- Thirty-two lessons in eight units
- The poems each lesson needs, printed in the lesson
- Study questions and writing exercises throughout
- For upper high school and early college
THE RHETORIC OF POETRY · GRADES 11–12 + COLLEGE
WORDHOARDThe Rhetoric of Poetry
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO NOBILITY
The capstone of the sequence. Building on Fitting Words and Grammar of Poetry, Word Hoard teaches students to read, hear, write and perform poetry: English “in its most elevated forms,” wielded for truth, goodness and beauty. The poet Joffre Swait calls it “the natural fruit of my life’s work.”
“As you will soon learn, our words are our greatest treasures, our finest tools, and our most dangerous weapons.”
Word Hoard · Introduction
“You will read poems and you will write them. In the end, you will go out and perform.”
READGood poems and bad ones, side by side, to learn the difference. “Examination is good. Dissection is bad.”
HEARRhythm, meter and rhyme, scanned aloud, and the alliteration of Old and Middle English.
WRITEBlank verse, terza rima, epigrams, sonnets, villanelles and shaped poems, then poems of your own on death, delight, food, nature, sports and transience.
PERFORMA new poem of your own, read aloud to an audience at a public venue.
Table of contents
Eight units, thirty-two lessons
From “What is Poetry?” to “Reading Reified.”
- Unit I: Why Study Poetry?3 lessons
- Unit II: Understanding the Poetic Elements2 lessons
- Unit III: Rhythm & Meter6 lessons
- Unit IV: Alliteration & Assonance3 lessons
- Unit V: Poetic Forms7 lessons
- Unit VI: Some Tropes, Some Styles, Some Memeing, No Synecdoche5 lessons
- Unit VII: Composing7 lessons
- Unit VIII: Performance1 lesson
Show all the lessonsHide the lessons
- Introductionix
- Thanksxiii
Unit I: Why Study Poetry?1
- Lesson 1: What is Poetry?3
- Lesson 2: What is Bad Poetry?9
- Lesson 3: Your Word Hoard17
Unit II: Understanding the Poetic Elements25
- Lesson 4: Introduction to the Poetic Elements27
- Lesson 5: How Poetic Elements Elevate Expression35
Unit III: Rhythm & Meter41
- Lesson 6: Exploring Rhythms in Poetry43
- Lesson 7: Meter—The Measure of Poetry49
- Lesson 8: A Word from Dr. Johnson53
- Lesson 9: Rhyme59
- Lesson 10: Natural Rhythm65
- Lesson 11: Real Meter75
Unit IV: Alliteration & Assonance83
- Lesson 12: Old English Poetry85
- Lesson 13: Middle English Poetry93
- Lesson 14: Alliteration & Assonance Now99
Unit V: Poetic Forms105
- Lesson 15: Free Verse107
- Lesson 16: Blank Verse & Terza Rima113
- Lesson 17: Poetic Aphorisms, Epigrams & Cinquains121
- Lesson 18: Sonnets129
- Lesson 19: Villanelle139
- Lesson 20a: Shaped Poetry147
- Lesson 20b: Jack of All Forms, Master of New Ones153
Unit VI: Some Tropes, Some Styles, Some Memeing, No Synecdoche157
- Lesson 21: Figures of Speech159
- Lesson 22a: Imagery165
- Lesson 22b: Simile & Metaphor173
- Lesson 23: Repetition & Parallels179
- Lesson 24: Onomatopoeia193
Unit VII: Composing199
- Lesson 25: What Do I Write?201
- Lesson 26: Death207
- Lesson 27: Delight211
- Lesson 28: Food215
- Lesson 29: Nature219
- Lesson 30: Sports221
- Lesson 31: Transience227
Unit VIII: Performance231
- Lesson 32: Reading Reified233
THE CAPSTONE
Go out and perform
“Your final assignment is to read aloud, to perform, a new poem to an audience at a public venue.”
A coffee shop’s open mic, a writers’ group, an evening with the youth group: the course ends with each student performing a poem they have written themselves. The Teacher’s Guide puts it simply: “This should be something special.”
“…whether that performance be of a simple sonnet, or of some kind words to an old lady, or a kind sonnet to an old lady, or even an old sonnet to a kind lady.”
Word Hoard · Introduction
THE COMPANION ANTHOLOGY
WORD HOARDAn Anthology of Poems Every Christian Should Know
“Not a collection of Christian poetry, mind you, but a Christian collection of poetry.”
219poems68poets7centuries, Chaucer’s to Eliot’s
The textbook is a bootcamp; the anthology is meant “to turn poetry from an excursion into a lifestyle.” The poems run in order of the poet’s birth, each century opened by a short introduction, and the Teacher’s Guide sets anthology readings for every week of the year. “Heretics and atheists are included alongside Puritan pastors and Roman Catholic martyrs.”
Geoffrey Chaucer · William Dunbar · Walter Raleigh · Edmund Spenser · Philip Sidney · Mary Sidney Herbert · William Shakespeare · Chidiock Tichborne · John Donne · Robert Herrick · George Herbert · John Milton · Anne Bradstreet · Thomas Traherne · Edward Taylor · William Cowper · William Blake · William Wordsworth · Samuel Taylor Coleridge · John Keats · Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · Edgar Allan Poe · Alfred, Lord Tennyson · Matthew Arnold · George MacDonald · Emily Dickinson · Christina Rossetti · Lewis Carroll · Thomas Hardy · Gerard Manley Hopkins · A. E. Housman · Francis Thompson · Rudyard Kipling · W. B. Yeats · G. K. Chesterton · Robert Frost · Carl Sandburg · T. S. Eliot · Wilfred Owen · W. H. Auden · Dylan Thomas · John Gillespie Magee Jr. and 26 more.
“These are poems about love and death and the Church as a hippopotamus. Expect conversations.”
About the author
Joffre Swait
Joffre Swait, also known as Joffre the Giant, lives in Idaho with his wife and five children. He is the author of two poetry collections, Well Met: Poems of Companionship, and Made In the Image: Plain Poems, and is co-author of Christian Pipe-Smoking: an Introduction to Holy Incense. Joffre has a deep love for the poetry of the West, and is more ambivalent about the Norman invasion than Tolkien was. He is also the author of Word Hoard: The Rhetoric of Poetry, published by Roman Roads Press.
THE CURRICULUM
Three books
A full year (32 weeks, four days a week) with weekly anthology readings, or a single semester (16 weeks) focused on composition. Schedules for both are in the Teacher’s Guide.
- One-year and one-semester schedules
- Answers for every lesson
- Four exams, with answer keys
- Anthology readings, week by week, and the capstone
- 219 poems by 68 poets
- Arranged by the poet’s year of birth
- An introduction to each century
- Poems every English-speaking Christian should know
STOCK YOUR WORD HOARD
More poetry from Roman Roads Classics
WORDCRAFT