Personification in Poetry Presentation

A pecha kucha presentation created for the Poetry Forum at QUT

1. POETIC TECHNIQUES:

2. What is Personification? Where a non-living object, an animal or an abstract idea is given human qualities The sentence involves a human action The poet writes about the object as if it is a person

3. For example: "Wind yells while blowing" "Wind yells while blowing" is an example of personification because wind cannot yell. Only a living thing can yell. “Necklace is a friend” "Necklace is a friend" is an example of personification because a necklace is a thing, and necklaces cannot be friends. Only living things can have friends.

4. Why Personify? Personification can make things easier to imagine when you read them. For example, you can’t see the wind, but if someone wrote “the wind raged with fierce anger” you might get a better impression of how the wind blew that day.

5. Is Personification used in other mediums apart from Poetry? Personification is used in many forms of literature, music, advertising, art and drama. These may include (but are not limited to) novels, short stories, fairytales, sculptures, television shows, films, and theatre.

6. Personification – Origins Personification is strongly associated with art and storytelling where it has ancient roots. Most cultures possess a long-standing storytelling tradition with personified animals as characters. For example in the children’s story Alice in Wonderland there are several anthropomorphic characters including the white rabbit or the cheshire cat. Artists have always thought there was something important about the connection between people and objects. For example in the drawing to the right the artist has personified the waves through the image of a woman.

7. Personification in Advertising Have any of these "people" ever appeared in your kitchen: Mr. Clean (a household cleaner), or Mr. Muscle (an oven cleaner)? How about Kellogg’s Snap, Crackle & Pop Rice Bubbles (cereal), or Uncle Ben’s (rice)? For over a century, companies have relied heavily on personification to create memorable images of their products--images that often appear in print advertisements and TV commercials for those "brands."

8. Personification in Music Musicians and lyricists constantly use personification to describe emotions, places, objects or nature in their songs. For Example: Stop & Stare – One Republic “This town is colder now, I think it’s sick of us.” A collection of songs using personification: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKexdSZNiLc

9. I Wandered Lonely as a  Cloud   by William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd , A host, of golden daffodils ; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. An example of Personification in a well-known Poem

10. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance . The waves beside them danced ; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee : A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

11. References Cummings, M. (2008). Study Guide: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. Retrieved April 26, 2012 from http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides3/IWandered.html Nordquist , R. (2012). What is Personification? Retrieved April 24, 2012 from http://grammar.about.com/od/qaaboutrhetoric/a/faqpersonification.htm Packard, W. (1994). The Poet’s Dictionary: A Handbook of Prosody and Poetic Devices . New York: Collins Reference. Paxson , J. (1994). The Poetics of Personification . London: Cambridge University Press. Wing Jan, L. (2009). Write Ways: Modelling Writing Forms (3 rd ed ). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.