Analyzing+Poetry

Here are the step to use when annotating and analyzing a poem.


 * 1) **Read the poem**. Several times. (Many people give only a cursory reading and expect the meaning to be obvious. Good poetry should make the reader work at bit. It's meant to be muld over, thought about, decyphered. For the vast majority of poems - that aren't about ponies or puppies - one reading just won't cut it.)
 * 2) **Define unfamiliar vocabulary** (You can't very well understand a poem if you don't know what the words mean. When reading prose, we often skip over words we don't know and glean meaning from their context. Or we will be satisfied that we understand the "gist" of a word and that's good enough. Not with poetry it isn't. Poets are very careful with word choice. Nuance really, really, really matters. You, the reader, must have a clear definition for each word in the poem.
 * 3) **Define the technical devices being used**. What are the images, metaphors, questions, etc., used in the poem. Does the poem have a rhyming scheme? Does it use metre? Note these things. Put them aside for the moment and return to them a bit later.
 * 4) **Look for anything odd.** Are some words capitalized? Is there a specific lay out on the page? How is punctuation used? Are odd things happening with grammar? Are words or phrases being repeated? Again, note them, put them aside for later use.
 * 5) **Look at the title**. Is there one? If not, why not? If so, what is it? Is it explanatory?
 * 6) **Deconstruct the poem**. This is perhaps the most complex part. Go through the poem line by line, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence. As with prose, it's usually the punctuation in a poem that tells you how meaning is grouped. Ask the question, what does this do? as you bring back into play the technical devices, and odd bits you noted in steps 3 and 4. Why use this word? (what is the difference between a word's denotative and connotative meanings?) What visual image does this create? What does this metaphor do? (It compares! Metaphors always compare. So what is being compared? Why? How?) As you do this, paraphrase the poem into your own words. Grouping the poem into chunks of meaning. Remember: sometime there may not be an obvious answer to your questions. Often the poet wants to create dual, triple, or quintuple meanings. Ambiguity is OK!
 * 7) **Reconstruct the poem**. Essentially what you've done in steps 2 - 6 is run an experiment. You've tested an hypothesis. The answers to the questions you've asked along the way are the results of the experiment. Not its time to interpret the data. What do you think the poem meant? You should now be able to state your opinion on its meaning it not based on assumptions and suppositions but backed up by evidence taken directly from the poem itself.