Guide on how to analyse a poem

The following steps are a tried and tested way of getting to know a
poem……

1. Consider the title and any associations it has for you.

2. Look at the shape: eg. number of stanzas and anything that catches
your attention.

3. Read it quietly twice, then aloud, then quietly again; take time to
get to know it.

4. Is there anything that catches your attention in particular?

5. Consider who is speaking… about what? Is there a listener?

6. What is the poem’s dramatic situation? Setting? Subject?

7. What do you notice about its form? Sentences, lines, rhymes or

other things…

8. Look at the words used by the writer. Do you notice any clusters –
groups of similar words?

9. Look at the words again. Do you notice any oppositions, tensions?

10. Are there any images? What are they saying? Are there any
comparisons – metaphors, similes, personification? Look for
figurative language versus literal language.

11. How about sounds? Rhymes? Assonance, alliteration? What is

the effect of these sounds?

12. What would you say was the tone of the poem? Its style?

13. Do these suggest the speaker’s viewpoint? Attitude? Do they

change?

14. Look again at the beginning and ending…what has changed

from start to finish?

15. What do you notice about its tone and the style? Give
examples of its mood….

16. Have a hunch or two as to what the subject matter/content of

the poem is? Be tentative…….
17. What is the writer’s purpose in writing the poem like this do
you think?

18. How does this compare/contrast with other poems you are
reading on the same subject?

19. Reread the poem now you have made some initial hunches.
Do you want to change anything you thought at first? Now jot down
some ideas
 TECHNICAL TERMS
Make sure you are familiar with the following terms and definitions. But
remember that the art lies with USING these terms to discuss EFFECTS in poetry,
not to merely ‘spot’ them.

General:
Speaker
The narrator or main voice in a poem. There may be more than one. It need not
be the same person as the poet. Eg. Sylvia Plath is NOT a mirror! – but the poem
has the mirror as its ‘speaker’.

Figurative or metaphorical language:

Refers to any non-literal language use. Most common forms are:

 Personification
o Attributing human or animal qualities to something inanimate or
abstract, eg. ‘The radio muttered quietly to itself in the corner’;
o ‘The clouds sulked on the horizon’;
o ‘the pier tottered on unsteady legs’

 Metaphor

A form of comparison where the qualities of the thing described are

enhanced or suggested through reference to something apparently quite
different or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common
or usual word that would be expected. Some examples of metaphors: the
world's a stage, he was a lion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea of
troubles.

 Simile
A form of metaphor where the comparison is made explicitly, through the
use of ‘like’ or ‘as …as…’
Egs.
‘My love is like a red, red rose’
‘Love goes to love as school boys to their books’(my italics)
Rhyme
The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more
words. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming within a poem. The pattern
of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for
each final sound. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second,
and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another.
Two rhyming lines together are rhyming couplets (AABBCC) and alternating
are alternating couplets (ABABCDCD…)

Rhythm
The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in spoken and written
language.

Other: alphabetically…
alliteration
 The repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words: “What
would the world be, once bereft/Of wet and wildness?” (Gerard Manley
Hopkins, “Inversnaid”)
assonance
The repetition or a pattern of similar sounds, especially vowel sounds: “Thou
still unravished bride of quietness,/Thou foster child of silence and slow time”
(“Ode to a Grecian Urn,” John Keats).
caesura
A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the
line. There is a caesura right after the question mark in the first line of this
sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the
ways.”
enjambment
The continuation of a complete idea (a sentence or clause) from one line or
couplet of a poem to the next line or couplet without a pause. The opposite is
an‘end stopped line’.
free verse
Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set meter
(= regular rhythm).

Iambic pentameter
A type of meter consisting of five feet called ‘iambs’ – a unit of one
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Eg ‘But soft, what light
through yonder window breaks?’
onomatopoeia
A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of
onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, and tick-tock. An
example of onomatopoeia is found in this line from Tennyson's Come Down,
O Maid: “The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/And murmuring of
innumerable bees.” The repeated “m/n” sounds reinforce the idea of
“murmuring” by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer day.
personification
A figure of speech in which things or abstract ideas are given human
attributes: dead leaves dance in the wind, blind justice.
quatrain
A stanza or poem of four lines.
refrain
A line or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after
every stanza.
stanza
A group of lines within a poem, the equivalent of a paragraph in prose writing.
stress
The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. Stressed syllables
usually stand out because they have long, rather than short, vowels, or
because they have a different pitch or are louder than other syllables. Eg.
 Think about which syllables are stressed in your own name… JoANna,
SamANtha, ElIZabeth, SOPHie, MELanie, LAUra Mia Ruby LuCIa

DIGGING
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests: snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug,

The shaft against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney

“Digging” by Seamus Heaney

1. What is implied by the line “comes up twenty years away”?

2. What do you think is implied in the simile, “snug as a gun”?
3. To what is the craft of writing poetry compared in this poem? Why?
4. “But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.” Why not?

The Thought Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:

Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow

A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye

A widening deepening greenness
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes

The Thought Fox” by Ted Hughes

1. Put yourself in the poet’s place. Sit at his desk. Why is the page blank? What is
reflected in the window as you stare out?
2. Why “thought-fox” and not just “fox”? What has been happening to the blank
page?
3. How does the fox approach? How do you know?
4. Explain the attitude to poetry writing foregrounded in this poem.

The Poem
It is only a little twig
With a green bud at the end;
But if you plant it
And water it,
And set it where the sun will be above it,
It will grow into a tall bush,
With many flowers,
And leaves which thrust hither and thither
Sparkling.
From its roots will come freshness
And beneath it the grass-blades
Will bend and recover themselves,
And clash one upon another
In the blowing wind.
But if you take my twig
And throw it into a closet
With mousetraps and blunted tools,
It will shrivel and waste.
And, some day,
When you open the door,
You will think it an old twisted nail,
And sweep it into the dustbin
With other rubbish.

Amy Lowell

“The Poem” by Amy Lowell

1. Explain the extended metaphor used in this poem.

 2. Look at the adjectives. Can you see the use of contrast? For what purpose is it
used?
3. What is the poet’s attitude to writing poetry? How do you know?

Smithereens
I spend my days
collecting smithereens
I find them on buses
in department stores
and on busy pavements

At restaurant tables
I pick up the leftovers
of polite conversation
At railway stations
the tearful debris
of parting lovers.

I pocket my eavesdroppings
and store them away.
I make things out of them.
Nice things, sometimes.
Sometimes odd, like this.

Roger McGough

“Smithereens” by Roger McGough

1. Literally speaking, what are “smithereens”? What do they represent in the poem?
2. Why does the poet use “leftovers”?
3. Explain the poet’s attitude to the craft of writing poetry.
4. Compare this poem to the others. What differences can you see in terms of ideas
and techniques?