Poem it is a literary text written in verse, which are distributed in stanzas. These verses can be regular, white or free. If it is composed of regular verses, this text may have different types of rhymes. It can also be narrative, dramatic or lyrical.
Regarding the differences between poem and poetry, the poem refers to a textual structure, while poetry is related to the content of the text.
Read too:Five poems by Manuel Bandeira
What is a poem?
Poem it is a literary text written in verse. Thus, structurally, he is opposed to prose, since she doesn't admit verses.
Poem example
Logies and Analogies
In Brazil medicine is doing well
but the patient is still doing poorly.
what is the deep secret
of this original science?
It's banal: certainly
it's not the patient
that accumulates capital.
cacasse
Prose example
Today, on the train, I came with the Apocalypse. He's a thin, scrawny guy, always unshaven. Dirty, short pants give the exact cut of her legs, which are thin, looking just like bone. The curious thing is that the Apocalypse, with the physiognomy of a domesticated old ape, kindly, etc. etc., has three children: one is at Escola do Realengo; another in the gym, and the other in the monastery of São Bento. (Book excerpt intimate diary, by Lima Barreto.)
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
Characteristics of the poem
A poem presents:
- Verses:
regular: with meter and rhyme;
white: with meter and without rhyme;
free: no meter and no rhyme.
- Stanzas:
couplet: two verses;
triplet: three verses;
quadra or quartet: four verses;
quintet or quintilla: five verses;
sextet or sextille: six verses;
seventh or septil: seven verses;
eighth: eight verses;
novena or ninth: nine verses;
tenth: ten verses.
The poem can also feature rime:
external: similar sounds at the end of different verses;
internal: rhymes between the final word of a verse and another within the next verse;
rich: between words belonging to different grammatical classes;
poor: between words belonging to the same grammatical class;
paired: AABB;
alternate or crossed: ABAB;
interpolated or opposite: ABBA;
mixed: another type of combination, such as ABACD;
acute: between oxytone words or stressed monosyllables;
severe: between paroxytone words;
esdruxula: among proparoxytones;
perfect, ringing, or consonant: complete sound matching;
imperfect, ringing or blowing: no complete sound matching.
→ Example
Next, let's analyze the structure of the fidelity sonnet (1939), of Vinicius de Moraes (1913-1980):
Of everything, to my love I will be attentive (THE)
Before, and with such zeal, and always, and so much (B)
That even in the face of the greatest charm (B)
Of him my thoughts become more enchanted. (THE)
I want to live it in every moment (THE)
And in your praise I will spread my song (B)
And laugh my laugh and shed my tears (B)
Your grief or your contentment. (THE)
And so, when you come to me later (Ç)
Who knows death, anguish of those who live (D)
Who knows loneliness, end of those who love (AND)
I can tell myself about the love (that I had): (D)
That it is not immortal, since it is flame (AND)
But let it be infinite while it lasts. (Ç)
That sonnet is composed of regular verses, since you have meterification, that is, all verses have ten poetic syllables (decasyllables), and the following rhymes:
external: attentive/thought, so much/enchantment, moment/contentment, singing/weeping, seek/last, live/had, love/flame;
rich: attentive/thought, so much/charm, love/flame;
poor: moment/contentment, singing/weeping, seek/last, live/had;
interpolated or opposites: ABBA (strophes 1 and 2);
bass: attentive/thought, so much/enchantment, moment/contentment, singing/weeping, seek/last, live/had, love/flame;
perfect, ringing or consonants: untilthen/pensamthen, tdear/encso, moment/contentament, çdear/prso, procure/dure, vive/tive,love/chlove.
In addition, the poem features the following stanzas:
quartets: stanzas 1 and 2;
triplets: stanzas 3 and 4.
See too: Lyrical genre - the legitimate expression of subjectivity
Types of poem
epic or narrative poem
Tell a story, in the form of verses, and presents all the characteristics of narrative genre, as narrator, characters, time and space. An example of this type of poem is the following excerpt from the book the uraguay (1769), by Basilio da Gama (1741-1795):
They still smoke on deserted beaches
tepid and impure lakes of blood
Where naked corpses ripple,
Crows pasture. It lasts in the valleys
The hoarse sound of angry artillery.
MUSE, let us honor the Hero that the rude people
Subjugated from the Uruguay, and in his blood
The affront washed away from the royal decrees.
[...]
dramatic poem
It does not have the voice of a narrator, as the story unfolds from the characters' speeches, structured in the form of verses, as in the following excerpt from death and severe life (1956), book of João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999):
THE RETREATANT EXPLAINS TO THE READER WHO HE IS AND WHAT HE IS GOING TO
— My name is Severino,
I don't have another sink.
As there are many Severinos,
who is a pilgrimage saint,
then they called me
Severinus of Mary;
as there are many Severinos
with mothers named Maria,
I was Maria's
of the late Zechariah.
But that still says little:
there are many in the parish,
because of a colonel
who was called Zechariah
and which was the oldest
lord of this allotment.
[...]
Lyric poem
manifest ideas, emotions or wishes. Does not have features of gender dramaticdoesn't even tell a story, as seen in the poem Your eyes, by Junqueira Freire (1832-1855):
Such beautiful eyes
What are in you!
so beautiful eyes
I never saw...
there may be beautiful
But not such as;
there is not in the world
Who has equals.
[...]
have such a charm
Your eyes!
"Who else can?"
Them or God?
See too: Haiku: a poem of Japanese origin
How is a poem made?
To make a poem, you need to answer these two questions:
Will the poem be narrative, dramatic or lyrical?
Whether it's narrative or dramatic, you need to create a plot, characters, and define where and when the action will take place. Also, you must choose a type of narrator — observer, omniscient, or character — for the narrative poem, which is not necessary for the dramatic poem. But if you're lyrical, you should ignore all these elements and focus on an idea, emotion, or desire you want to talk about.
Will the poem have regular, white or free verses?
If it has regular or white verses, it is necessary meter. So, you'll have to choose what kind of regular verses to use. You can choose the roundabout,smaller (five syllables) or greater (seven syllables), the decasyllable (ten syllables) or the Alexandrian (twelve syllables), for example. These are the most used, but there are other options.
In the case of regular verses, it is also necessary to think about the rhymes: external, internal, rich, poor, paired, alternate (crossed), interpolated (opposite), mixed, high, low, odd, perfect or imperfect. In the case of free verses, you don't have to worry about metering or rhyming, however, whatever type of verse you choose, the content must be attractive.
→ Tips
In metering, the back syllable count is made up to the last stressed syllable: “De-le-se en-can-te-more- my- pen-sa-men-to". Thus, in this verse by Vinicius de Moraes, we count ten poetic syllables.
Still in metrics, when the last syllable of a word ends with vowel sound and the first syllable of the next word starts with vowel sound, in the count it is possible to join these syllables, which, instead of two, will be considered just one: “De-le- if in-can-te-more- my- think-sa-men-to".
THE roundabout is the most suitable choice for poems with a simpler content.
O decasyllable it's the alexandrine are good choices for less emotional poemsor more complex, like the narrative poem.
One type of rhyme does not exclude the other; therefore, you can have, in the same poem, rich and poor rhymes, for example.
In the poem with regular verses, it is necessary to have the ability to fit content to form, to choose the right words, without compromising the measure of the verse and the rhyme.
In the poem with free verses, the content becomes even more relevant.
Read too: Perfect rhyme and imperfect rhyme
Differences between Poem and Poetry
O poem is a structure, that is, a text written in the form of verses, with or without metering, with rhymes or not. Thus, opposes prose, which is not using verses in the writing of a text. already the poetry is the content, characterized by multi-meaning, ambiguity and strangeness. Thus, there can be poetry written in verse or in prose form, the so-called “poetic prose”.
Let's analyze the sonnet verses to a dog, in Augusto dos Anjos (1884-1914):
What strength could, attached to shapeless embryos,
Your stupid throat rip out
The secret of the egg cell
To bark in huge solitudes?!
This obnoxious unconsciousness, in which you sleep,
Enough is, to prove
The unknown soul, ancestor and elementary,
of yours vermiform ancestors.
Dog! — Soul of an inferior wandering rhapsode!
Resign her, support her, support her, caress her, help her
The scale of the ancestral barks...
And so it will go on, for centuries,
Barking the weirdest prosody
From your parents' hereditary anguish!
After reading this text, you can conclude that it is a poem, due to the fact that it is written in verse. Furthermore, these verses are metrified (decasyllables) and have rhymes. This poem is a poetry, causes strangeness during its reading, as it is ambiguous and multi-significant. But, attention, literature and art are not exact sciences; they're not even science, of course. What we mean is that, at times, the text may not be so ambiguous or strange, but it may present multiple meanings, that is, extrapolate the meaning connotative text.
Now let's read an excerpt from a poetic prose in Cruz e Sousa (1861-1898) entitled Sound. As you will see, this text it's not a poem, as it was written in prose form; at the however, it is a poetry, as it presents ambiguity, strangeness and multiple meanings:
I bring all the street vibrations, on a sunny day, when a electric current of motion circulates in the air...
But, of all the collected vibrations, only me remained, living the music of the sound in my delighted ear, the song of your voice, which I keep in my ear, I keep forever, like a diamond inside a golden shrine.
Here it is, here I feel harmonizing, spreading in sound my whole body, like flexuous ideal serpent, your white light filter voice, magnetic, dormant like an opium…
Often, by night when the stars march across the sky, I have been throbbing to the sensation of errant notes, of vague sounds that the breezes bring.
The deep melancholies that the stars and the night bring down through my being, from the silent vastness of the firmament, they give my soul abstract softness, vaporous fluids, solemn symphonies, mysticism, immense waves of unprecedented sonority.
[...]
At this point, you might be asking yourself: “There is, then, a poem that is not poetry?”. To answer your question, let's read an excerpt from The Lusiads (1572), prose in verse of Luís Vaz de Camões (1524-1580).
And as Gama very much wished
Pilot for India, which he was looking for,
He saw to it that among these Moors it was taken,
But it didn't happen to him how he cared;
That none of them would teach you
What part of heaven was India;
But they tell you all who are near
Melindre, where they will find the right pilot.
We just read a poem, as it is a text written in verses. In this case, the verses are metrified (decasyllables) and have rhymes. However, there is no strangeness, ambiguity or multi-meaning in the content of the text, which is more denotative. so he it's not poetry.
Finally, it is necessary to clarify that the term "prose" can either refer to a text structureopposite to back for a more objective content. Therefore, when we say that the excerpt from Camões' poem is a prose in verse, we are referring to a prose content, that is, denotative.
Read too:5 best poems by Fernando Pessoa
solved exercises
The questions 01 and 02 refer to the poem.
THE DANCE AND THE SOUL
THE DANCE? It's not movement,
sudden musical gesture.
It's concentration, in a moment,
of human natural grace.
Not on the ground, in the ether we hover,
in it we would love to stay.
The dance — not wind in the branches:
sap, strength, perennial being.
A being between sky and ground,
new domain conquered,
where to look for our passion
free yourself everywhere...
where the soul can describe
your most divine parables
without escaping the form of being,
over the mystery of fables.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade. complete work. Rio de Janeiro: Aguilar, 1964. P. 366.
Question 01 (Enem)
The definition of dance, in dictionary language, which comes closest to what is expressed in the poem is
a) the oldest of the arts, serving as an element of communication and affirmation of man in every moment of his existence.
b) the form of bodily expression that goes beyond physical limits, enabling man to release his spirit.
c) the manifestation of the human being, formed by a sequence of confused gestures, steps and movements.
d) the organized set of body movements, with a rhythm determined by musical instruments, noises, songs, emotions, etc.
e) the movement directly linked to the individual's psyche and, consequently, to their intellectual development and culture.
Resolution:
Alternative “b”.
According to Drummond's poem, dance is a “form of bodily expression that goes beyond physical limits”, as the lyrical self affirms that it “is not movement, / sudden musical gesture", is "A being between sky and ground, / new domain conquered, / where we seek our passion / free yourself throughout side...". Therefore, "it enables man to liberate his spirit": "Where the soul can describe / its most divine parables / without escaping the form of being, / over the mystery of fables."
Question 02 (Enem)
The poem “A Dança ea Alma” is constructed based on contrasts, such as “movement” and “concentration”. In one of the stanzas, the term that contrasts with ground is:
a) ether.
b) sap.
c) floor.
d) passion.
e) to be.
Resolution:
Alternative “a”.
The word “ether” is opposed to the word “soil”, since the ether is something volatile, unstable, while the soil is something firm.
Question 03 (Enem)
broken
sometimes I'm the policeman I suspect
I ask for documents
and even in possession of them
I arrest myself and I beat myself up
sometimes i'm the doorman
not letting me in on myself
unless
through the service port
[…]
sometimes I make a point of not seeing myself
and clogged with their sight
I feel misery conceived as an eternal
beginning
close the circle
being the gesture I deny
the drip that I drink and I get drunk
the finger that I point
and I denounce
the point at which I surrender.
sometimes!…
CUTI. Negroesia. Belo Horizonte: Mazza, 2007 (fragment).
In the black-themed literature produced in Brazil, the presence of elements that translate historical experiences of prejudice and violence is recurrent. In the poem, this experience reveals that the lyrical self
a) selectively incorporates the speech of its oppressor.
b) submits to discrimination as a means of empowerment.
c) engages in denouncing past oppression and injustice.
d) suffers a loss of identity and sense of belonging.
e) sporadically believes in the utopia of an egalitarian society.
Resolution:
Alternative “a”.
The lyrical self embodies the discourse of its oppressor, when it behaves like the policeman and the doorman.
Image credits:
|1|rook76 / Shutterstock.com
by Warley Souza
Literature teacher
