Literary Terminology List

Naoshi Koriyama deftly equates the poetic process with a commonplace procedure in his poem "A Loaf of Poetry," proving that in the end, poetry is open to anyone who has the persistence, experience and inspiration to dabble in it. Added to this is the idea that poetry, like a loaf of bread, is not an ornate affair like some gastronomical preparation, but one of the primary forms of sustenance crucial to our diet.

The fascination with this poem, often reprinted in textbooks and taught to students by way of introducing poetry to them, lies in its simplicity which conceals Koriyama's methodical approach. That, however, is what the poem actually wants to point out: great care and diligence to create such a piece of writing is required, no matter how modest the end product may appear to be. 


Before moving on to the overview of the poem, let me just stress once more the importance of teaching or reading poetry. For Koriyama, writing poems was a means of escaping solitude during his studies away from Japan. All too often these days we hear or read stories which reflect Koriyama's experience about individuals who suffer from loneliness or isolation and feel they have no way of coping. If only as children or teens such individuals had been shown the benefits of expressing their feelings through poetry or prose. 

With that said, let's turn to the poem itself. Read the poem here.

Remember to take a look at these literary terminology lists: 

Literary Terminology List

Literary Terminology List 2

This first part of the overview includes some biographical notes, deals with the poem's persona, overall structure (meter, rhyme, sounds, turning point) and first half of the poem, based on my division of it.

Naoshi Koriyama - A Loaf of Poetry

Life 

• born 1926, Japanese

• studied in the US

• returned to Japan to teach and write poetry

• he began writing poetry as a means of overcoming the loneliness he felt during his studies in the US in the 1950’s

• one of his college professors told him to give a talk about Japanese poetry and after translating some 20 verses of tanka (31-syllable Japanese poetic genre) became interested in literature and has been ever since

• in an interview, he considers “A Loaf of Poetry” to be his most successful poem 

  • the idea for the poem came to him while he was helping his wife bake bread 

     

Overall Structure

• 23 verses

• free verse

• narrated as any 2^nd part of a recipe would be 
• recipes usually have 2 parts to them 
• the ingredients list 
• the preparation method (instructions)

• the preparation instructions are short, concise, don’t require complete sentences: Koriyama adheres to this in his poem as well

• no punctuation, no capitalization

• varying meter: verses may consist of a 
• monometer 
• dimeter or 
• not even a full meter (“with”, “and”)

• simple, straight-forward words are used 
• total number of words = 59 (excluding the poem’s title) 
• 52 of the 59 words present in this poem are monosyllabic 
• 7 are polysyllabic: experience, inspiration, until, inner, again, into, oven

• sounds 
• no particular consonant sounds are used 
• vowel sounds regularly include diphthongs or long vowel sounds 
• almost every second line contains a diphthong 
• dough, yeast, knead, pound, might, leave, out, own, shape, round, bake 
• however, the last 2 lines have short sounds (no long vowel sound or diphthong is present)

• conclusion: 
• the long sounds/diphthongs are linked to the laborious task of preparing bread/writing a poem 
• once the work is done, placing it in the oven of your heart is a light task, hence the short sounds meant to be read trippingly

• turning point of the poem seems to be the word “until” 
• it is positioned almost in the middle of the poem serving as a cliff-hanger to the outcome of the work put in by the poet/baker in the previous verses 
• 12 lines precede the word “until” 
• 10 lines follow it

• figurative language used throughout to link the preparation of bread with the process of writing a poem

 

 Persona (speaker in the poem)

• not directly present in the poem: use of the generic “you” rather than a more personal “I” 
• this shows that Koriyama may have intended to include all readers in the writing process in the sense that everyone is a potential poet

• from this poem the reader feels that the person speaking takes great care and pride in the work they do 
• they put a lot of work into a simple loaf of bread: pound, use all their might, knead the dough again 
• they don’t neglect to include love and their heart in the whole process

 

 Content

• can be divided into 2 parts (what precedes the word “until” and what follows it)

• part 1 
• 12 lines 
• this part describes the work the poet/baker puts in 
• the procedure can be subdivided into 3 categories 
• the verbs used 
• mix 
• knead 
• pound 
• leave 

• the ingredients the poet/baker works with 
• dough 
• yeast

• the abstract qualities that go into the poem/recipe 
• experience 
• inspiration 
• love 
• might

• links are created between the following concepts (because of their proximity in the poem) 
• dough = experience 
• yeast = inspiration 
• knead with love 
• pound with might

• conclusion: 
• the basis of a poem is experience (the dough) 
• without inspiration (the yeast), the poem will remain flat 
• the poet's task is to work (knead) the poem with love but also handle it critically (pound) by writing and rewriting verses, forcing the ideas to become a homogenous, integral mixture (later seen in the round shape the poet gives it)

 Stay tuned for the second half of this overview!

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