Creating Meaning
Creating Sound
Alliteration, Assonance, and Consonance
Using Form
- Sonnet
- Sestina
Elements of Poetry
Diction and Connotation
Diction refers to the word choices that a poet makes. Because poems are usually very concise, a poet has to make the most of every word he or she uses. Using specific, concrete words helps writers to do that. For example, a general word would be "car". Now, if you were to say this word in a classroom of twenty-five students and ask each to draw a picture of a car, you would most likely have twenty-five very different pictures. However, if you change that word to a specific word, like "Mustang", the pictures of the cars would suddenly start to look much more similar to each other. Specific word choices help create a more definite picture in the reader's mind.
Every word also has a denotation, or dictionary meaning. Many words share the same denotation, which is why we have synonyms. If you have every used a thesaurus, you have found words with the same denotations. However, these words can't always be used interchangeably because their connotations, or associations, may be different. Words may trigger a response in a reader and cause the reader to make associations to the word. For example, if someone were to say the word "terrorist", most people today make associations to September 11th, Al Queda or Hussein, or the bombings that are occurring almost daily in Israel. None of those associations would be found in the dictionary definition for terrorist, but they are connotations of the word.
A poet can choose words with connotations that fit the tone he or she is trying to achieve or the picture he or she is trying to paint. To see what differences words with the same denotations can have, complete the following activity and bring your answers to class.
Using a thesaurus, write down all of the words that mean the same as "to laugh". Next, write down the connotations of each word, or the associations that you make with it. For example, after the word "cackle", I would write down a witch, a high-pitched or nasal laugh, a hyena. The associations I would make with "guffaw" would be much different.
Class Discussion
Read the following poem and prepare answers to the questions for class.
"My Papa's Waltz"
Theordore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Why did the poet use "romped" instead of "waltzed", as implied in the title, or instead of "danced"?
What connotations does "romped" have that "danced" does not?
How is the word "countenance" different from the other words in the poem? Why choose this word? What information does it give us?
Considering the connotations of the words the poet chose, how do you interpret the situation of the poem?
