A lot of students are expected to write a literary essay based on appreciation of poetry. To make the task enjoyable we need to define poetry. What is poetry? Edmund Clarence Stedman said the following: “Poetry is rhythmical, imaginative language expressing the invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight of the human soul.”

Poetry is the creativity of a person’s imagination. Like any other literary work, it needs to be understood to be appreciated. The writer writes for a reason. His purpose may be to evoke emotion, inform, define, represent something of the world or life, entertain … Whatever the case, a poem is unique to its writer. And each poem can be analyzed to be appreciated. Here are some general ideas to help you understand the poem you are reading:

1. Subject: Try to outline the subject matter of the poem. You need to look at what is being described. It could be a place, an event, a person, a situation or an experience. What does the poet want you to focus on, in the poem or in each stanza?
2. Theme: Once you have identified the subject of the poem, try and figure out what the poet wants to tell you. Look at the following: the poet’s message; his purpose; ideas that he is conveying; the title; and the type of poem (i.e. sonnet, ballad, lyrical, reflective, monologue, elegy, narrative, descriptive, a combination of different types). Always remember that feeling and tone work hand-in-hand with the subject and theme.
3. Structure: The form of the poem is very important. By now, you should know what kind of poem you are dealing with: e.g. ballad, epic, ode, sonnet, dramatic monologue, elegy, etc. Discuss your knowledge of the poem’s structure in the essay
4. Rhythm: Look at the flow of the poem through the line patterns. Are they regular or irregular? If they are regular, does the metre stay the same throughout the poem? (Metre: pattern of rhythmic beats per line; stressed and unstressed words that make up the rhythm of the poem, indicating pace, e.g. slow or fast.) If there are changes to the metre, analyse where the changes are. Try to find the reason for the change. What effect does this change have on the poem?
5. Rhyme: Does the poem have a set scheme? Has the poet written in free verse, blank verse; does he use pair rhyme, cross rhyme, or broken rhyme? Does he use half rhyme, near rhyme, middle rhyme or end rhyme? Does the poet emphasise words or the message by means of the rhyme scheme? What is the purpose and effect of the rhyme scheme? Pausing and punctuation have an effect on the structure, rhythm and rhyme of a poem.
6. Imagery: There are various ways to paint a picture in the reader’s mind through the use of words. Look at the figurative and sound devices used in the poem. Are the images visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, olfactory or gustatory?
7. Diction: The words that are used and the way they are placed can enhance the power of the poet’s creativity. Remember inversion, hyperbole, euphemism, irony, sarcasm, rhetorical questions and other poetic techniques that can bring meaning to the poem. When you are writing your essay, you only need to mention imagery, figurative and sound devices, as well as diction; you need not explain why the poet has used the technique or whether it is effective or not.
8. General Impression: Give your opinion of the poem in general and what effect it has had on you. Did you like it or not? Remember to use quotation marks when you are quoting from the poem.

As you read and appreciate more poetry, you will discover that the study of poetry is educationally fulfilling. Once you start to understand poems, you will be enriched in so many ways. Poetry enhances character. Keep on trying. Success lies first and foremost in the love for literature, and then it can be found in the understanding and interpretation of texts.

Auditory processing skills come into play when becoming a proficient reader. Think about this for a minute. In order to read you need to decode words (the ability to sound out printed words) as well as encode words (the ability to put letters to the sounds that make up a word).

Many students that struggle with reading struggle because they have auditory processing difficulties. There are actually nine areas of auditory processing that affect learning. Problems with any one or more of those areas can make learning difficult. The cause of the auditory processing difficulties may be due to CAPD, ADD, dyslexia, a learning disability, a learning difficulty or autism.

If you are a parent working with your own child, or tutoring a student, or homeschooling or a teacher, there are specific things you can do to make a difference in your child’s learning life.

Here are 6 activities you can use to strengthen auditory processing. These auditory processing activities use things you typically have around the house or in the classroom.

These activities are designed for you to do either at home after school or during the day if you are homeschooling. These activities will help those children with dyslexia, learning disabilities, ADHD, auditory processing problems such as auditory memory, auditory discrimination, and auditory closure.

Awareness of Phonemes or Letter Sounds

For success with reading and spelling, your child must perceive the individual phoneme sounds of the language. He must learn to differentiate each language sound representing a letter shape from other sounds. Such abilities are essential for decoding written language.

1. Initial consonants. Learning beginning sounds of words is important. To prepare for this activity, make a list of 40 words (1 key word and 3 words per time – e.g. popcorn: plate, handle, lamp; banana: car, bus, rug; milk: astronaut, mountain, bicycle). Then, say, “Tell me the word that begins like popcorn: plate, handle, lamp.” Continue down your list of keywords and words.
2. Ask your child to think of words that begin like a specific word: e.g. Tom, candy, dog, fan, etc.
3. Have your child find pictures of words that begin like Tom, or find pictures of words in magazines that begin with the letter T. Find the word that is different at the beginning from the rest: “paper, pear, table, past.”
4. Consonant blends, digraphs, endings, vowels. Similar activities can be devised to help your child learn to auditorily perceive and discriminate other phonic elements.
5. Rhyming words. Learning to hear rhyming words helps your child recognize phonograms. Games similar to initial consonants can be used with rhyming words. Experience with nursery rhymes and poems that rhyme is also helpful.
6. Riddle rhymes. Make up riddles that rhyme. Have your child guess the last rhyming word. For example: “It rhymes with book. You hang your clothes on a _________.”

Remember, good auditory processing skills are a critical component to reading success. Fortunately, there are a variety of books, games, and guides that are specifically designed to work on auditory processing at the same time as specific skills such as reading, spelling, note taking, and comprehension. When choosing materials, you want to be sure they will do two things. You want to be sure they address auditory processing skills such as auditory memory, auditory comprehension, auditory discrimination, auditory closure, and reading comprehension. You also want to be sure they teach specific learning skills such as reading, writing, and spelling.

For centuries, companies have used slogans in their advertisement. Big and small firms use catchy phrases to make their product special. With time, the pattern of slogans has changed and today many companies are using rhyming slogans to stand out in the crowd. As an advertiser, you should always try to attract the customer’s attention. Rhyming slogans are a perfect way to achieve this goal. Given below are the advantages of using such slogans.

Differentiate your product

The advertising landscape has undergone a sea change over the years. Unique thoughts of yesterday have become common today. With the growth of media, consumers see and read thousands of ads every day. Right from television and print to social media, they are bombarded with messages from thousands of companies. Using rhyming slogan helps you to differentiate your product from your competitor. Jingles are easy to recall than long tag lines. While a lengthy tag line may give plenty of information about your product, using jingles creates a striking reputation in the mind of the consumer.

Have a warm and fuzzy effect on consumer

Alliteration in advertising slogans has a warm and fuzzy effect on consumers. It brings a smile on their face and imparts a positive feeling among them. Such slogans stick in the mind of buyers for years to come.

Creates solid product awareness

Poems are easy to remember and create a robust product awareness. It creates a rhythmic echo that is hard to forget. You can easily kindle the buyer’s imagination by using poetry in your slogan. You can describe many things about your product through corporate poetry. Copywriters strive to give a musical touch to the catchphrase.

Creates brand recognition

With the help of rhyming slogans, you can tie all the elements of an ad campaign and create recognition for your brand. You can, not only use the catch line in your product, but also on promotional items. All this will help you create brand recognition in the market.

Reach young audience

Using jingles helps you reach the young audience. Children get a hang rhymes at a young age in schools and using them in your ad gives a great exposure of your product among kids.

Successful companies have sought help of jingles sometimes or other during their promotional campaign. A perfect tag line makes your brand memorable and creates a long-lasting impression among buyers. Ad ideas revolve around a motto. A perfect slogan will help your brand reach great heights and reap huge benefits.

*Poetry and pleasing verses and rhyming words inspire, captivate and entertain everyone, especially our children. Children’s stories are always short and sweet and rhyme at the end. If you think about poetry and rhyming that was our first inspiration as children to want to learn more about nature, animals and other peoples from around the world. Acknowledge the power and the beauty that poetry and rhyming words provide to you and me. The power and reach of poetry extends to our posterity, outliving our differences and springing forward our unity. Our unity will be seen long after we are gone, for many generations to come!

* At the onset of poetic inspiration are genuinely happy or joyful memories that inspire feelings of tranquility, relaxation and contentment. Perhaps happiness abounds for you too when remembering wonderful childhood memories! Do you remember your old neighbors, long, lost relatives or some of your favorite religious, cultural or traditional activities that you engaged as a child? Maybe specific cultural, traditional or athletic or original ways of childhood adventure were part of your childhood experience. Do you remember the name(s) of your neighborhood pet(s), or if you had a pet, do you remember its name? I remember most of the names of our childhood pets, though since there are so many kids and there were so many pets, I am sure that I might forget a few names: Windy-the dog, our rabbits were named- Romeo and Juliet, or was that the birds? Honestly, we had so many pets that I have to admit that I may only remember a dozen names, at best.

I remember a lot of the names of the neighborhood kids that played with us when we kids. They can from many different parts of the state, had different religious beliefs, and more often than not, were not even all from Texas. Children are both accepting and eager to embrace cultural knowledge, diversity and inclusion. I remember going to Sam and Tammy’s house and getting to meet their parents and visit their home. They lived in an apartment, as a child, visiting their home was the first exposure that I had to see apartment living. I thought it was fun! I was fascinated by apartment living! No yard to clean, no dog poop to clean, no laundry to hang outside on the clothesline, no weeds to pull, no leaves to rake, what a wonderful life, I thought. They each had their own bedroom.

Then, I got this really neat idea and asked my dad to move us into an apartment and he replied,” Sure, just remember that we will not have any rabbits, swing sets, slides, mini- bikes, large outdoor toys, trampolines, portable swimming pools, backyard soccer field, drive way basketball court, or any outdoor games. As I thought about what dad said, I slowly decided that apartment living was NOT going to be very fun FOR ME,at all. Because I was the youngest, I was not allowed to play outside alone or unsupervised, or able to go outside at all when my sibling’s were at school. As a matter a fact, it was going to be especially awful for, because I wasn’t allowed to play outside anywhere, unless I was in my own yard, so I quickly scratched the idea of apartment living.

*It was a lot of fun living in an environment that had a lot of people around. We always had one another for playtime and to protect one another. Life was always eventful, you were never alone at home, or ever even alone in your yard without the presence of a dog, or any other kind of animal by your side. I had siblings around me at all times, during my youthful, formative years, until they grew up and cultivated lives and children of their own.

* Childhood days of playing and glorious non-existent responsibility, came with trouble-free malaise. The only childhood malaise that came about was always very seasonal. Yep, it’s that time again! As a kid, about the only time to fret was recognizing daylight savings time: an hour less time to sleep, ushering in the spring season of the year. We all reluctantly recognize the changing of the clocks, it is observed at the stroke of 2:00 A.M- at least here on the east coast of the U.S.: Remember, it’s time to Spring forward and lose an hour of sleep! Daylight Saving’s time is here AGAIN, and it always comes a little bit too early for me every year. Time to rise and shine an hour earlier than what was observed just one day before.

In the Fall or Autumn we will be falling back and again, that is another anxious time for children as they get to play outside one hour less than they could, just the day before. The dates and times of the Fall season changes of course, are between Winter and Spring and Autumn and Winter. In the Autumn, oftentimes called Fall, we will be falling back an hour; extending our evening slumber one hour longer than just the one day before.

These are some of the best memories to entertain when remembering the small, simple concerns of our childhood and youth. When I reminisce, about what I miss the most, I remember missing the consistency of the jovial and peaceful living in a family group and setting. I remember a time when five consecutive days were meant to be spent at school, and weekends were spent at grandma’s, church services, and dinning out for Sunday pancakes,lunch soccer games and barbecue’s and Saturday night movies, popcorn and fried chicken or pizza for dinner. Does anybody miss those days as much as I do? The large time clock on the wall in the family living room held so many secrets that it could probably write some very funny or happy poems of its own.

Children enjoy learning and seek inspiration when writing, rhyming or story-telling. Sometimes students may write stories to keep themselves amused, engaged or simply to fend off boredom. The nostalgia when remembering the biggest dilemmas that we experienced as a kids, is simply humbling.

*A feeling of bliss is in the air as warm feelings abound in the tone or mood of the poet or writer. When a poet feels happy, he wants his mood to consume the tone of the room where he is calmly writing. It is usually first demonstrated during childhood, at the very beginning when writing an inspirational verse, rhyme or in the musical composition of lyrics. Or on occasion, writing inspiration is released from childhood memories of happiness and youthful nonchalance attributed to the days of unfettered childhood memories.

As children grow into adults, they inherit all of the responsibilities and problems that adolescence and adulthood most assuredly bring about, like a Florida thunderstorm in July. As adults, writers seek more or different diversions for writing and decompressing. Writers seek introspective and inspiration through experiences engaged or pursued in nature. Engaging the elements is beneficial for attaining the innocence and inspiration required for the cultivation of writing stories, books, rhymes and songs.

*Share or give attention and gain inspiration by listening to the simple, subtle, natural sounds in nature.

You can gain perspective when you engage musical instruments, joyful songs or verses as a starting point when seeking inspirational assistance to facilitate or aid the writing or artistic process.

Life Inspiration is helpful when writing entertaining, amusing or short passages or verses. Write poetry for yourself first;enjoy reading your hard work first,before you decide to share your artistic creativity with others. Poetry and pleasing verses and rhyming words inspire, captivate and entertain everyone, especially our children. Children’s stories are always short and sweet and rhyme at the end.

*I enjoy learning from you and from others offering me knowledge continuously!~

Many people have attempted to tell me that road trips and road trip games are a thing of the past, now that everyone flies to their destinations. While there is certainly truth to that, people still go on road trips all the time – and anyone who has kids will agree that they are always looking for fun games and activity ideas for any long road trip, or even just a short car trip around town to run errands.

So, whether on your next long road trip, or just a quick car trip around town – try this extremely fun game to help keep the kids entertained. It is one of many, but seems to be one that children really enjoy.

BILLBOARD POETRY

# of Players: 2 or more

Objects Needed: Nothing

Everyone playing this fun car game will be on their own team. One player will start and find a random billboard and read one sentence from the billboard, and it should be a relatively short sentence (anywhere from 5-7 words long). Once the sentence is read, the person to the left of whoever just read the sentence will then have 30 seconds to think up a line that rhymes with the sentence just read. This made up rhyme must be about the same amount of words, the end word must rhyme, and it should be somewhat relating to or relevant to what the sentence is about. If, for example, if player 1 reads: “everything in the store must go,” then before 30 seconds is up, player 2 might say: “the merchandise is selling so slow.”

Once player 2 responds with a pertinent rhyme, they will then find a new sentence from a different billboard, and this will repeat around the circle. If a player does not respond within 30 seconds, or the rhyme is voted by everyone else as either not rhyming or not relating to the sentence read, that person gets one strike. A player is out for that round once they receive 3 strikes. The last player playing will receive a point for winning that round. Start another round, and everyone will come back in and play – the first person to score 3 points is the winner!

If you’re reading this article you too, probably, have a toddler or two running around creating havoc. If, like me, you’re wondering where all the traditional nursery rhymes have gone to, I’m here to remedy the situation!

Do you remember the traditional children’s songs from your kindergarten years such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, Incy Wincy/Itsy Witsy Spider, ABC, etc? I assume that you remember them sung in a certain way, with different emphasis and stresses on certain keywords. You cannot forget the melodies either – impossible! In fact a lot of melodies are reused on multiple nursery rhymes such as Twinkle Twinkle has the same melody as the A, B, C Song and Baa Baa Black Sheep.

So you can imagine my horror when recently, when I was trying to entertain my youngest daughter (15 months old) with some videos on YouTube and almost none of these aforementioned kids’ songs were as I recalled! Was my poor memory to blame here?

I wanted to show my baby all the nursery rhymes that I had grown up with, as did my own mother/father and theirs too. I was stunned (or should that read “shocked”?) to see how disastrously bad the vast majority of the online videos were. I mean they were really awful! At best, some were genuinely laugh out loud, but for all the wrong reasons(!) and at worst some were downright scary and perhaps not even suitable for young children. Perhaps the ratio of good:poor quality was around 1:40! Also I noticed that most of the YouTube nursery rhyme videos had incredibly long intros – 20, 30 or even more seconds of pre-ambling material, promotions and other irrelevant material before actually commencing the main theme. I probably don’t need to tell you dear parent, that even just 20 seconds can seems like an incredibly long time when you have a wriggling and slightly bored baby on your lap!

Not only are the websites and animations mainly of an incredibly poor quality the actual songs and lyrics themselves were very often incorrect, as the singer/company’s first language was often not actually English. Where had all the real nursery rhymes gone I wondered? There was very little online resources that mirrored my childhood memories. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” had now become “Dwingle Dwingle” and the little boy from Baa Baa Black Sheep now lived in the lane (whatever that means!)

It’s important that we don’t lose our traditional songs to the unrelenting technological changes that allow anyone to upload any material they like to the internet. It’s important that high standards are adhered to and that we pass our playground songs on accurately. I urge you to check out some of the nursery rhyme videos for yourself to see how awful they have become. You will laugh at some and cringe at others but after the initial laughter has died down you too will feel the sadness of your childhood memories becoming lost.

The number of views a video has received or where it appears in the search results unfortunately doesn’t give any indication of quality. So, how to locate the good stuff and ignore the bad? My recommendations are as follows:

1. Go to YouTube (not Google) to search
2. Use the nursery rhyme’s full name – i.e. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is better than “Twinkle Twinkle” and use speech marks around title.
3. Adding the word “British” or “English” can really help
4. Click search options and under “Features” (far right) click High definition.

Songs are all based on their lyrics and tunes. Writing the lyrics of a song may seem like something that needs lots of formal training. On the contrary, song lyrics are available everywhere around us. We just have to realize that they’re there.

It is very easy to get lyric writing ideas by listening in to conversations and by monitoring activities around you. There are ideas everywhere, on the radio, magazines, and newspapers and even in your office. You could start out writing your thoughts like a story, and then transform these ideas into lyrics and rhyme. Once you start writing lyrics, you start searching for words that rhyme to make your lyrics rhyme. However, if you can’t get the last words of the lyrics to rhyme, you could try to make the line rhyme halfway as well. However, it is not always that you need to have the lyrics rhyme. Don’t make it seem as if the rhymes have been forced to rhyme by adding words at the end of the line just because they rhyme. Instead, make your rhymes flow naturally into the lyrics.

Never pressure yourself to finish a song on one seating, as this is not practical. Just jot the lines as they come to you, and eventually you will be able to pick up the best of the ideas or phrases to complete the lyrics for your song. As in all other cases, practice makes perfect. The more songs and lyrics you write, the better you will become. To ensure that you don’t neglect your lyric writing, it is better to set aside a regular period everyday to write lyrics, preferably early in the morning when you are fresh and will thus get better ideas. Nowadays, for those who need instant song lyrics, there is even songwriting software available on the internet.

Poetry is a beautiful thing, because you can write about anything. If you have no idea what to write about, try this exercise. Close your eyes and think of a person, place, or thing that you really love. Write down 4 descriptive words to describe this person, place, or thing.

Example: Magnificent, Beautiful, Extraordinary.

When you are visualizing also write down the colors that stand out the most to you. Choose at least 3 or 4 colors. Now you should have your colors and descriptive words. Alright, get your pen or pencil ready. Time to write some poetry. Here is my short poem.

The sound of the river was peaceful,

Surrounded by green shrubs and yellow flowers.

White waterfalls sparkling in the sun,

Beautiful Autumn red leaves falling,

Relaxing in the shade, the perfect day.

Right now this may not make sense, but at least you have a starting point. A poem does not have to rhyme, but I could make this poem a near rhyme.

The sound of the river was peaceful,

The red leaves of Autumn beautiful,

White Waterfalls sparkling,

The sounds, so relaxing.

OK now it’s starting to sound a little better, but there is still something missing. We need to bring in emotions and let the reader know how we feel about this person, place, or thing. What do we love about it? How does it make us feel? For your finished poem you can use all of the words you wrote down earlier, but you don’t have too. With that said lets take a look at our finished product.

Mists from the waterfall sparkled in the light,

Revealing a beautiful rainbow, to my delight.

The sounds brought me peace, relaxing in the shade,

Drifting off to sleep, in the Autumn leaves I laid.

As you can see the finished poem sounds much different than what we originally started with. That tells me that this little exercise worked. My point is that it doesn’t have to make sense when you first start out learning how to write poetry.

The main thing is to keep writing and get those creative juices flowing. Remember your poem does not have to rhyme. If you do choose to rhyme though, do not try to be poetic and visualize at the same time. If you do your poem is not going to make sense and it will end in frustration.

Good Luck with your poems and I hope this article helped.

There’s a whole word of possibilities imperfect rhymes can add to your lyrics. Imperfect rhymes are rhymes that have the same vowel sound, but a different consonant sound after the vowel sound. The words “dark” and “heart” are imperfect rhymes for that reason. This is unlike perfect rhymes which have the same consonant sound after their vowel sound, like “lap” and “map.”

Depending on how close the consonants are at the end of two words, imperfect rhymes can either be used for lyrics that are complete, balanced, and happy, or for lyrics that are not those things. You have to trust your ear when it comes to how close imperfect rhymes sound to a perfect rhymes. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Before we met I was in the dark

Now there’s a spotlight on my heart

“Dark” and “heart” are pretty close. They share the “r” before their final consonant, and the “k” and the “t” that they end on are both hard sounds that match pretty decently. So using this rhyme in lieu of a perfect rhyme, for a happy lyric feels appropriate. Especially considering that when these lines are sung, the vowel will probably be held out more than when we speak them, so less focus will be on the consonant that the words end with.

You may be thinking that you want to stick to only perfect rhymes for complete, balanced lyric ideas. But the truth is, if you start to introduce imperfect rhymes into your choices, you’ll open up a much wider range of rhymes to pick from, giving your lyric a much better chance of being interesting, and not cliché.

On the other hand, check out these lines:

I just want to escape

I hope you feel the same

“Escape” and “same” are pretty distant imperfect rhymes. The vowel sound connects them, but that’s about it. The consonant sounds that follow the vowel don’t sound anything alike. The plosive “p” in “escape” isn’t anything like the nasal “m” in “same.” So this rhyme works well for a lyric that implies the idea of longing. The rhyme leaves us longing a more definitive rhyming match. This is good, because it plays into what the lyric is saying.

Imperfect rhymes can range anywhere from having an almost complete feeling to having an almost unstable feeling, and anywhere in between. In addition to that, we have additive and subtractive rhymes, where a word that ends on a vowel is rhymed with a word that ends on a consonant. These types of rhymes are truly middle of the road rhyme types. They usually don’t feel too complete, but they don’t feel too unbalanced either. So use them accordingly.

Let’s look at another example:

Look all I’ve seen

Across the world I’ve roamed

Then you left me

And now I’m feeling broken

In this case, “seen” and “me” are subtractive rhymes (since the consonant is subtracted at the end of the second word), so they’re sort of sitting on the fence in terms of connecting the two words together. “Roamed” and “broken” on the other hand, are pretty different. The “m + ed”” sound in “roamed” is pretty different from the “k + en” consonant sounds in “broken.” Plus “roamed” is a single syllable rhyme that’s being rhymed with the two-syllable word, “broken.” It creates some dissonance between those two lines, which is fitting. The lyric is about feeling broken, and the rhyme is supporting that idea. At the same time, the words “seen” and “me” aren’t creating as many waves, being subtractive rhymes. They’re just kicking back, waiting for “roamed” and “broken” to really deliver the bad news.