Vol. 4 Issue 1. – Article: ‘Ideas and Activities for Teaching Poetry’ by Pankhuri Bhatia

ELTWeekly Vol. 4 Issue#1 | January 2, 2012 | ISSN 0975-3036

Beauty, as it is often said, cannot be bound by words. But the fact of the truth remains that beauty can easily be encaptured in words, hats off to the poets and their immortal poetry. We mortals, since time immemorial have been witness to what it has done till date and, moreover, what it shall continue to do by playing with words.

Poetry is, infact, the beauty of literature, and so, has rightly been accorded the top most slot in every culture which has a literature to boast of. By appealing to the aesthetic sense, poems leave the readers in a state of long lasting bliss. Poems create beauty through rhythm, sounds, the thoughts they evoke, the characters they portray, the special use of language, through what they say and what they leave unsaid.

Besides providing aesthetic pleasure, poems teach immensely and, therefore, are an integral part of the school and college curriculum. First and foremost, poems are useful in learning language; since, poets use the language of the people to convey their thoughts and feelings. In the hands of the poets the language used gets enriched. Thus, poems help people in the development of effective speech.

Poems can also serve as an excellent prompt for oral work. Students can take part in the discussions that arise after the poem is read out to them. They can also listen to the poems read aloud by the teacher (or on record or tapes).Thus, poems can serve as an excellent means for enhancing all the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Poems acquaint the students with the whole range of possibilities of human life from happiness, love, ecstasy and hope to fear, anxiety and despair.  They purge the students of their emotions, hone their sensibilities and prepare them to face the hard hitting realities of life with more vigour and zest. Thus, the study of poetry leads to mental training of the reader.  This idea was prompted by F.R Lewis, “It trains in a way no other discipline can, intelligence and sensibility together, cultivating sensitiveness and precision of response and integrity of intelligence.”¹

The vast scope of poetry has led to various ways of approaching it. Literary critics have always been concerned with the origin and composition of literary work, whereas, for a linguist the analysis of the literary text is more important. Therefore, they analyze the language of the text at five levels viz phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and discourse.  Stylicians, however, take recourse to a middle path. But for a teacher of English the aim is to arouse the interest of the students in poems, to stimulate their creative sides, to develop in them critical thinking and to make them learn the language which ultimately helps them to experience the bliss that the poems are capable of rendering. I, being a teacher myself, am writing this research paper with the same aim.

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauties of the world,

and makes the familiar objects be as if they were not familiar”²

How do the poets accomplish this feat? Well, they do this miracle with the help of a variety of poetic devices. The analysis of the poetic devices can help the readers to understand the poems in a much better way and thus appreciate the poet’s craft. If the students are given the skills to identify the poetic devices, they themselves will start unveiling the mysteries of the poems created through the special use of language.  The best way of teaching poetic devices is through amusing activities and examples of day to day life. Since, humour tickles the mind, the teaching-learning process becomes fun. This treats students as autonomous agents who participate actively by knowing what they are doing. This also accelerates the learning process. The learners register everything easily and the target of teaching is achieved.

Owing to the paucity of space in a research paper it is not possible to discuss all the figures of speech. So, the figures of speech which are widely used by the poets are chosen for discussion here.

Alliteration

It is one of the oldest poetic devices. It is a figure of speech in which the consonant sound at the beginning of the words is repeated. Alliteration is near to being an instinctive way of emphasis. Not just poetry, if we observe our own conversation we may notice much alliteration. Many proverbial and idiomatic expressions gain much of their force from alliteration. For instance:

1. ‘Fine feathers make fine birds.’
2. ‘Money makes the mare go.’

Alliteration can be best explained through tongue twisters. For instance:

1. Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore.  In this the /s/ sound is being repeated.
2. Mother goose tongue twister:

Peter piper picked a pipe of pickled peppers. In this the /p/ sound is being repeated.

3. The famous Hindi tongue twister;  ‘chandu ke chacha ne chandu ki chachi ko, chandi ke chamach se chatni chatai.’

Alliteration can also be explained with the help of the famous game that children play. For instance:

• Tipi tipi top, which colour you want. In this /t/ and /w/ sounds are being repeated. The students can also be asked to reply in alliteration.

Students are usually film buffs. They can be asked to name actors or cartoon characters having alliterative names. For instance:

Karishma Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck.

Simile

It is a figure of speech in which one thing is compared to another in such a way as to clarify and enhance an image. It is an explicit comparison (as opposed to a metaphor, where the comparison is implicit) recognizable by the use of words ‘like’ or ‘as’ or ‘such as’.³

‘My heart is like a red rose.’ (Robert Burns)

The description of siblings is usually easy to identify with and, therefore, easily understable. Therefore, the students can be given examples such as:

1. My sister is as irritating as a rash.
2. My brother is as messy as a pig.

Exercises:

1. I am as beautiful as _________
2. Shahid  dances like _______
3. Hrithik’s eyes are as blue as _______

Metaphor

A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, without using the word like or as. Metaphors can be very subtle and powerful and can transform people, places, objects and ideas into whatever the writer imagines them to be.

For example: “the starry canvas of the night.”⁴

The comparison is usually implicit. For example a person who is bright can be described as ‘a star’; a pure soul can be described as an ‘angel’.A good way to explain metaphors is to involve personal experiences. The students can be asked to write a metaphor describing their family with the help of the following exercise: they can be asked to compare their family with something that has a number of pieces and parts. For example: a vegetable garden, a bookshelf, a car etc. they can proceed like this:

My family is a vegetable garden with many vegetables. My father is a potato; head of the family. My mother is an onion. She has many layers to her. At times she brings tears to our eyes but essentially adds flavour to our lives.  My sister is a coconut; hard from outside, soft from inside. My brother is a ginger, bitter in taste but a cure for many diseases.

Exercise:

Identify similes and metaphors:

1. Your cheeks are red cherries.
2. This class is like a three ring circus.

Personification

It is a form of comparison in which human characteristics are attributed to inanimate objects. A beautiful tool in the hands of a poet, it lends life and motion to inanimate objects by assigning to them human behaviour and emotions. Personification appears frequently in poetry. For example: Keats in his poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” treats the urn as a ‘sylvan historian’, which can express a tale sweetly.

Examples:

The moon smiled at me. Here, the verb ‘smile’ is a human action. Using the verb smile for moon means we are considering moon as a human being. Personification is variously used in normal day conversation. Indians call moon, ‘chanda mama’ (maternal uncle). They also call sun, ‘suraj chachu’ (paternal uncle). Personification can also be explained by explaining that justice is personified (made into a person) by using a blind folded woman holding the scale of justice. She is blind because she is supposedly impartial.

The language of cricket is understood by all. Therefore, Navjot Singh Sidhu’s famous line, ‘The ball went so high up in the air that it kissed the air hostess on its way back’ can serve as an excellent example of personification.

Exercise:

Find out the object being personified and write its meaning:

1. The rain kissed my cheeks as it fell.
2. The video camera observed the whole scene.
3. The microwave timer told me that it was time for dinner.

Anthropomorphism:

It relates to specific instances of personification in which animals are given human traits such as the ability to speak and show emotions like love and anger.

Example: Animal Farm, Stuart Little.

1.   Video clips can be played for students where they would be required to give voice to the cartoon characters such as Tom and Jerry (popular animation)

2.   Another good example could be playing the Jungle Book series for the students.

Neologism

Invention of new words is called neologism. It is not the prerogative solely of the poets. Journalists, copywriters and scientists are for various reasons renowned for such lexical inventions. Neologism is of three types:

1.       A completely new word (example hap; hipster), without any discernible etymological

origin.

2.       A word formed from an existing root or prefix (many words formed from stereo-, para-

, hetero-).

3.       An established word (e.g. beat, dig, high) which has been given a completely new

meaning.

Quite a number of widely used English words apparently originated in poetry: examples are blatant (Spenser), assassination (Shakespeare), pandemonium (Milton) and casuistry (Pope).⁵

Even ordinary citizens in day- today conversations quite often stumble into neologism in order to express their feelings or opinions. New words are called NONCE- Formations if they are made up ‘for the nonce’, i.e. for a single occasion only, rather than as serious attempts to augment the English word stock for some new need. Poetic neologisms are less ephemeral than conversational ones, for a successful poem will be read time and again.

The best way of teaching neologism is to ask the students to coin their own words. A few examples may be given by the teacher. For example: a person who has a mania for soap can be called a sopomaniac (the word sopomaniac is made up of two words; soap and mania). A person whose sketches look beautiful can be called sketchogenic (sketch and genic).

Pun

A pun is a play on words alike or nearly alike in sound but having different meanings. It is a fore grounded lexical ambiguity which may have its origin either in homonymy or polysemy. A famous pun in dramatic literature is   Mercutio’s laconic crack as he is dying, ‘Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man’. (Romeo and Juliet, III, I).

A pun is often used for creating humour. So, it is best to explain it with the help of humorous examples. For instance,         

Amitabh Bachchan has got two bunglows, one is called Pratiksha and the other is called Jalsa. When amitabh’s son got married, only a few people were invited to the wedding. The people who were invited were put in Jalsa (celebration) and the others were kept waiting i.e. in Pratiksha.

Exercise:

The students can be asked to create their own puns. They can be asked to write their own word or phrase having more than one meaning or having sound similar to the other word and thus write funny puns using them. Some suggestions can be provided like: Taiwan (tie one), Appeal (a peel).

Conclusion:

The afore-said analysis of the poetic devices makes the students understand that the poets take recourse to a particular and in part a unique use of language. Poetic devices are the accessories of a language. By understanding the figures of speech, the students can very easily unveil the connotative meaning of the poem. Once the meaning of the poem stands comprehended, the students on their own realise the ultimate aim of poetry i.e. Rasa. The comprehension of the concepts in this way gives a fillip to the independent thinking of the students. This gives them command over the language as well and the teacher’s efforts stand vindicated. It won’t be an exaggeration to claim that examples are not the best way of teaching; they are in fact the only way.

References

¹Brain Parkinson and Helen Reid Thomas, Teaching Literature in a Second Language (Edinburgh University Press) 9.

²Percy Byshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry, 22 February.

³J. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin Books, 1976) 830.

⁴Wynford Hicks, English for Journalists (Oxon: Routledge,1998) 63.

⁵Geoferey N .Leech, A Linquistic Guide to English Poetry (London: Longman Group Ltd.,1969)15.

Bibliography:

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New Delhi: Thomson, 1999.

Boulton, Marjorie. The Anatomy of Poetry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1953.

Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin Groups, 1976.

Collie, J. and S. Slater. Literature in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Goodman, W. R. Practical Criticism. New Delhi: Doaba House, 1971.

Lazar, Gillian. Literature and Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge, 1993

Leech, Geoferey N. A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London: Longman Group Ltd.,  1969.