Introduction
The best spirit with which to approach and analyze is a poem is one of open-mindedness and inquiry. Or, as T.S. Eliot writes in his classic long poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”:
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
When you approach a poem to analyze it, think about the task as one akin to visiting a new city. It is possible to arrive without any sense of orientation, any sense of history; you can visit New York, say, and not have a list of sights to see. But think of how that visit changes if you know you want to see the Brooklyn Bridge. Then think about how that changes if you know something about the history of the Brooklyn Bridge. You know how long it took to construct. You know a little bit about what its construction symbolized. Suddenly that visit to the Brooklyn Bridge, to the city, is one replete with rich meaning.
It is in this spirit of guided visitation that your analysis of poetry will be most pleasurable. In this lesson, you’ll learn about common landmarks in poems—in other words, the techniques or tools that poets use. How each poet uses, say, alliteration or meter or rhyme or imagery may be different, just as the Golden Gate Bridge has a very different story than the Brooklyn Bridge; regardless, though, paying attention to these landmarks will tell you something important about the city or, of course, the poem.
Approaching & Analyzing Poetry
Poetic Analysis
What is the point of analyzing poetry? One simple answer is that the more we know about anything the more interesting it becomes: listening to music or looking at paintings with someone who can tell us a little about what we hear or see – or what we’re reading – is one way of increasing our understanding and pleasure. That may mean learning something about the people who produced the writing, music, painting that we are interested in, and why they produced it. But it may also mean understanding why one particular form was chosen rather than another: why, for example, did the poet choose to write a sonnet rather than an ode, a ballad, or a villanelle? To appreciate the appropriateness of one form, we need to be aware of a range of options available to that particular writer at that particular time. In the same way, we also need to pay attention to word choice. Why was this particular word chosen from a whole range of words that might have said much the same?
Think about this first stanza of Thomas Hardy’s “Neutral Tones” (1867):
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray. (Gibson, 1976, p. 12)
Notice that, in the last line, oak or elm would work just as well as far as the rhythm or music of the line is concerned, but ash has extra connotations of grayness, of something burnt out, dead, finished (“ashes to ashes”), all of which contribute to the mood that Hardy conveys in a way that ‘oak’ or ‘elm’ wouldn’t.
To return to the original question then, what is the point of analyzing poetry?, one answer is that only an analytical approach can help us arrive at an informed appreciation and understanding of the poem. Whether we like a poem or not, we should be able to recognize the craftsmanship that has gone into making it, the ways in which stylistic techniques and devices have worked to create meaning.
General readers may be entirely happy to find a poem pleasing, or unsatisfactory, without stopping to ask why. But studying poetry is a different matter and requires some background understanding of what those stylistic techniques might be, as well as an awareness of constraints and conventions within which poets have written throughout different periods of history.
You may write poetry yourself. If so, you probably know only too well how difficult it is to produce something you feel really expresses what you want to convey. Writing an essay presents enough problems – a poem is a different matter, but certainly no easier. Thinking of poetry as a discipline and a craft which, to some extent, can be learned, is another useful way of approaching analysis. After all, how successful are emotional outpourings on paper? Words one might scribble down in the heat of an intense moment may have some validity in conveying that intensity, but in general might they not be more satisfactory if they were later revised? A remark William Wordsworth made 200 years ago has become responsible for a number of misconceptions about what poetry should do. In the Preface to a volume of poems called Lyrical Ballads (1802), he wrote that “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Owens and Johnson, 1998, p.85,11.105–6). The second time he uses the same phrase he says something often forgotten today: “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity” (editor’s italics) (ibid., p. 95, ll.557–8). Notice the significant time lapse implied there – the idea that, however powerful or spontaneous the emotion, it needs to be carefully considered before you start writing. He goes on: “The emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation is gradually reproduced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins.”
You don’t have to agree with Wordsworth about what poetry is or how best to achieve it. But the idea of contemplation is a useful and important one: it implies distance, perhaps detachment, but above all re-creation, not the thing itself. And if we try to re-create something, we must choose our methods and our words carefully in order to convey what we experienced as closely as possible. A word of warning though: writers do not always aim to express personal experiences; often a persona is created.
The poet Ezra Pound offered this advice to other poets in an essay written in 1913: “Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something” (Gray, 1990, p. 56).
And in the 1950s William Carlos Williams advised, “cut and cut again whatever you write.” In his opinion, the “test of the artist is to be able to revise without showing a seam” (loc. cit.). That sewing image stresses the notion of skilled craftsmanship. Pound and Williams were American, writing long after Wordsworth, but, as you can see, like countless other poets they too reflected very seriously on their own poetic practice.
How to Analyze a Poem
Introduction to Literature. Licensed under CC BY SA 4.0 https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-introliterature/chapter/approaching-poetry/
“How to Analyze a Poem.” Licensed under CC BY 4.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lVHsfk0vV8
Summary
Assonance, alliteration, imagery, repetition, rhyme, lineation: don’t worry if you can’t remember the nuances of these tools. Furthermore, don’t worry if it seems hard to separate rhythm from rhyme; to disentangle image from diction. While learning about metrical feet may seem tricky, what you’re really training yourself to do is pay attention. That’s the most important part of any kind of analysis: paying close attention to the work at hand.
Don’t be afraid to print out a poem that you’re studying. Annotating the poem—identifying key techniques, lines that leap out at you, repeated words or sounds or phrases—and asking questions in the margins of the text will help you actively make meaning of the work. Remember that analysis is not a passive activity. Analysis is making meaning, and making, like writing poetry, involves creating.
The more you read poetry, the better you will be at finding sense among the sounds. You will become an informed visitor in your own city.
