1.Stanza (khổ thơ) In poetry, a stanza is used to describe the main building block of a poem. It is a unit of poetry composed of lines that relate to a similar thought or topic—like a paragraph in prose or a verse in a song. Every stanza in a poem has its own concept and serves a unique purpose. A stanza may be arranged according to rhyming patterns and meters—the syllabic beats of a line. It can also be a free-flowing verse that has no formal structure.
2.Rhyme Scheme (cách gieo vần) There are many different types of rhymes that poets use in their work: internal rhymes, slant rhymes, eye rhymes, identical rhymes, and more. One of the most common ways to write a rhyming poem is to use a rhyme scheme composed of shared vowel sounds or consonants
Types of Rhyme Scheme
1.Alternate rhyme. In an alternate rhyme, the first and third lines rhyme at the end, and the second and fourth lines rhyme at the end following the pattern ABAB for each stanza. This rhyme scheme is used for poems with four-line stanzas.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life” :
Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!— For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. 2.Ballade. A ballade is a lyric poem that follows the rhyme scheme ABABBCBC. Ballades typically have three, eight-line stanzas and conclude with a four-line stanza. The last line of each stanza is the same, which is called a refrain.
Andrew Lang, “Ballade of the Optimist”:
And, sometimes on a summer's day To self and every mortal ill We give the slip, we steal away, To walk beside some sedgy rill: The darkening years, the cares that kill, A little while are well forgot; When deep in broom upon the hill, We'd rather be alive than not. 3.Coupled rhyme. A coupled rhyme is a two-line stanza that rhymes following the rhyme scheme AA BB CC, or a similar dual rhyming scheme. The rhymes themselves are referred to as rhyming couplets. Shakespeare’s sonnets end with rhyming couplets, such as this one:
William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 18”
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 4.Monorhyme. In a monorhyme, all the lines in a stanza or entire poem end with the same rhyme.
William Blake, “Silent, Silent Night” :
Silent Silent Night Quench the holy light Of thy torches bright For possess’d of Day Thousand spirits stray That sweet joys betray Why should joys be sweet Used with deceit Nor with sorrows meet But an honest joy Does itself destroy For a harlot coy 5.Enclosed rhyme. The first and fourth lines and the second and third lines rhyme with each other in an enclosed rhyme scheme. The pattern is ABBA, in which A encloses the B. Sonnet VII by John Milton How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. 6.Simple four-line rhyme. These poems follow a rhyme scheme of ABCB throughout the entire poem.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (excerpt)
It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? 7.Triplet. A triplet is a set of three lines in a stanza—called a tercet—that share the same end rhyme. William Shakespeare, “The Phoenix and the Turtle”
Truth may seem, but cannot be Beauty brag, but 'tis not she Truth and beauty buried be 8.Terza rima. An Italian form of poetry that consists of tercets, a terza rima follows a chain rhyme in which the second line of each stanza rhymes with the first and last line of the subsequent stanza. It ends with a couplet rhyming with the middle line of the penultimate stanza. The pattern is ABA BCB CDC DED EE. 10.Limerick. A limerick is a five-line poem with the rhyme scheme AABBA. 11.Villanelle. A type of poem with five three-line stanzas that follow a rhyme scheme of ABA. The villanelle concludes with a four-line stanza with the pattern ABAA.
3.Imagery(hình ảnh)
In poetry, imagery is a vivid and vibrant form of description that appeals to readers’ senses and imagination. Despite the word’s connotation, “imagery” is not focused solely on visual representations or mental images—it refers to the full spectrum of sensory experiences, including internal emotions and physical sensations.
7 types of imagery
Visual imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s sense of sight by describing something the speaker or narrator of the poem sees. It may include colors, brightness, shapes, sizes, and patterns. To provide readers with visual imagery, poets often use metaphor, simile, or personification in their description. William Wordsworth’s classic 1804 poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is a good example:
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
In this poem, inspired by a walk Wordsworth took with his sister, the poet uses simile to compare his lonely wandering to the aimless flight of a cloud. Additionally, he personifies the daffodils, which dance as if a group of revelrous humans.
Auditory imagery. This form of poetic imagery appeals to the reader’s sense of hearing or sound. It may include music and other pleasant sounds, harsh noises, or silence. In addition to describing a sound, the poet might also use a sound device like onomatopoeia, or words that imitate sounds, so reading the poem aloud recreates the auditory experience. In John Keats’ short 1820 poem “To Autumn”—the final poem he wrote before abandoning the craft because poetry wasn’t paying the bills—he concludes with auditory imagery:
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Keats personifies fall as if it is a musician with a song to sing, and then creates an audible soundtrack from the sounds the surrounding wildlife is making. The gnats form a wailful choir, the lambs bleat, the crickets sing, the red-breast whistles, and the swallows twitter—all sounds marking the passage of time and the advance of winter.
Gustatory imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s sense of taste by describing something the speaker or narrator of the poem tastes. It may include sweetness, sourness, saltiness, savoriness, or spiciness. This is especially effective when the poet describes a taste that the reader has experienced before and can recall from sense memory. In Walt Whitman’s 1856 poem “This Compost,” he uses some disturbing gustatory imagery:
O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you? Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv’d, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
Whitman is pondering the life cycle and how it is that the Earth produces “herbs, roots, orchards, grain” that are enjoyable whilst processing a compost of the many human corpses buried under soil everywhere. Although most people have not eaten human flesh, the “sour dead” and “foul liquid and meat” conjure the taste of rotting meat
Tactile imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s sense of touch by describing something the speaker of the poem feels on their body. It may include the feel of temperatures, textures, and other physical sensations. For example, look at Robert Browning’s 1836 poem “Porphyria’s Lover”:
When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm
Browning uses tactile imagery of the chill of a storm, the sensation when a door is closed to it, and the fire’s blaze coming from a furnace grate to describe the warmth of the cottage.
Olfactory imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s sense of smell by describing something the speaker of the poem inhales. It may include pleasant fragrances or off-putting odors. In his poem “Rain in Summer,” H.W. Longfellow writes:
They silently inhale the clover-scented gale, And the vapors that arise From the well-watered and smoking soil
Here, Longfellow’s use of imagery in the words “clover-scented gale” and “well-watered and smoking soil” paints a clear picture in the reader’s mind about smells the speaker experiences after rainfall.
Kinesthetic imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet appeals to the reader’s sense of motion. It may include the sensation of speeding along in a vehicle, a slow sauntering, or a sudden jolt when stopping, and it may apply to the movement of the poem’s speaker/narrator or objects around them. For example, W.B. Yeats’ 1923 poem “Leda and the Swan” begins with kinesthetic imagery:
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
In this retelling of the god Zeus’s rape of the girl Leda from Greek mythology, the opening lines convey violence in the movement of the bird’s “beating” wings while Leda’s “staggering” provides the reader with a sense of her disorientation at the events.
Organic imagery. In this form of poetic imagery, the poet communicates internal sensations such as fatigue, hunger, and thirst as well as internal emotions such as fear, love, and despair. In Robert Frost’s 1916 poem “Birches,” he makes use of organic imagery:
So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It’s when I’m weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood
In this poignant moment, Frost, who has seen bent birch trees and imagined a boy’s playful swinging has bent them, describes feelings of fatigue and aimlessness and a longing to return to the purposeful play of youth.
