Poetry Analysis: Understanding Poems

• Poetry shares similarities with music through rhymes, themes, and meters for easy connection.
• Like songs, poetry can evoke deep emotions.
• Poetry's concise format allows for quicker reading, despite potential complexity.

Ten Steps to Understanding Poetry

• Overcome any apprehension towards poetry.
• Read the title to anticipate the poem's subject.
• Skim the entire poem to grasp the main idea first.
• Annotate the poem, noting significant elements and personal reactions.
• Define unfamiliar vocabulary.
• Identify the speaker including tone and message.
• Identify shifts or changes via hinge words.
• Analyze the poem's structural layout and rhyme scheme.
• Read the work aloud to identify new insights.
• Enjoy the process of discovery.

PLF Poem Analysis

• The poem explores themes of love and self-reflection.
• The final line emphasizes a mirroring of qualities between the speaker and the subject.
• The author conveys trust and unwavering support to the poem's subject.
• Features an alternating rhyme scheme.
• Conveys a tone that balances both romance and melancholy.
• It could be interpreted as a declaration of deeper feelings towards a friend.

Poetry Terminology

• Poetry: literary form expressing ideas and feelings through a specific structure that tells a specific story.
• Poet: The poem's author.
• Speaker: The voice or persona narrating the poem.

Poetry Form

• Form: The visual arrangement of words on the page.
• Line: A single row of words in a poem.
• Stanza: A group of lines forming a unit.

Types of Stanzas

• Couplet: two-line stanza.
• Triplet: three-line stanza.
• Quatrain: four-line stanza.
• Quintet: five-line stanza.
• Sestet: six-line stanza.
• Septet: seven-line stanza.
• Octave: eight-line stanza.

Rhythm

• Rhythm: The pattern of sounds created by the words.
• Can use meter, rhyme, alliteration, and refrain.

Meter

• Meter: Poem's rhythmic structure, based on syllables and their emphasis.
• Foot: A unit of meter, usually with one stressed and one or more unstressed syllables.

Types of Feet

• Iambic: unstressed, then stressed.
• Trochaic: stressed, then unstressed.
• Anapestic: unstressed, unstressed, then stressed.
• Dactylic: stressed, unstressed, unstressed.

Free Verse Poetry

• Lacks consistent patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Doesn't rhyme, modern poetry.

Blank Verse Poetry

• Written in unrhyming iambic pentameter.

Rhyme

• Created when words share similar ending vowel and consonant sounds.

Rhyme Scheme

• Rhyme Scheme: The pattern of rhymes in a poem.
• End Rhyme: Rhyme at the end of lines.
• Internal Rhyme: Rhyme within a single line.

Poetic Devices

• Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate sounds.
• Alliteration: Repetition of consonant sounds at the start of words.
• Consonance: Repetition of consonant sounds anywhere in the word.
• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds in lines.
• Repetition of sounds emphasize key parts.
• Refrain: Repeated sound, word, phrase, or line.

Types of Poems

• Lyric: Short, expresses emotion, idea, or scene from first-person; often musical.
• Haiku: Three-line Japanese poem (5, 7, 5 syllables).
• Shakespearean Sonnet: 14 lines, three quatrains and a couplet, abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme.
• Narrative: Tells a story, longer than lyric poems.
• Concrete: Words arranged to form a picture related to the poem's topic.

Figurative Language

• Idiom: Phrase's literal meaning differs from its actual meaning.
• Personification: Assigning human traits to non-human things.
• Symbolism: Something representing a deeper meaning beyond itself.
• Allusion: A reference to something well-known.
• Imagery: Language appealing to the five senses.
• Figurative language transforms the reader's experience.

Types of Metaphors

• Implied Metaphor: Comparison hinted, not directly stated.
• Hyperbole: Exaggeration for emphasis.
• Idiom: Expression with a non-literal meaning.
• Personification: Giving human qualities to non-human entities.

Explore poetry analysis with ten steps to understanding poems. Learn to identify themes, vocabulary, and structure. Discover emotions and insights through poetry.