Michaela's Poetry Blog: In what a beautiful silence the death is inflicted

Sunday, January 18, 2009

In what a beautiful silence the death is inflicted

My second external form poem this week is Evening News by David Ferry, which is on page 1048 of the Norton.

The interesting set-up of this poem leaves a lot of blank space on the page, which mirrors the "nothing" mentioned in the second and third lines. The way the lines are arranged makes the reader pause while speaking or reading and go through the poem slowly.

The pace created by the shape of the poem allows the reader to examine the juxtaposition of the language as well, which leads to the deeper meaning. "Death" and "wasted" are really the only two unpleasant words in the poem, so it is easy to glide over them amongst happy words such as "beautiful," "dazzling," and "radiantly." "The eye is instructed" by these words, which serve to gloss over the actual issue of death and destruction in the village. The shape and resulting pace of the poem helps the reader to have a discerning eye, which is necessary when watching the evening news as well, to discover the truth beneath the pleasantries.

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Literary Devices

Apostrophe: when a speaker breaks off to address a person who is not there or an abstract quality or idea
Allusion: a reference to something in literature, history, etc.
Enjambment: the continuation of a clause or sentence over a line break
Envoi: a short stanza at the end of a poem to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem
Euphony: a sound pattern that creates a smooth, pleasant quality in a poem
Anaphora: emphasizing words or phrases by repeating them at the beginnings of clauses
Euphemism: the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that might offend or suggest something unpleasant
Caesura: a short pause within a line of poetry, often but not always signaled by punctuation
Italian/Petrarchan sonnet: 8-6 sonnet ordinarily written in a rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde
English/Shakespearean sonnet: 4-4-4-2 sonnet ordinarily written in a rhyme scheme of abba abba efef gg
Sonnet: verse form of fourteen lines usually written in iambic pentameter.
Stanza: a group of lines divided from other groups by white space on the page, divided for effect.
Reflective (meditative) Structure: A poem which muses about a subject, theme, or event and whose structure imitates and represents the thought process
Imitative Structure: A poem which mirrors as closely as possible the structure of something that already exists and can be seen
Descriptive Structure: A poem's organization based on the description of a person or thing
Discursive Structure: Organization made to resemble the form of a treatise, argument,or essay
Dramatic Structure: A poem that consists of a series of scenes, presented as if on stage
Narrative Structure: The organization of a poem based upon a story and the unfolding of its plot
Situation: The context of the poem's action
Setting: The time and place in which the poem takes place
Speaker: The person whose ideas and feelings the reader hears (if different from those of the poet)
Tone: Attitude of the speaker to the subject