What does poetry mean?

1. The characteristics of poetry

Poetry is a literary genre that reflects real life and expresses thoughts and feelings with strong feelings and rich imagination through rhythmic language. Lyrical color, beautiful rhyme and implicit conciseness are the three basic characteristics of poetry. There are many kinds of poems. From the content, there are mainly lyric poems and narrative poems, and from the form, there are metrical poems, free poems and folk songs.

On the Classification of Ancient Poetry

China's poems have a long history and are rich in excellent works. In ancient China, unhappy people were called poems and happy people were called songs and lyrics. The ancients said that "poetry expresses ambition, and songs express ambition" refers to the role of poetry and songs. What modern people call poetry mainly refers to poetry, while poetry refers to poetry and songs.

There are many kinds of poems.

According to the content, there are lyric poems, narrative poems, farewell poems, frontier poems and pastoral poems. According to the structural forms, there are metrical poems, free poems, prose poems and allegro poems; There are new poems and old poems according to time; From other angles, it can also be divided into: philosophical poems, limerick poems, satirical poems, recitation poems and so on.

The so-called ancient poetry refers to the old poetry as opposed to the new poetry, that is, the poetry of China society before the May 4th Movement, also known as the old-style poetry.

Ancient poetry can be divided into four-character poems, five-character poems, six-character poems, seven-character poems and miscellaneous poems. According to the genre, it can be divided into: Chu ci style, Yuefu style, Gexing style, metrical style, etc. According to the standard of temperament, it can be divided into ancient poems and modern poems.

Classical poetry and modern poetry are concepts formed in the Tang Dynasty. Before the Tang Dynasty, poems were written with free rhymes, and each sentence was four, five, six, seven, and miscellaneous (more people in later generations used classical poems with seven words). Therefore, people in the Tang Dynasty called this kind of poetry ancient poetry, also known as ancient poetry and ancient style. Modern poetry, compared with classical poetry, is also called modern poetry, which is a kind of metrical poetry formed in the Tang Dynasty. It is divided into quatrains and metrical poems, and its word number, sentence number, level tone and rhyme are strictly regulated. For example, a metrical poem, which originated in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and matured in the early Tang Dynasty, has four or five rhymes, eight sentences each and the number of words must be the same.

Two couplets must be antithetical, with two, four, six and eight rhymes. The first sentence can be pledged or not. If the arrangement is extended to more than ten sentences on the basis of fixed rhythm, it is called arrangement. In addition to the antithesis of the first and last couplets, there are also antitheses, which are called "model pairs". For another example, quatrains are just antithetical sentences of two or four sentences, also known as quatrains, broken sentences and broken sentences, which have certain requirements for parallelism, rhyme and duality.

Strictly speaking, metrical poems include words and songs in addition to metrical poems and quatrains, while modern poems only refer to metrical quatrains without words and songs, so strictly speaking, generalized metrical poems cannot all be equal to modern poems.

Compared with the generalized metrical genre, the poetic genre includes Chuci, Yuefu and Gexing.

Chu Ci is a form of poetry created by Qu Yuan during the Warring States Period, which is characterized by the use of dialects and phonology of Chu Ci and has a strong Chu color. There are seventeen volumes of Chu Ci edited by Liu Xiang in the Eastern Han Dynasty, mainly the works of Qu Yuan, and Qu Yuan's works take Li Sao as his masterpiece, so later generations also call it "Chu Ci Style" and "Sao Style".

Yuefu style refers to the songs that can be accompanied by music collected and preserved by Yuefu organs from Han Wei to the Tang and Five Dynasties.

Gexing style is a variant of Yuefu poetry. After the Han and Wei Dynasties, there were many Yuefu poems with the theme of "Song" and "Xing". Although the names are different, there is no strict difference between them. They all mean "Song". Their syllables and meter are generally free, and they are archaic in form, with rich changes. Since then, they have merged "Song and Xing". In the Tang Dynasty, poets in the early Tang Dynasty created Yuefu poems, in addition to following the old themes of Yuefu in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, a few poets also created new themes. Although it was renamed Yuefu, it was not limited to temperament, so it was called New Yuefu. This kind of poetry has been greatly developed by Li Bai and Du Fu. For example, Du Fu's Sad Chen Tao, Mourning for the Head, Military Vehicle Shop, Second Road, etc. Many of Bai Juyi's works are in the form of Yuefu songs, and most of them are mixed in a few words.

Knowing the classification of ancient poetry, when we face a specific work, it is easy to identify its genre type. For example, Chen Ziang is on the tower of Youzhou (where the time before me has passed? Behind me, where are the future generations? . Only the boundless universe, boundless, can't stop the tears full of sadness. ) and Bai Juyi's Flowers Are Not Flowers (Flowers are not flowers, fog is not fog, come at midnight and go at dawn. When there are many spring dreams in the future, there seems to be no place to go to the clouds. ), some people say it is a regular poem (see "Reference Book of Chinese Teaching in Secondary Vocational Schools" published by Higher Education Press in July 2000, page 222), but according to the characteristics of regular poems, these two poems can't be counted as regular poems anyway. In fact, the title of Chen's poem has been clearly stated: this is a poetic style; As for the white poem, if carefully analyzed, it should be a new Yuefu poem mixed with three words and seven languages.

There are generally two ways to write poetry appreciation articles:

(1) comprehensive analysis-express your own views through the overall analysis of the whole poem.

In this position, the more complete writing is:

A. brief introduction of the author.

B. brief introduction to the writing background of the work.

C image analysis of works (interpretation or translation of poems, emotions and thoughts expressed in poems, artistic conception expressed in poems).

D. analysis of artistic techniques of works (usually combined with image analysis of works).

E. comprehensive evaluation of the artistic features of the work (often with the meaning of summary).

If completeness is not required, the author's introduction and writing background can be omitted.

⑵ Theme analysis-analyze the most prominent aspects of poetry and express your own views.

When using this writing method, we often only grasp one aspect, such as artistic conception, language expression, the beauty of expressing thoughts and feelings in some way and so on. Other aspects are ignored, so its length is generally short and small.

It must be pointed out that no matter which writing method is adopted, the appreciator should have his own understanding and analysis of the poem, and try to avoid imitating others or even copying it.

How to appreciate ancient poetry

Appreciating ancient poetry is one of the important purposes of our study of ancient literature, and it is also the basis for our further study. So how should we analyze classical poetry?

First of all, we must understand poetry, which requires us to have a correct understanding of every word and sentence of a poem. If we don't even understand the original meaning of a poem, how can we analyze and appreciate it? When talking about poetry appreciation, Mr. Wu Xiaoru once put forward "general interpretation" and "clear allusions", which are the basis of understanding a poem. For us, there are more or less language barriers in classical poetry. For some poems, we have to rely on the comments of our predecessors to understand them. Moreover, allusions are often used in classical poetry, and it is also very important to understand the meaning of allusions correctly. The ancients said that "a poem has nothing to say", and the understanding of a poem can naturally be different, but after all, there is still a relatively objective standard, that is, rationality. At least I think this understanding is reasonable, and the analysis of ideological content and artistic techniques on this basis can be convincing.

On the basis of understanding poetry, we can analyze poetry from the following aspects: First, to understand the creative background and writing situation of poetry, and to deeply analyze poetry works, we must first understand the author. Mencius once put forward the literary criticism method of "knowing people and discussing the world". The so-called "understanding people and discussing the world" is to deeply understand the poet's life, thought, morality, experience and the times in which he lived, which is very helpful for us to correctly understand his works. For example, after we understand the political situation in the middle Tang Dynasty and Liu Zongyuan's experience, we can better understand the attitude of avoiding the world and taking care of mountains and rivers in Fisherman. The second is to analyze the ideological content and artistic characteristics of the work itself. For shorter works, such as metrical poems and quatrains, we can analyze them sentence by sentence, and for longer works, we can analyze problems or paragraphs. This is the main body of job analysis. The works we analyze must have appreciation value. When we read a poem, we will have some feelings. We write an analysis article to show the value of the work and express our feelings. The analysis of works is also a process of re-creation, so we should pay attention to the choice of words and try our best to make the language beautiful and concise. Third, we can compare and analyze other works that are comparable to the works, and better grasp the ideological and artistic nature of poetry in comparison. For example, Du Fu's "Climbing Yueyang Tower" and Meng Haoran's "To Dongting Lake" are both excellent works describing Dongting Lake, but we will find that "Climbing Yueyang Tower" shows Du Fu's concern for the fate of the country and the sufferings of people's livelihood, while "To Dongting Lake" is only limited to self-pity for personal sufferings. In contrast, the hearts and personalities of these two poets. Fourthly, we should know the status and influence of the works, which is also a way for us to better grasp the works. For example, if we know that Ode to an Orange is the first complete object-chanting poem in the history of China's poetry, we can better understand that the technique of "expressing one's will by supporting things" is the original creation of Ode to an Orange, which has had an immeasurable influence on later object-chanting poems.

When analyzing the works, if we achieve these aspects, then our goal will be achieved. Below we provide you with several examples of job analysis, hoping to help you. The first two can be used as a reference for you to write appreciation articles, and the third can be used as a reference for you to answer work analysis questions in exams.

Lamentations touched the past and the present.

-Appreciation of The Book of Songs and Gu Feng

Zhuo Wei

The poem Gu Feng belongs to The Book of Songs. "Tai" was originally a feudal country in the early Zhou Dynasty. Zhu's Biography of Poems said: "The King of Wu succeeded in business, which was divided into Zhou as the city, Zhi in the north (now Tangyin South, Henan Province), Zhi in the south and Wei in the east to seal the princes." Before long, the country fell into a state of extreme poverty. Therefore, in the Book of Songs, Longfeng and Yan Feng are actually "Feng Wei".

Weiguo (now southern Hebei and northern Henan) is located in the Central Plains and is one of the culturally developed areas in the Zhou Dynasty. The working people in Weiguo love singing, so there are more folk songs collected in Changfeng, Changfeng and Fengwei than in other places, and about half of them are about love and marriage. Therefore, some guardians of later generations said that Zheng Wei's wind was lewd and mulberry trees were noisy, so they opposed some poems about love and marriage by Zheng Feng and Zhong Zhong, or misinterpreted them from the perspective of Confucian classics.

Gu Feng is a poem about abandoning a wife, which is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is the heroine's persuasion to her furious husband, hoping that he will not give up on himself; The second chapter writes that the abandoned heroine looks back at her hard home and is reluctant to leave; The third chapter is the heroine's excuse and anger for being abandoned, as well as her grief for her children. The fourth chapter writes about the heroine's recollection that she has been diligent in managing the family and being friendly to her neighbors after marriage; The fifth and sixth chapters write that the heroine recalls the different attitudes of her husband towards herself in the past and now.

The whole poem is written in the tone of the heroine's self-description. There are no angry words, but full of sad words. Through the heroine's self-narrative language, her kind, meek and weak character is clearly presented to the readers.

The heroine is kind. When she was in her husband's family, she did not regard her husband's hard life as a kind of suffering, but took pleasure in creating a family business with her husband in suffering. "I used to be afraid of parenting and was subverted", which reflected the love joy she enjoyed when she was in conflict with her husband. In terms of neighborhood relations, no matter who has great disasters or minor difficulties, she tries her best to help. The words "everyone is sad, climb to save it" and "climb" make the heroine's kindness to save people from danger jump from the page. The heroine's kind character is also reflected in her concern for her children after being abandoned. In the poem, she did not describe the scene of her separation from her children in heartbreaking language. She just said, "I bow and don't read, so I love my queen?" If I can't even take care of myself, how can I take care of the children living in my husband's family? Behind this discourse, hidden in the heroine's kind heart, is the yearning for children and the worry about their future fate!

This poem also describes the gentleness of the heroine's character in many ways. This is first manifested in her infatuation with her dead husband. There are not many words in the poem to express their love combination, but through the heroine's self-narration, readers can feel that their combination still has a certain love foundation. Although he may just be infatuated with her beauty or her ability, she is sincere to him. She was married when her husband's family was poor, and worked hard with her husband to establish this poor family. "It is better to be born in Sri Lanka and grow up in Sri Lanka than to be poisoned". Life is a little better, but he has changed his face and found another lover. However, she endured her husband's cold face. Even when he turned against him, easily provoked family disputes and wanted to abandon her, she showed her loyalty with emotion and reason, trying to persuade him to change his mind. Secondly, she defended her abandonment. Her husband likes the new and hates the old, blaming her for her age and long difference. She insisted on defending herself. In the poem, Wei Qing, who is turbid in Jing, is used as a metaphor. The diameter of water is turbid, because compared with Wei Shui, if the water stops flowing, it will be clear. The implication is that he is not unattractive, and his appearance is not necessarily worse than that of the bride, but his husband is infatuated with the beauty of the new wedding banquet and never wants to get close to the old woman again. "There is no such thing as picking flowers from the Philippines", and he politely advised her husband not to look at the color and the soul, stubbornly clinging to her old love. When she learned that her husband was completely heartless and that love was over, she still didn't condemn him positively. She just asked gently in a reproachful tone: Have you forgotten all the previous days? You once loved me! She is attached to her husband's former "love", with warmth in anger and fantasy in blame. This kind of pen and ink vividly depicts the gentle infatuation of the heroine and a moving image of a gentle and beautiful working woman in ancient China.

The author also wrote the other side of the heroine's character, which is hard-working, kind, gentle and affectionate, that is, her weakness. For the arduous work at home, she tried her best to bear it, worked hard, and repeatedly endured her husband's emotional indifference and torture. She tried to change her mind even when her husband welcomed the new students and put her in unbearable humiliation. When she has been abandoned and has to go back to her parents' home, she still hopes that her husband can come to see her off, even if it is to see her out of the door, "send me a gift from a thousand miles away." This weakness can't help but make readers mourn his misfortune and want to provoke him. Of course, literary works are precisely to describe complex and diverse characters. This weakness is the weakness of the heroine's character, but it is the success of this work. The author wants to describe a special character with a gentle and weak special character. Just like the heroine's personality in Feng Weimeng is both gentle and strong, which shows the different personalities of different characters and the richness of their personalities.

Another character in the poem is the heroine's husband. This is a ruthless and treacherous man, but there is not a word in the whole poem that describes him positively. The author uses imaginative writing skills to reveal the heroine's character through her bitterness towards her own destiny. When he was down and out, he took a fancy to the beautiful, kind, gentle, affectionate and capable heroine and defrauded her of her love for him. Even then, he just regarded her as a dry dish for the winter. As soon as winter passed, he kicked down the bridge and fell in love with a new person who was more beautiful in his opinion. In order to achieve the purpose of abandoning his wife, he provoked a dispute between husband and wife for no reason. From the beginning, you can feel his gloomy face and anger in the contrast of "learning and raining" Instead of listening to his wife's grief and persuasion, he tortured her physically and emotionally by all kinds of despicable and cruel means. The author compares the joy of her husband's wedding with the bitterness of his wife's abandonment, and writes the depth of his wife's abandonment, which further embodies her husband's cruelty and ruthlessness. These are not reflected in a positive and concrete description, but through the tearful statement of the heroine, the ugly face of this lothario is exposed completely. This is virtual writing on art wood. In this respect, Gu Feng is different from Fengmeng. Although both of them depict the hero images with basically the same personality, Feng Meng expresses it positively through the heroine pointing at her husband's nose, while Gu Feng expresses it through the side and back. The artistic effects received by the two are the same, really the same.

In artistic expression, this masterpiece not only depicts two plump and vivid characters in a real and imaginary way, but also uses other artistic expression methods. The most noteworthy thing is to be good at using the atmosphere to render. The first two sentences set off the sad tone of the whole work, describing the weather with cold rain and evil wind, creating a tragic artistic atmosphere, setting a tragic tone for the whole poem, and immersing readers in this tragic artistic realm from the beginning. About these two poems, Zhu Peng said, "Bi Ye. Xi Xi, and Shu Ye. East wind is called valley wind. ..... after saying Yin and Yang, it will rain, like a husband and wife coming home. " (Biography of Poems) But when we look at the poem, the description of Gu Feng with "Yin as rain" just shows that "Gu Feng" has caused the bad climate of continuous rainy days, clearly depicts the scene of sending bitter rain and symbolizes the anger of the husband below, so "Gu Feng" should be interpreted as "Gu Feng, that is, strong wind" (The Book of Songs) and "Xi". These two sentences not only laid a tragic atmosphere for the whole poem, but also symbolized her husband's violent character, with far-reaching implications. But this poem does use contrast, and the metaphors used are not only appropriate, but also varied, vividly depicting the characters' personalities and images. "After receiving the Philippines, there is no following" means that the husband only pays attention to looks and does not pay attention to morality. The edible roots of these two plants are mainly underground roots, not leaves growing on the ground. So people use dysprosium and phenanthrene mainly because of their lower body. The heroine's husband values a woman's appearance and despises her virtue. Therefore, "collecting medicine and collecting Philippine, without carrying it" vividly shows her husband's lewd character. Who said that tea is bitter? It is as sweet as tea "is the heroine's own bitterness." Zhu Peng said: "Although tea is bitter, it is more bitter than tea." (Biography of Poetry, Volume II) But this metaphor is different from the previous one, and it is put forward in the form of irony, which profoundly shows the great pain of the heroine after being abandoned. The similarity between these two metaphors is that they both put forward only what is used as a metaphor, but not what is compared. Metaphor is to borrow things that are compared. This is a metaphor, and the image and things are blurred and more closely combined. But in the second metaphor, a metaphor of "its sweetness" is used. The sweetness of water chestnut is sweeter than that of "tea" (tea is bitter, of course, but it is still sweet for the heroine), which is what we usually call simile. It can be seen that its proportional method is the same as that of China. There is also a simile that "a wedding banquet is like a brother", which not only describes the joy of a husband's wedding, but also compares his own suffering. Another metaphor is "Jing and Wei are confused, and their looks are not good", which means that compared with newcomers, their looks are not necessarily ugly, but also very vivid. From the above examples, we can see that the metaphor of this poem is changing, flexible but not rigid, vividly portraying the characters and personalities, and strengthening the image of the poetic language. Secondly, the metaphor used in this poem is not only vivid, but also very simple and natural, without affectation.

Solution skills

(A), solve the problem into the case

1, poetic image: identity+personality

2. Poetic imagery, meaning: surface meaning+deep meaning (that is, explaining poetry)

3, the feelings of expression: through what content+express (host/reveal) what feelings.

4. Experiencing artistic conception: what artistic conception is the objective image+subjective feeling+integration?

(A), solve the problem into the case

5, taste keywords: meaning+technique+expression (sentence meaning+text meaning+theme emotion)

6. Appreciation of rhetorical methods: revealing technique+analytical expression (sentence meaning+text meaning+theme emotion)

7. Appreciate expression: how to tell (describe)+tell (describe) what+express what feelings.

8. Appreciation and expression: technique+expression (sentence meaning+text meaning+theme emotion)

(A), solve the problem into the case

9. Experience the feelings of poetry: the feelings of worrying about the country and the people, the pain of the country's ruin and death, the desolation of wanderers, the bitterness of husband and wife, the loneliness of talented people, the resentment of serving the country, the performance of heroes, the calmness of freedom and leisure, the love of beautiful mountains and rivers, the sincerity of family friendship, the joy of returning to the fields and seclusion, the pain of dark officialdom, the mood of leaving thoughts, and the relegation of officials.

10, summarizing the content of the poem: what is this poem+what is written in each sentence of the poem+what means are used+what emotions are expressed+evaluation (total score)

(2), the answer procedure

"What to write": lyrical description of scenery, lyrical praise of things and aspirations (emotions), nostalgic praise of history, that is, feelings about things, frontier battles, pastoral scenery, images, artistic conception, background and theme.

How can I be sure what I wrote?

Pay attention to the title of this poem.

The title of a poem often tells us the content of the poem. Determining the content of a poem can help us understand the theme of the poem and the author's feelings.

For example, think about Li Ning's Seclusion: What can be seen from this poem?

The content of the suggested poem is to describe Li Ning's seclusion.

(2) Carefully scrutinize the key words.

(3) Pay attention to the implied information of words.

One of the characteristics of poetry expression is implication, which is often one meaning on the surface, but actually another meaning.

For example, "Do you know it's green, fat, red and thin?" .

(4) Mobilize knowledge accumulation.

For example, what do you think of when you mention Wang Wei and Yue Fei?

"How to write": Romanticism, realism, poetic eye, lyricism through scenery, expressing one's mind directly, combining the virtual with the real, drawing and coloring, combining the dynamic with the static, turning the static into the dynamic, refining words, connecting the preceding with the following, and enriching the future.

(2), the answer procedure

"Why write": express the thoughts and feelings of …, reflect the social reality of …, show the interest of …, and place the feelings of … (admiration, melancholy, depression, etc.). ), express the pursuit of …, reveal the tendency to …, express the feelings for …, and reveal the feelings for ….

This poem adopts the technique of (expression, rhetoric, expression), writes out the characteristics of (image), shows (highlights) (feelings) and plays a (certain) role.

The general steps of poetry appreciation are narration and evaluation.