Reading Literature

Literature refers to books, letters, reports, articles, essays, poems, short stories, novels, and biographies which:

• Represent high quality writing
• Talk about familiar human problems
• Highlight truths about the “human experience”
• Clarifies our position in the world

Poetry

What is poetry?

Writers often use poetry to express personal, emotional, philosophical, or historic ideas or themes. Poetry can differ from prose in several ways. Poetry may have some or all of the following characteristics:

• Rhythm
• Rhyme
• Literary devices
• Unusual word or sentence patterns
• Capital letters for each new line

What is rhythm and rhyme?

When we speak, we tend to emphasize some parts of words more than other parts. We are putting more energy into making some syllables. Rhythm refers to the pattern of stressed syllables and unstressed syllables, and it is sometimes referred to as “meter”.