How to analyze a poem?

( Technicality & Ethics)

Sub Topic: The beautiful part in reading literature is the reading

poetry.

Written and presented by

Ardhendu De
www.ardhendude.blogspot.com
Keywords: Poetry,FormofLiterature,
Spoken or Written, ,Rhythm, Intricate
Patterns of Sound and Imagery, Stanzas, Epic,
,Lyric, Rhythm and Meter, Figure of Speech
OR rhetoric.
Are you
Familiar with
these poets?
Dante
Ben Jonson
Lord Byron
John Clare
William Wordsworth
The Analysis
reading poetry. In fact, you
too enjoy the practice of
making clever rhymes or
noting down your own
feelings in loose sentences,
known as poetry. The
periodicals and
newspapers make a large
demand for these exercises
in rhyme and rhythm: it is
really nice to see you born
as poet. To make our
aesthetic sense develop,
we must nurture a poet
inside of our heart. Now,
lets look the inside of the
poem- how they are built
and dressed up in thought
and sound?
As a Student of Literature,
however, you have to read
rather than write most of
Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth,
Chaucer, Byron, Eliot,
Sidney, Spenser, John
Donne, and John Milton,
some William Shakespeare,
a little Dryden, and a
certain amount of Tennyson.
While reading a poem and
reaching to its meaning you
are following the prime of
an objective observer rather
than a creative articulator.
Before we go any further, I
want to set some straight
points regarding an analysis
 own ideas based on the raw
material of the poem you
are about to read. This
process is important to
validate your own version of

?
reading the text. As long as
you approach the task
positively, you cannot be
wrong! The raw material of
the poem is its words,
syntax, versification,
thought content and
obviously its felicity of
expressions. To extend these
points you have to search for
rhetoric, genre, style, type
etc. As you know answers
lay hidden in questions, so
never stop questioning
The next key point is
reaching the author doing
some research about the
authors life and work, using
reference books. Always
remember a poem is a
natural plant in the field of
authors creativity. Authors
might have a fertile land but
the very climate is the time
the author represents. So,
reaching the author means
reaching the author and his
time. After re- reading the
text you can see many a
moon in the domain in your
thought. Here you can
compare the contents with
 It is important, next, that
you must select suitable
related areas of study: such
as history, geography,
sociology, politics and
philosophy. A related study
of the text benefits for
setting up pre and post-
reading activities
completing open-ended
statements as no analysis
Percy Bysshe Shelley is ever conclusive.
There are some general
ways of analyzing a text
in the poem. Now we will
put a cursory look at
these points.
 Liketherhythmsinnature,
such as the motion of the
planets, the succession of
seasons, and the beating of the
heart, poetic rhythm usually is
organized in regularly recurring
patterns. Such patterns
regulate the motion of the
music and aid the human ear
in grasping its structure. The
most basic rhythmic unit is the
Iambicpentameter, alternates
weak unstressed and strong
John Keats stressed syllables to make a
ten-syllable line (weak
strong/weak strong/weak
strong/weak strong/weak
strong).
word or group of words used to give
particular emphasis to an idea or sentiment.
The special emphasis is typically
accomplished by the user's conscious
deviation from the strict literal sense of a
word, or from the more commonly used
form of word order or sentence
construction. From ancient times to the
present, such figurative locutions have been
extensively employed by orators and writers
to strengthen and embellish their styles of
speech and composition. Broadly speaking
rhetoric is the art of speaking in which we
can locate dressing or ornamentation. But it
is always to be remembered that it is not
the essence of the poem rather one of the
essentials.

There is little common

rhetoric that we often
meet in the lines of
the poems.
Antithesis: In Antithesis
there is Placement or
juxtaposition
( placed side by side) of two
words, phrases, clauses, or
sentences contrasted or
opposed in meaning in such a
way as to give emphasis to
contrasting ideas. Here is an
example of antithesis is the
following line by the English
poet Alexander Popes Essay on
Criticism: To err is human, to
forgive divine.
Apostrophe: It is the device by which an
actor turns from the audience, or a writer
from readers, to address an absent or
deceased person or entity, an inanimate
object, or an abstract idea. For example:
William Shakespeare invokes womenfolk in
these satirical words: Frailty, thy name is
woman (Hamlet) or the poet John Milton,
in his poem Il Penseroso, invokes the spirit
of melancholy in the following words: Hail
divinest Melancholy, whose saintly visage is
too bright to hit the sense of human sight.
Il Penseroso
 Climax: It is an arrangement of
words, clauses, sentences or even
names in the order of their
importance. The whole statement
looks like ascending a ladder of
argument: For example the famous
lines from Julius Caesar: vini , vidi,
vici.( I came, I saw, I conquered.)

Samuel Johnson
 Anticlimax: It is a sequence of ideas that
abruptly diminish in dignity or importance
at the end of a sentence or passage,
generally for satirical effect. It is arranged
like the descending order of importance as
opposed to climax. The following sentences
contain illustrations of anticlimax:
1."In moments of crisis I size up the
situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract
my muscles, take a firm grip on myself and,
without a tremor, always do the wrong
thing." (George Bernard Shaw)
2.Among the great achievements of Benito
William Wordsworth Mussolini's regime were the revival of a
strong national consciousness, the
expansion of the Italian Empire, and the
running of the trains on time.
 Hyperbole, form of inordinate
exaggeration or overstatement
according to which a person or thing
is depicted as being better
or worse, or larger or smaller, than is
actually the case.
Examples:

(1) Ten thousand daffodils I saw at a
Robert Browning glance.
(2) Oscar has the appetite of a starving
lion.
Metaphor: Here is a comparison
between two unallied things
in an implicit manner
for the purpose of suggesting a
likeness between the two.
Unlike simile here is
no use of like, as or than.
Examples: (1) The iron tongue of
midnight hath told twelve.
Shakespeare.
(The striker or clapper of the bell is
being compared to the
tongue of a speaking human being.)
(2) The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round
earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle
furled. - Matthew Arnold
(The Sea of Faith is compared to the
Christianity)
Onomatopoeia: Here is
imitation of natural
sounds by words. Examples in
English are the italicized words
in the phrases
the humming bee,
the cackling hen, the
whizzing arrow,
and the buzzing saw.
Oxymoron: Here is a combination
of two seemingly
contradictory or incongruous
words.
Examples: of living deaths, dear
wounds, fair storms,
pensive pleasure, hellish paradise,
sweet sorrow and
freezing fires.
Personification: Here is a
representation of
inanimate objects or abstract
ideas with the
attributions of living beings.
Examples
Fortune brings in some boats
that are not steered
Shakespeare.
Because I could not stop for
Death,
He kindly stopped for me.
Emily Dickinson.
Simile: Here is specific explicit
comparison
by means of the words like or as
between
two kinds of ideas or objects.
Examples: 1.William Wordsworth:
But, like a thirsty wind, to roam
about.
2. The barge she sat in, like a
burnished throne,
burned on the water.Shakespeare.
Setting: Thesettingofapoemthe time and place of its
action, the environment in which a story unfolds is crucial to
the creation of a complete work. Physical places such as
deserts and outer space, as well as cultural settings such as
hospitals and universities, help determine poets conflicts,
aspirations, and destinies.
Genre: Type or kind, as applied to poem varies different
categories:
Such as sonnet, satire, mock-epic, lyric, epic etc.

So friends enjoy the sweet stream of words and have fun.

 Ardhendu De
Assistant Teacher
Patrahati Ramratan High School (H.S.)
Makarkole; Onda
Bankura
West Bengal
India: 722207
E Mail: ardh.de@gmail.com ; Blog: www.ardhendude.blogspot.com