| Mood
and Meaning in Poetry
Learn
how various techniques impact the mood and meaning of poetry.
Mood
The mood is the feeling or atmosphere of a piece. The
mood can be many different things. Some examples included:
- A feeling
of love.
- A feeling
of doom.
- A feeling
of fear.
- A feeling
of pride.
- An
atmosphere of chaos.
- An
atomsphere of peace.
Meaning
What is the author trying to communicate.
How
to Achieve Mood and Meaning
You
should be able to establish mood or purpose in poetry by:
- choice
of words,
- summary
terms,
- symbolic
language,
- structure
of the sentences,
- the
length of each poetic line,
- and
the punctuation marks chosen.
- So
to do this, you must first have background knowledge on
the subject, or research it.
Dialect
A regional way of speaking that is different from the
norm. For example, A southerner might say Ya'll while
a New Yorker might say Youz Guys. The entire piece
can be altered by dialect. If you want to convey a sense of
innocence, you might choose the casual dialect of a someone
who has not had much schooling.
Invented
words
Poets
can invent words.Just look at any Dr. Suess book. His words
always convey some meaning and often come with the mood of
levity. These words are never just thrown in to fit a place,
they add color and clarity to a work.
Sensory
and figurative language
Sensory
language is language that appeals to the senses (e.g seeing,
hearing, feeling, touching, smelling). Figurative Language
are words used for descriptive effect that express some truth
behind their literal meaning (eg. similes, metaphors, personification).
Sentence
structure
You
could choose long compound sentences to, perhaps, create an
air of formality and seriousness. Or maybe you want a more
lively piece in which you can choose longer and shorter sentences.
Perhaps, instead, you want to create a feeling of confusion,
you might chose to use fragments.
Line
legnth
The
legnth of sentences and stanzas in poems. Again, you can convey
mood and meaning by varying your line length, just as you
can by varying your sentence structure.
Punctuation
The use of standard marks and signs in writing and printing
to seperate words into sentences, clauses, and phrases in
order to clarify meaning. You can create confusion or perhaps
insecurity by including no punctuation.
Rythm
The arrangment of stressed and unstressed sounds in writing
and speech. Rythm may be regular or it may be varied.
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