Poems

Section 3 - Poems

Ode

• It's a poem that is written for an occasion or on a particular subject: a person, an event, or something that’s not even present.

• It has a more formal and serious form than any other poetry.

• Modern odes: sarcastic poems. Ex: they can talk about velcro and vegetables.

• 3 types of odes: the Pindaric, Horatian and Irregular.  

Keats' odes

• Ode on Indolence (1819): “One morn before me were three figures seen,”

Ode to Psyche (1819): “O GODDESS! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung" Ode to a Nightingale (1819):  “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains”  Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819): “THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,” Ode on Melancholy (1819): “NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist" To Autumn (1819): “SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” Themes in Keats' poetry Themes: The inevitability of death The contemplation of beauty Passing of time Love The Inevitability of Death: Poems: “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”:  “Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.” “Sleep and Poetry”: “Smoothed for intoxication by the breath Of flowering bays, that I may die a death Of luxury” The Contemplation of Beauty: Poems:   “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:  “ A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme” “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again”:  “Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.” Passing of time: Poems:  “To Autumn”: "later flowers for the bees,  Until they think warm days will never cease,           For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells." “Ode to a Nightingale”: "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?   Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?" Love: Poems:   "La Belle Dame sans Merci":  “I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful – a faery’s child” "Bright Star":  “Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,”

Synesthetic Images

It's when the poet combines different senses, such as tactile, visual, auditory, taste or smell in just one image. The synaesthesia performs a major function in Keats' poems: it produces a sensual effect by combining different senses together, reproducing one important image which the poet wants to highlight in a certain poem.

"Isabella; or, the Pot of Gold":

"And TASTE the MUSIC of that VISION pale." (stanza XLIX)

In this quotation, John Keats uses a synesthetic image as he combines three sensory experiences such as taste, auditory and visual, so as to share his feelings.

Poetic Ballad

The Poetic Ballad has its origin in the Middle Ages. It's a type of poem were stories are told through songs. It's constructed in quatrain stanzas, which each line contains 3 or 4 stresses and rhyming the second with the fourth lines, or alternating lines.

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"