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POETRY ANALYSIS "Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech." Assignment: Read all of the information provide below, including the poems (see the list on the sidebar on the right of this page). Select one poem to analyze. Use the suggestions to compose an analysis of no more than three pages. Since your space is quite limited, you will want to write concisely. On the day of your conference, you will need to have two copies of your rough draft for us to go over. Your rough draft is to be typed, adhere to MLA formatting requirements, and be written in formal Standard American English (no use of “I” or “you”). In addition to your rough draft, you need to bring specific written questions or concerns about your paper. --------------------- While I’m at it, please let me remind you of the following: You will need to show me you Reader Journal notebook with five entries for the readings you will have done by the time of your appointment. You will also need to present the final draft of your response to one of the questions about An Enemy of the People. Please be extremely careful to follow all directions to the letter. If you are in Class 2, I failed to check your Reader’s Journal on Monday. I noticed in checking my other students’ work tjhat a number of people did not follow the format requirements for the assignment. These are pretty clearly stated in the material I sent you via e-mail. Please make whatever corrections a re necessary. What Should I Know about Writing about Poetry? Most importantly, you should realize that a paper that you write about a poem or poems is an argument. Make sure that you have something specific that you want to say about the poem that you are discussing. This specific argument that you want to make about the poem will be your thesis. You will support this thesis by drawing examples and evidence from the poem itself. For the purposes of this assignment, your argument will focus on the theme of the poem you select: its “life lesson,” the “message” it conveys about human existence or some aspect of the human condition. You might, therefore, call this paper an interpretation or analysis of the poem’s meaning. The purpose of a poem analysis is to enrich the poem for other readers, to allow readers to see what you have seen in the poem. To attain this purpose, you will want to work very closely with the poem, its sound, its rhythm, the various associations and connotations of words, because the thrill of a poem comes not from its overall prosaic meaning but from the intricacy through which the poet has expressed that meaning. Take account of all there is to see, hear, and think about in the poem. At times you will find that a word or line may suggest two or more meanings, all of which could be relevant to the meaning of the poem, so mention them all. If you don't understand the meaning of something, make intelligent guesses at it. In dealing with any part of the poem, show how it helps convey the overall meaning and feeling of the poem. Don't treat any line as though it's in a vacuum, completely separate from the rest of the poem. It is helpful to think of analysis as decoding. Creative writers rarely say what they mean in a straightforward, obvious way, and this is especially true of poets. However, they are trying to communicate with readers. In doing so they use a variety of tools to enrich their purpose, and these tools are the elements of poetry. The combination of elements the poet uses makes up the "code" of the poem. Analysis means literally picking a poem apart--looking at elements such as imagery, metaphor, poetic language, rhyme scheme, and so on--in order to see how they all work together to produce the poem's meaning. By looking at a poem in terms of its elements, one decodes the poem. This guide is to help readers learn what to look for and what questions to ask in decoding a poem. What does "critical" mean? To criticize means to judge the merits and faults of a poem. Questions to consider in this regard are: What has the poet done well, and what has he done less well? Has he successfully expressed his theme? Has he written a "good" poem or a "great" poem? The Structure of the Poem Analysis In your first paragraph, give a full, thorough explanation of the overall meaning of the poem. The thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph may narrow its focus on some particular theme and devices in the poem (ex. "The imagery of birds, wild berries, and oranges in Wallace Stevens' “Sunday Morning” asserts the idea that people should be attuned not to some vague notion of an afterlife, but to this earth, because this earth, despite its imperfections, is a paradise"). The rest of the essay may be structured in any number of ways. You may move chronologically through the poem, from beginning to end, analyzing how the poem develops as it moves towards its climax or resolution. Or you may spend a separate paragraph on each important device in the poem (ex. imagery, rhythm, alliteration, myths and legends, structure, etc.). Or you may focus on three or four important themes within the poem, spending a paragraph on each one of these themes and showing how the devices of imagery, rhythm, etc. convey those themes. Whatever structure you choose, open each paragraph up with a topic sentence that summarizes the paragraph and reminds the reader of the overall meaning of the poem (ex. "The sounds in the poem - - the alliteration and onomatopoeia - - make you feel you are in the middle of a storm with things whirling, cracking, and breaking around you"). Please understand, however, that you do not need wide knowledge of the technical terminology of poetry to write this paper. What you do need is a willingness to spend sufficient time and effort to read the poem very carefully, remembering that it is normally the nature of a poet to select words and images with great care. The poet is normally not trying to hide anything; rather he or she is interested in very precisely expressing an idea or ideas. Consequently, most frequently the poem will not “slap you in the face” with its meaning. Where is the art in that? Instead, the poem will be much more subtle, and you will have to think to understand what the poet intends for you to understand. Reading and Studying the Poem *Read the poem more than once. *Use a dictionary when you find a word about whose meaning you are unsure. *Read the poem slowly. *Pay attention to what the poem is saying; do not be distracted by the rhyme and rhythm of the poem. *Try reading the poem out loud to get a sense of the way the sounds of the poem effect its meaning. Underline important passages. Make abundant marginal notes. *Paraphrase the poem. Put it “plain English.” See the POETRY ANALYSIS DIAGRAM for more ideas: LINK Composing an Analysis of a Poem One thing to definitely avoid in composing your opening paragraph is making empty remarks about the poet's style: "Dylan Thomas was a great Welsh poet of the 20th century. His poetry is interesting to read because his symbols can be interpreted in a number of different ways. His poetry is also rhythmical and fun to read aloud . . . ." Such remarks could be made about any poet. They don't deal with the meaning and specific techniques of the poems at hand, and therefore are a waste of the reader's time. The Devices of a Poem Consider these devices as you analyze a poem and incorporate them into your analysis. What do you SEE in the poem? Discuss each important image. What emotions and ideas are evoked by each image? Relate each image to the meaning of the poem. Remember that an image is not a single picture, but a combination of pictures blending together in your imagination. For example, in the opening lines of "Oread”: Whirl up, sea - - whirl your pointed pines The image is of a forest of pine trees swaying back and forth like the sharp-cresting waves of a stormy sea. The pictures of sea and pine together form the image. What do you HEAR in the poem? *Which words are onomatopoeic? Explain how each of these words is onomatopoeic by analyzing its vowel and consonant sounds. Onomatopoeia is a word which imitates a sound (ex. crack, splash, squeak, pitter patter). *What assonance and consonance are important in conveying the poem's feelings? Assonance is the repetition of a vowel sound (a, e, i, o, u) to produce a particular effect. The following is an extract from Dylan Thomas' "Vision and Prayer" poem to commemorate the home birth of his son. The "o" sound has a ghostly effect to imitate the mystery of creation and the "boom boom" sound of a heartbeat beginning. (You must use your imagination in trying to figure out the effect of an assonance or consonance in a poem): Who Consonance is the repetition of a consonant sound for a particular effect. You crash over the trees, You crack the live branch: the branch is white, the green crushed, each leaf is rent like split wood. - from "Storm" by Hilda Doolittle In this poem, the "bra" and "cr" sounds imitate the cracking of the branches in a storm. The repetition of "sh" and "ch" imitates the sound of the rain and wind in a storm. *Is the length of lines in the poem significant? Are they short of long? For what effect? Does it suit the feeling and meaning of the poem? The lines in the following poem are short, perhaps to imitate the cautious, insecure movements of old people: Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and falling they are buffeted by a dark wind . . . -from "To Awaken An Old Lady" by W.C. Williams *How are words positioned for maximum emphasis? Look especially at the effect of beginning or ending a line with a certain word. *Rhythm: how does the poem flow? Does it have a lilt or a beat? What effect does that regular beat have? Most free verse poems don't have a regular beat throughout the poem, but there may be a regular beat at certain places in the poem for a particular effect. In the poem "I Hear An Army" by James Joyce, the poet has a nightmare about charioteers clad in black armor and with long green hair, riding out of the sea and charging towards him. The beat in certain lines imitates the galloping of the horses' hooves as well as the beating of the poet's anxious heart. See if you can detect which lines have that beat. To detect a beat, read the poem out loud, emphasizing the accented syllables. I HEAR AN ARMY I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armor, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers. They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling Laughter. They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame. Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil. They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore. My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone? |
