How to Analyze a Poem

• Clarify unknown words (purely a vocabulary issue)
• Clarify allusions (references to ideas outside the text itself that the reader must possess knowledge of in order to make sense of their use)
• Read the poem one line at a time, closely checking each word for a multiplicity of connotations (the connotations may be metaphorical, symbolic, or literal)
• Summarize what is happening or what is being described in the poem (do this in small chunks—for example, by stanza or punctuation)
• Extrapolate main ideas present in the poem
• Examine the relationships between the main ideas
• From the relationships of ideas, generate essential questions raised by the poem
• Always ground your analysis in the text itself. The more textual proof there is, the stronger your assumptions are.
• Evaluate the prosody of the poem (http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/m/morillo/public/prosody1.htm)
• Identify and explain possible relationships between prosody and content (how does the rhyme and meter tie into the meaning of what is being said).