Poetry+Analysis+help

Here are some example to help you write a good Poetry Analysis (also called a response or a critique)

1. Poetry Analysis [|Step] by Step 2. [|Critical Reading] This is your first step. 3. Writing About Poetry - [|Elementary] 4. [|Framework] for Responding to Poetry 5. [|Analysis] of poetry 6. Some [|words] to use

Graphic =Writing About Poetry =
 * What is the poem about?** Summarise what the poem is about in two or three sentences.
 * Write about the verse form of the poem.** If the poem is rhymed verse, what is the rhyme scheme? Why do you think the poet chose this verse form?
 * Choose three or four interesting descriptive words or phrases in the poem.** Say what they mean and why you found them interesting.
 * Choose a comparison (for example, simile, metaphor or personification) from the poem.** Explain why you liked it.
 * Write about the tone and mood of the poem. Is it funny, sad, angry?** Use quotes to prove your point.
 * What did the poem make you think of, or feel?** Try and give reasons for your opinion and quote from the poem to show what you mean.
 * Did you like the poem?** Give reasons for your answer.

=A Framework for Responding to Poetry= 
 * Introduction**:
 * Briefly introduce the title of the poem and name of the poet.
 * Try to classify the type of poem it is e.g. sonnet, ballad, haiku, acrostic, shape, lyric, ode, limerick, elegy, dramatic monologue etc.
 * Briefly explain the subject of the poem.
 * Point One:** Explore the Themes of the Poem
 * Try to group the ideas in the poem is there a story that the poem tells?
 * What do you think the poem is about?
 * Point Two:** Imagery used to express themes
 * What are the pictures in the poem?
 * Are metaphors/similes used to explain ideas?
 * Are the five senses used to evoke certain reactions in the reader?
 * Point Three**: Form and Structure
 * How is the poem organised e.g. lines, verses, layout and shape.
 * Why has the poet decided to structure the ideas in this way e.g. the sequence of ideas, length of lines, patterns etc.
 * Point Four:** Rhyme and Rhythm
 * How does the poem rhyme? E.g. abab or aabb etc.
 * What is the rhythm of the poem when read aloud?
 * Why has the poet chosen this rhyme and rhythm to express these ideas?
 * Point Five: Language Patterns**
 * Think about the sound of the poem and choice of words
 * The poet uses specific words because they have a certain association in the reader's mind.
 * Look out for alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, personification, symbolism. How has the poet grouped words to achieve a desired effect?
 * Conclusion: Poet's message**
 * What is the poet trying to communicate to the reader?
 * How effective are the devices/language that he uses?
 * What is your response to the poem?

=Analysis of poetry =

STATE, QUOTE, COMMENT
When commenting on a writer's style and the intended effect it is important to show your understanding. By following the **STATE, QUOTE, COMMENT** approach you will develop an appropriate approach. STATE** In the first stanza of the poem "Miracle on St David's Day" Gillian Clarke describes the country house in what seems to be an idyllic setting. //.............The sun treads the path among cedars and enormous oaks. It might be a country house, guests strolling...// Despite the conversational tone suggesting normality, her use of the word might alerts the reader. The illusion of normality is swept away by the opening line of the second stanza: I am reading poetry to the insane. The finality of the end-stopped line and the matter of fact tone shock the reader. The contrast between the descriptive lines of the opening stanza and the flat tone of this line introduce the reader to the contrast between the setting and the guests. In the first stanza of the poem "Miracle on St David's Day" Gillian Clarke describes the country house in what seems to be an idyllic setting: //.............The sun treads the path among cedars and enormous oaks. It might be a country house, guests strolling...// Despite the conversational tone suggesting normality her use of the word might alerts the reader. The illusion of normality is swept away by the opening line of the second stanza: //I am reading poetry to the insane.// The finality of the end-stopped line and the matter of fact tone shock the reader. The contrast between the descriptive lines of the opening stanza and the flat tone of this line introduce the reader to the contrast between the setting and the guests. Note the two methods of using quotations: 1. Lines set out as printed and apart from your writing. 2. Single words included as part of your writing. JA/5/00 This poetry resource by Jean Aldred was found free at www.englishresources.co.uk © 2000 Copyright English Resources, all rights reserved
 * e.g.
 * QUOTE**
 * COMMENT**
 * STATE**
 * QUOTE**
 * COMMENT**
 * Your paragraph would thus read:**

Terms

Terms of Art Used in the [|**__Virtual Classroom__**]

Words to use for analysis of verse Allegory: the saying of one thing and meaning another. Sometimes this [|__trope__] works by an extended metaphor ('the ship of state foundered on the rocks of inflation, only to be salvaged by the tugs of monetarist policy'). More usually it is used of a story or fable that has a clear secondary meaning beneath its literal sense. Orwell's //Animal Farm//, for example, is assumed to have an allegorical sense.

Alliteration: The repetition of the same consonants (usually the initial sounds of words or of stressed syllables) at the start of several words or syllables in sequence or in close proximity to each other. In Anglo-Saxon poetry and in some fourteenth century texts such as //Piers Plowman// and //Sir Gawain and the Green Knight// rigid patterns of alliteration were an essential part of poetic form. More recently it is used for expressive or occasionally onomatopoeic effect.

Apostrophe: In rhetoric the word is used to describe a sudden address to a person or personification. In punctuation the same word is used to describe the mark ' which can be used to indicate the beginning and end of direct speech, a quotation, or an [|__elision__]. From the late sixteenth century an apostrophe was used, very irregularly, to indicate a possessive form of a noun: by the mid-nineteenth century it was established by convention that singular possessive forms should be indicated by "'s" ('the cat's pajamas') and that regular plural possessive forms should be indicated by "s'" ('my parents' house'). If a plural does not normally end in 's' then the form "'s" is used for the plural possessive form ('the children's tea was delicious'). The main exception to this rule is 'it's', which is used as the contracted form of 'it is' or 'it has'. The form 'its' is reserved for the possessive use ('the door has lost its paint').

Assonance: The word is usually used to describe the repetition of vowel sounds in nieghbouring syllables (compare [|__Alliteration__]. The consonants can differ: so 'd**ee**p s**ea**' is an example of assonance, whereas 'The queen will sw**eep** past the d**eep** crowds' is an example of internal [|__rhyme__]. More technically it is used to describe the 'rhyming of one word with another in the accented vowel and those which follow, but not in the consonants, as used in the versification of Old French, Spanish, Celtic, and other languages' (OED).

Blank verse: is the metre most frequently used by Shakespeare. It consists of an unrhymed [|__iambic pentameter__]. It was first used in Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey's, translation of Books 2 and 4 of Virgil's //Aeneid//, composed some time in the 1530s or 40s. It was adopted as the chief verse form in Elizabethan verse drama, and was subsequently used by Milton in //Paradise Lost// and in a wide range of subsequent meditative and narrative poems.

Couplet: a rhymed pair of lines, which are usually of the same length. If these are [|__iambic pentameters__] it is termed a **heroic couplet**. This form was made popular by Chaucer's //Canterbury Tales// and became the dominant poetic form in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In the work of Alexander Pope it becomes a flexible medium for pointed expression. Couplets of four iambic feet (i.e. eight syllables in all) are called **octosyllabic couplets**. These were favoured by John Gower, Chaucer's near contemporary, and became a vehicle for a comically brisk style in Samuel Butler's satirical poem //Hudibras// (1663-78).

Diction: or lexis, or vocabulary of a passage refers to nothing more or less then its words. The words of a given passage might be drawn from one [|__register__], they might be drawn from one linguistic origin (e.g. Latin, or its Romance descendants Italian and French; Old English); they might be either very formal or very colloquial words.

Elision: The omission of one or more letters or syllables from a word. This is usually marked by an apostrophe: as in 'he's going to the shops'. In early printed texts the elided syllable is sometimes printed as well as the mark of elision, as in Donne's 'She 'is all States, all Princes I'.

Foot: the basic unit for describing metre, usually consisting of a certain number and combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. Stressed and unstressed syllables form one or other of the recognised metrical forms: an iamb is 'di dúm'; a trochee is 'dúm di', a spondee is 'dúm dúm' (as in 'home-made'), an [|__anapaest__] is 'di di dúm', and a [|__dactyl__] is 'dúm di di'.

Feminine Rhyme: a rhyme of two syllables in which the final syllable is unstressed ('mother | brother'). If an iambic pentameter ends in a feminine rhyme the last, unstressed, syllable is usually not counted as one of the ten syllables in the line ('To be or not to be, that is the question' - the 'ion' is unstressed and takes the line into an eleventh syllable). Feminine rhyme can be used for comic effect, as it is frequently in the works of Byron: 'I've spent my life, both interest and principle, | And think not what I thought, my soul invincible.' It can also be sometimes used to suggest a feminine subject-matter, as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 20, which is addressed to the 'master mistress of my passion' and which makes extensive use of 'feminine' rhymes.

Form: The term is usually used in the analysis of poetry to refer to the structure of stanzas (such as [|__ottava rima__]). It can also be used less technically of the general structural principles by which a work is organised, and is distinguished from its content.

Free Verse: verse in which the metre and line length vary, and in which there is no discernible pattern in the use of rhyme.

Genre(from Latin //genus//, type, kind): works of literature tend to conform to certain types, or kinds. Thus we will describe a work as belonging to, for example, one of the following genres: epic, pastoral, satire, elegy. All the resources of linguistic patterning, both stylistic and structural, contribute to a sense of a work's genre. Generic boundaries are often fluid; literary meaning will often be produced by transgressing the normal expectations of genre.

Homophones: Words which sound exactly the same but which have different meanings ('maid' and 'made').

Irony: strictly a sub-set of [|__allegory__]: irony not only says one thing and means another, but says one thing and means its opposite. The word is used often of consciously inappropriate or understated utterances (so two walkers in the pouring rain greet each other with 'lovely day!', 'yes, isn't it'). Irony depends upon the audience's being able to recognise that a comment is deliberately at odds with its occasion, and may often discriminate between two kinds of audience: one which recognises the irony, and the other which fails to do so. **Dramatic irony** occurs when an audience of a play know some crucial piece of information that the characters onstage do not know (such as the fact that Oedipus has unwittingly killed his father).

Metaphor: the transfer of a quality or attribute from one thing or idea to another in such a way as to imply some resemblance between the two things or ideas: 'his eyes **blazed**' implies that his eyes become like a fire. Many metaphors have been absorbed into the structure of ordinary language to such an extent that they are all but invisible, and it is sometimes hard to be sure what is or is not dead metaphor: 'the fat book' may imply a metaphor, as may also be the case when we talk of a note of music as 'high' or 'low'. **Mixed metaphors** often occur when a speaker combines two metaphors from very diverse areas in such a way as to create something which is physically impossible or absurd ('the report of the select committee was a bombshell which got right up my nose'). These often result from the tendency of metaphors to become received idioms in which the original force of the implied comparison is lost. See also [|__Simile__].

Metonymy: A figure of speech in which the name of one object is replaced by another which is closely associated with it. So 'the turf' is a metonym for horse-racing, 'Westminster' is a metonym for the Houses of Parliament, 'Downing Street' is a metonym for the Prime-Minister or his office. 'Sceptre and crown came tumbling down' is a metonymic way of saying 'the king fell from power'. See [|__synecdoche__].

Metre: A regular patterned recurrence of light and heavy stresses in a line of verse. These patterns are given names. Almost all poems deliberately depart from the template established by a metrical pattern for specific effect. Assessing a poem's metre requires more than just spotting an [|__iambic pentameter__] or other metrical pattern: it requires you to think about the ways in which a poem departs from its underlying pattern and why. Emotion might force a reverse foot or [|__trochee__], or the normal patterns of speech might occasionally cut across an underlying rhythm. See [|__Iambic Pentameter__].

Monorhyme: A rhymescheme in which all lines rhyme (aaaa etc.)

Onomatopoeia: The use of words or sounds which appear to resemble the sounds which they describe. Some words are themselves onomatopoeic, such as 'snap, crackle, pop.'

Ottava rima: an eight line verse [|__stanza__] [|__rhyming__] abababcc. In English it is usually in [|__iambic pentameter__]. It was introduced into English by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 1530s, and was widely used for long verse narratives. Sir John Harington translated Ariosto's //Orlando furioso// into ottava rima in 1591; Byron used the form in //Don Juan// (1819-24). Edmund Spenser produced a nine line modification of the form which ends with an [|__alexandrine__] and rhymes ababbcbcc. for his //Faerie Queene// (1590-6). This is known as the Spenserian stanza, and was quite widely used by Wordsworth, Byron and Keats.

Personification: the attribution to a non-animate thing of human attributes. The thing personified is often an abstract concept (e.g. 'Lust'). Personification is related to allegory, insofar as personification says one thing ('Lust possessed him') and really means another. But it is opposed to allegory insofar as it aims for the maximum degree of explicitness, whereas allegory necessarily involves greater degrees of obliquity.

Quatrain: a verse stanza of four lines, often rhyming abab. Tennyson's //In Memoriam// rhymes abba, however.

Refrain: A repeated line, phrase or group of lines, which recurs at regular intervals through a poem or song, usually at the end of a [|__stanza__]. The less technical term is 'chorus'.

Rhyme: When two or more words or phrases contain an identical or similar vowel-sound, and the consonant-sounds that follow are identical or similar (red and dead). **Feminine rhyme** occurs when two syllables are rhymed ('mother | brother'). **Half-rhyme** occurs when the final consonants are the same but the preceding vowels are not. ('lo**ve** | ha**ve**')**. Eye rhyme** occurs when two syllables look the same but are pronounced differently ('kind | wind' - although sometimes changes in pronunciation have made what were formerly perfect rhymes become eye rhymes). **Rime riche** occurs when the same combination of sounds is used in each element of the rhyme, but where the two identical sounding words have different senses ('maid | made'). This was in the medieval period regarded as a particularly perfect form of rhyme. **Leonine rhyme** occurs when the syllable immediately preceding the [|__caesura__] rhymes with the syllable at the end of the line. The **Rhyme Scheme**, or regularly recurring patterns of rhyme within a poem or stanza, is recorded by using a letter of the alphabet to denote each rhyme, and noting the order in which the rhymes recur (aabbcc... is the most simply rhyme scheme of all, that of the couplet).

Rhythm: a term designating the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in verse or prose. Different lines of verse can have the same [|__metre__] but a different rhythm. Thus two lines of alliterative verse in Middle English poetry might have the same metrical pattern of four stressed syllables, but their rhythm might differ by having a greater or lesser number of unstressed syllables intervening between the stressed syllables.

Simile: a comparison between two objects or ideas which is introduced by 'like' or 'as'. The literal object which evokes the comparison is called the **tenor** and the object which describes it is called the **vehicle**. So in the simile 'the car wheezed like an asthmatic donkey' the car is the tenor and the 'asthmatic donkey' is the vehicle. **Negative similes** are also possible (as in Shakespeare's Sonnet 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun').

Sonnet: In its earliest usages this can mean just 'a short poem, often on the subject of love.' Now it is almost always used to denote a fourteen line poem in [|__iambic pentameter__]. There are two main forms of Sonnet: the 'Shakespearean Sonnet' rhymes abab cdcd efef gg. It was the form favoured by Shakespeare, in his //Sonnets// (1609), although it is first found in the work of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. The three quatrains can be linked together in argument in a variety of ways, but often there is a 'volta' or turn in the course of the argument after the second quatrain. The final [|__couplet__] often provides an opportunity to sum up the argument of the poem with an epigram. Edmund Spenser's //Amoretti// (1595) introduced a variant form in which the quatrains are connected by rhyme: abab bcbc cdcd ee. The 'Petrarchan Sonnet', which is the earliest appearance of the form, falls into an octet, or eight line unit, and a sestet, or six line unit. The Petrarchan sonnet form rhymes abbaabba cdecde (although the sestet can follow other rhyme-schemes, such as cdcdcd). Often there is a marked shift in the progression of the argument after the octet in the Petrarchan sonnet, which is sometimes vestigially registered in the Shakespearean form by a change of argument or mood at the start of the third quatrain. Sonnets may be free-standing poems, or they may form part of an extended sequence of poems which might relate in a loose narrative form the progress of a love affair (as is the case in Sidney's //Astrophil and Stella//, Spenser's //Amoretti// and Petrarch's //Canzoniere//).

Stanza: 'A group of lines of verse (usually not less than four), arranged according to a definite scheme which regulates the number of lines, the metre, and (in rhymed poetry) the sequence of rhymes; normally forming a division of a song or poem consisting of a series of such groups constructed according to the same scheme' (OED). See also [|__ottava rima__], [|__quatrain__]. This term is preferable to the less technical 'verse', since that word can also refer to a single line of a poem. In printed poems divisions between stanzas are frequently indicated by an area of blank space.

Stress: Emphasis given to a syllable in pitch, volume or duration (or several of these). In normal spoken English some syllables are given greater stress than others. In [|__metrical__] writing these natural variations in stress are formed into recurrent patterns, such as [|__iambs__], [|__anapaests__] or [|__trochees__].

Synecdoche: the rhetorical figure whereby a part is substituted for a whole ('a suit entered the room'), or, less usually, in which a whole is substituted for a part (as when a policeman is called 'the law' or a manager is called 'the management'). See [|__metonymy__].