Featured: Analyzing Poetry

Analyzing poetry can seem like a daunting task at first, but once you get the hang of it, analyzing poetry is one of the best parts of reading it. Although it may seem difficult, deciphering a poem is easier than it seems.

Beginning to analyze a poem is the easiest step. Give the poem a quick read through to discover the meaning that it presents at face value. This is what the poem would be about if it was translated to conversational language.

After you have the literal meaning of the poem, it is time to dig into the deeper meaning of the poem. This can be done by breaking the poem down into individual words or connected phrases. For example, if your poem contains a wilting flower, you would break down the wilting flower into an individual piece to analyze.

With your individual pieces, you can gather deeper meanings that you may not have gathered on the surface. Using our wilting flower example, the flower could represent the narrator’s slowly dwindling hope that is occurring in the telling of the poem. Though it may be hard to gather this meaning at first, it will get easier with time. The more individual pieces of the poem that you have analyzed, the more sense it will make. This is because these pieces are usually related together into a bigger theme.

After you have the individual pieces, you are ready to analyze the deeper meaning of the poem. You can do this by putting together the bigger picture and all the deeper meanings of the individual pieces. Once you have done this, it will hopefully be clear what the author was representing in their poem.

It may take practice, but analyzing poems gets easier with time, and you may find yourself reading and analyzing poetry for enjoyment in your free time.

Special thanks to sheepcat; and aubs for editing!