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Poetry Analysis

Jennifer F. and Mike M., Writing Center tutors

Please keep in mind that these are only general guidelines; always defer to your professor's specifications for a given assignment. If you have any questions about the content represented here, please contact the Writing Centers so that we can address them for you.

Writing About Poetry

A poem, whether formal or free verse, is made up of many elements that all work together to produce what is conveyed by the final work. While works of literature and works of poetry can both be analyzed, the writer’s explication will differ. A poem can be long or short. It can follow a set form or not. Sometimes something of what it is intended to convey can be taken in the first reading, and sometimes—very often—multiple readings are necessary. What, as a reader, is noted first about the poem? Writing about a poem is a good way to become more comfortable with poetry in general.

Some Relevant Terminology

Figurative Language: An essential feature of poetry, this is distinct from what most people consider the ordinary use of words. Figurative language is the use of words and phrases for a specific effect. Chief among these are similes and metaphors, imagery and symbolism, and other tropes such as personification and allusion.

Simile and Metaphor: A simile is a comparison making use of “like” or “as.” An example is “The tree is like a gnarled man.” Metaphor, on the other hand, is a comparison made without a helping word. Example: “The tree, a gnarled man, leaned close to the earth.”

Imagery and Symbolism: Imagery, while related closely to the visual images that arise while reading, can also relate to the other senses (auditory, tactile, etc.) as well. Symbolism is when a word or object in the poem stands for something else, often an idea or an abstraction. While the imagery of a rose may call up the sight and smell of one, the rose in a poem may also symbolically stand for love.

Personification: In the simile and metaphor examples above, the tree is personified. This is taking the qualities of a person and giving them to an object or an animal.

Allusion: An allusion is a veiled reference, most often to another work that is assumed to be known by the reader. While allusions were more common in the past, the internet makes it very easy to look up unknown references and increase the student’s knowledge.

Diction: What words are chosen? Why? What work do they do within the poem? Diction is related to a poem’s tone, and just as a poet makes the choice of one word over another, so does the student writer make similar choices in their work. Take the word “door” for instance. Other words that might be used are “entrance,” “entry,” and “opening.” Among others, of course.

Form and Meter

Form and meter provide a lot of information about how the poem may be analyzed. While not all poetry is written in a form or is able to be scanned metrically, those that are will provide the student writer with many different elements to consider when analyzing the work. But before form and meter are looked at, something must be said about rhyme.

Rhyme:

When many students think about rhyming poetry, they think of Shakespeare’s sonnets or something that seems removed from contemporary readers and writers. This is not necessarily the case, however. While it is true that rhyming poetry was the norm in Shakespeare’s day, it is still used to good effect by today’s poets. When analyzing a poem, look for the presence of rhyme, off-rhyme, or internal rhyme.
  • Rhyme scheme: This is the way that rhyme is arranged in poems. It is diagrammed using small letters (a b a b, for example). Each a stands for the same sound in the poem, each b stands for a different sound, etc.
  • End rhyme: This is the rhyme scheme that is most common, which rhymes occurring at the ends of lines.
  • Off-rhyme or slant-rhyme: This is a type of rhyme used in many cases to disorient the reader (see the work of Emily Dickinson). Think of the difference between the true rhyme of “house” and “mouse”; for a slant rhyme alternative, think of how reading lines ending in “house” and “use” would create a different feeling. Slant rhyme is especially effective when it is used in the midst of true rhyme—the reader expects to hear one sound, but is given another one instead.
  • Internal rhyme: This is a type of rhyme occurring within a line, rather than at its end. It may be less easy to pick out, but the careful reader may find many elements not immediately apparent.

Form:

Different forms work in different ways. For example, in a sonnet, there is a repetition of sounds. In a sestina, there is a repetition of words, and in a villanelle, there may be a repetition of entire lines. What does this say about the poem? In Dylan Thomas’s well-known villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the repetition of lines gives a feeling of how exhausting it is to stand up against what is known to be inevitable. If the lines only appeared once, this feeling of urged effort wouldn’t be an essential element of the poem. Thus, repetition is a powerful tool. There are many different forms, and the ones mentioned above are among the most common. But the poet does more than pour words into the fourteen lines of a sonnet; within the line, there is often a great deal happening as well.

Meter:

Meter refers to how a line of poetry scans. Scansion is the use of specific signs and symbols to assign syllabic stress. Just like the a b a b is used to show rhyme, the use of a straight line (-) above the syllable to show strong stress, and a curved line (~) to show weak stress.

Blank Verse:

Blank Verse refers simply to unrhymed, iambic pentameter. In other words, each line has five “feet” (a foot is a basic rhythmic unit consisting of a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables, like iambs, trochees, etc), with the stress on the second beat of each foot. It is the verse form that most closely resembles natural patterns in English speech. Much of Shakespeare’s work is in blank verse, as is Milton’s "Paradise Lost."

Free Verse:

Free Verse poetry is not constrained by regular meter or fixed forms. The poem may therefore take whatever shape the poet feels fits it best. However, this does not mean that a poet writing in free verse should disregard poetic conventions and devices: they are free to use rhyme, alliteration, even meter and rhythm as they find it suitable.

For more about form and meter, visit the Bedford St. Martin's poetry tutorial. Learn more about reading and understanding poetry, and take part in virtual exercises. A very helpful guidebook is Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry by David Mason and John Frederick Nims. Not only does it provide a wealth of explanation, but many examples spanning centuries of verse.

Using Quotations from a Poem:

Using quotations from a poem differs in some respects from using prose quotations. MLA format is traditional, but always ask if in doubt. When possible, blend the quotation smoothly into one’s own words. This is not always possible, however, and there are certain rules for quoting. When more than three lines of a poem are quoted, they should appear like a block quote. There are no quotation marks, as the lines are already set apart from the paper’s text. The line numbers of the poem should appear parenthetically after the last line, so that the reader can refer back to the poem easily. When two or three lines of a poem appear in the body of the paper’s text, the student writer must pay close attention to line breaks, using a slash ( / ) with spaces on either side of it to separate them. Line breaks are an important component of poetry, and yet one more element to pay attention to when analyzing the work.

Links to Online Resources

There are a variety of online resources about writing the literary analysis. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, has provided this informative handout on writing about literature , as well as one on the poetry explication. One further reference with rather an unusual element is Poets Graves, which, just as it would seem, shows where well-known poets are buried in and around London (and the rest of England, America, etc.). But that isn’t all that is offered, and the site also has a great section on poetic terminology.

View a list of tutors who specialize in poetry analysis

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