western world Because of the immediacy of a play and the short time span in which the action must occur, things happen more quickly than they might in a novel There is less time for digressions; everything must be related to the unfolding of events on the stage

Drama

LIKE FICTION and poetry, drama has its own conventions and

forms Understanding these conventions and forms can help you understand the drama excerpts you will find on the GED This chapter reviews the elements of drama and strategies for understanding this genre

36

Drama also presents us with a unique point of view.

Because there is no narrator, the story isn’t filtered

through someone’s point of view Even if there is a

nar-rator on stage telling us the story, we still see the action

for ourselves This dramatic point of view allows us to

come to our own conclusions about the characters and

their actions

The action of a play takes place in a real physical

space, so setting is particularly important in drama The

setting might be realistic, minimalist, or symbolic; the

play can occur in “real time” or take place over several

years in the characters’ lives For example, in Samuel

Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot, the stage is

intentionally bare The stage directions call only for a tree

and a low mound on which one of the characters sits

The emptiness on stage reflects the emptiness that echoes

throughout the play: The characters wait, and wait, and

do nothing; they wait for someone who does not come

 D r a m a t i c I r o n y

In a play, we must listen carefully for the tone that

char-acters use when they speak But the controlling tone of a

play is often dramatic irony Dramatic irony occurs when

a character’s speech or actions have an unintended

meaning known to the audience but not to the character

For example, in Henrik Ibsen’s classic 1879 play A Doll’s

House, we find Torvald Helmer lecturing his wife about

the evils of lying He uses Krogstad, whom Helmer had

just fired for committing forgery, as an example But he

doesn’t know what we know Several years before, Nora

had forged her father’s signature to borrow money she

needed to help Helmer through a serious illness Because

Helmer hates the idea of borrowing money, she kept the

forgery and the loan a secret But now Krogstad has

threatened to reveal the secret if he does not get his job

back Notice how powerful the irony is in the passage

below, especially when Helmer takes Nora’s hand:

NORA: But tell me, was it really such a crime

that this Krogstad committed?

HELMER: Forgery Do you have any idea what

that means?

NORA: Couldn’t he have done it out of need? HELMER: Yes, or thoughtlessness, like so many others I’m not so heartless that I’d condemn a man categorically for just one mistake

NORA: No, of course not, Torvald!

HELMER: Plenty of men have redeemed them-selves by openly confessing their crimes and tak-ing their punishment

NORA: Punishment—?

HELMER: But now Krogstad didn’t go that way

He got himself out by sharp practices, and that’s the real cause of his moral breakdown

NORA: Do you really think that would—? HELMER: Just imagine how a man with that sort of guilt in him has to lie and cheat and deceive on all sides, has to wear a mask even with the nearest and dearest he has, even with his own wife and children And with the chil-dren, Nora—that’s where it’s most horrible NORA: Why?

HELMER: Because that kind of atmosphere of lies infects the whole life of a home Every breath the children take in is filled with the germs of something degenerate

NORA: [coming closer behind him] Are you sure

of that?

HELMER: Oh, I’ve seen it often enough as a lawyer Almost everyone who goes bad early in life has a mother who’s a chronic liar

NORA: Why just—the mother?

HELMER: It’s usually the mother’s influence that’s dominant, but the father’s works in the same way, of course Every lawyer is quite famil-iar with it And still this Krogstad’s been going home year in, year out, poisoning his own chil-dren with lies and pretense; that’s why I call him

morally lost [Reaching his hands out toward her]

So my sweet little Nora must promise me never

to plead his cause Your hand on it Come, come, what’s this? Give me your hand There, now All settled I can tell it’d be impossible for me to work alongside of him I literally feel physically revolted when I’m anywhere near such a person

– D R A M A –

 T h e D r a m a t i c S t a g e

Drama comes from the Greek word dran, which means

to do or to act Because dramas are performed, these

ele-ments of the performance are essential eleele-ments of

drama:

■ dialogue

■ stage directions

■ live audience

Dialogue

In fiction, the story is heard through the voice of a

nar-rator; in poetry, through the voice of the speaker of the

poem In drama, as noted earlier, there is no narrator;

instead, the characters speak directly to each other or to

the audience The story is driven forward by the words

and actions of the characters, without the filter of a

nar-rator Through dialogue (two or more characters

speak-ing to each other), monologue (a character speakspeak-ing

directly to the audience), and soliloquy (a character

“thinking aloud” on stage), we learn what the characters

think and feel about themselves, each other, and the

things that are happening around them Characters can

also speak in an aside, which is like a blend between a

monologue and a soliloquy In an aside, the actor shares

a quick thought with the audience but not with the other

characters This privileges the audience with knowledge

that the other characters do not have

The exchange between Nora and Helmer is an

exam-ple of dialogue Here is an excerpt from one of the most

famous soliloquies of all time:

HAMLET: To be, or not to be: that is the

question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause:

—William Shakespeare, from Hamlet

Stage Directions

Stage directions are the playwright’s instructions to the

director and actors They often include specific details about how the characters should look, the tone of voice they should use when they speak, significant gestures or actions they should take, and the setting, including cos-tumes, props, and lighting Stage directions can help us understand tone and reinforce the theme of the play For

example, the stage directions for Waiting for Godot, as we

noted earlier, are intentionally few; the emptiness of the stage is meant to echo the play’s exploration of the emptiness in our lives Similarly, the stage directions in

Susan Glaspell’s 1916 play Trifles show us how uneasy the

characters feel when they begin to piece together the puzzle of Mr Wright’s murder When Mrs Peters finds the bird that Mr Wright killed, she remembers how she felt in a similar situation and understands how Mrs Wright could have killed her husband:

MRS PETERS: [In a whisper] When I was a

girl—my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—and before I could

get there—[Covers her face an instant] If they hadn’t held me back I would have—[Catches herself, looks upstairs where steps are heard, falters weakly]—hurt him.

Audience

Audience, of course, is the third essential element of

drama, for without an audience, a play cannot be fully brought to life Of course, this does not mean one can-not find great meaning and enjoyment out of simply reading a play While missing out on the visual effects and the energy of the theater, reading a play can offer a different type of enjoyment because the reader has the option to reread lines and imagine the scenes in his or her own mind To bring the play to life, however, one needs to pay extra attention to the stage directions to see how things are supposed to happen and how the actors are supposed to behave

 Ty p e s o f P l a y s

The symbol of the theater is two masks, one with a great

smile, the other with a frown and a tear

For many years, drama, which originated in religious

celebrations of the ancient Greeks, was either tragic or

comic Today, of course, plays can be tragedies, comedies,

and everything in between But you will better

under-stand all those “in betweens” if you underunder-stand the

extremes and the traditions from which they come

Tragedy

In drama, a tragedy is a play that presents a noble

char-acter’s fall from greatness In Greek drama, the characters

are all kings, queens, and other nobles In the course of

a typical Greek tragedy, the main character does

some-thing (or doesn’t do somesome-thing) that leads to a dramatic

fall from grace This fall usually happens because of the

character’s tragic flaw (though the character often tries to

blame fate).

A tragic flaw is a characteristic that drives the

charac-ter to make a poor decision or do something he or she

shouldn’t do Often, the flaw is also part of what makes

the character great Pride is often a tragic flaw, and so is

absolutism For example, in Sophocles’ ancient play

Antigone, Creon puts the welfare of the state before the

welfare of any individual, and he is respected and revered

for his powerful leadership and devotion to the state But

he refuses to make an exception when his niece Antigone

breaks the law, and as a result, Antigone, Creon’s son

(Antigone’s fiancée), and Creon’s wife all kill themselves

by the end of the play Only Creon is left to survey the

destruction he brought upon his family

While a tragedy will often move us to tears, it is not

entirely depressing A true tragedy is cathartic, allowing

us to feel and release strong emotions by experiencing

the pain and sadness of the characters, by watching

human beings make mistakes and suffer—without

actu-ally making mistakes or suffering ourselves The hope

comes from how tragic heroes deal with that suffering

and loss A tragic hero like Creon, for example, accepts

responsibility for those mistakes, and Antigone ends with

the hope that Creon has learned from the tragedy and will therefore be a better (more flexible, more just, more compassionate) leader in the future

Comedy

On the other end of the spectrum is the comedy As a

rule, comedies have happy endings Instead of ending in death, destruction, or separation, comedies end in hap-piness, reconciliation, and union (e.g., marriage) The humor in comedies can come from many sources, such as miscommunications, missed timing, and mistaken identities (all things that can also be the source

of tragedy) Humor may also arise from puns (plays on

the meaning of words) and double meanings as well as overturned expectations For example, in Woody Allen’s

1968 one-act play “Death Knocks,” the Grim Reaper— normally portrayed as a somber, frightening, powerful character of few words and fearful actions—climbs through Nat Ackerman’s window and asks for a glass of water This Grim Reaper is no ominous character who unwillingly takes us from life Rather, he is a hassled, clumsy, casual character who has to check whether he’s got the right address Instead of being afraid of death, we laugh at it, especially at Death’s attempt to make a dra-matic entrance:

DEATH: I climbed up the drainpipe I was try-ing to make a dramatic entrance I see the big windows and you’re awake reading I figure it’s worth a shot I’ll climb up and enter with a

lit-tle—you know [Snaps fingers] Meanwhile, I

get my heel caught on some vines, the drainpipe breaks, and I’m hanging by a thread Then my cape begins to tear Look, let’s just go It’s been a rough night

A melodrama is a “tragedy” that has been given a

happy ending, thus ruining the effect of a true tragedy

Tragicomedies are more common These are true

trage-dies (with a tragic ending), but interspersed throughout are comic scenes that help alleviate the intensity of the emotion the tragedy arouses

– D R A M A –

Today’s Theater

Unlike the Greek tragedies of long ago, today’s dramas

do not center around extraordinary people (kings and

queens) and extraordinary events (wars, plagues, and

other major historical events) Rather, most dramas

focus on “normal” people and the everyday situations

and challenges they face For example, John Guare’s play

Six Degrees of Separation is about our need to connect

with others and the drastic measures we may take to

alle-viate loneliness and fit in

Many of today’s dramatists also believe that plays

should acknowledge that they are plays and should not

attempt to be realistic At the same time, they attempt to

portray human nature as realistically as possible As a

result, the antihero has emerged as a regular onstage

presence This character inspires pity more than admi-ration, for he or she often ruins more than he or she

repairs In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, for

exam-ple, Willy Loman is a deluded salesman who believes that success means being liked by as many people as possible When he loses his job and realizes that he has been liv-ing a lie—and that he has raised his sons to live the same kind of lie—he commits suicide He is a pitiful character

who does not redeem himself But his son, Biff, will

change his life as a result of what he has learned through-out the play He is the true tragic hero