Island In Silence

Reading Poetry

• all you need to do at the start is listen for the pleasure produced by poet's arrangement of words
• read the poem aloud before you read it silently
• pay attention to its punctuation & don't stop at the end of every line where there is no punctuation
• the title
• most important about your initial readings is to ask questions about the words, descriptions, sounds, structures…
• a variety of specific elements: speaker, image, metaphor, symbol, rhythm
• note your response at different points

doggerel 打油诗 : lines whose subject matter is trite (老生常谈的主题) & whose rhythm and sounds monotonously heavy-handed (单调笨拙的韵律)  → Crudely or irregularly fashioned verse, often of a humorous or burlesque nature.多属幽默滑稽、粗劣、无章法的诗

“Poetry has two outstanding characteristics. One is that it is indefinable. The other is that it is eventually unmistakable.”                                                    -- Arlington Robinson

Shakespeare's Sonnets 莎士比亚十四行诗

the English sonnet, more commonly known as the Shakespearean sonnet, is organized into 3 quatrains and a couplet, which typically rhyme abab cdcd efef gg.

一种由莎士比亚完善的十四行诗形式，由三个四行诗及一抑扬格五音步诗行的对句组成，具有韵律格式abab cdcd efef gg  也作  Elizabethan sonnet,English sonnet