Analyzing a Poem

1. IDENTIFYING FEATURES OF POETRY

Before you interpret a poem, there's a little detail you have to make sure of: that what
you're reading is, in fact, a poem. So what makes a poem a poem? Concentrate on
these five things: the line, the sound, the density, the associations, and the irony. Not
every poem will exhibit all of these features, but they're a good starting point anyway.

Attention to the line as a basic element, not the sentence

The line is a poem's most basic unit. The length of each line of a poem is part of its
composition. Compare this to normal prose, where it doesn't really matter where on
the page the sentence ends, just so long as it ends. The length of the lines in a poem
will affect the meaning of the words within those lines, as well as the sound and
rhythm as the poem is read.

Line breaks can essentially be used to add another form of punctuation.

Often, a sentence or clause in a poem ends at the end of a line, and this is called an
"end-stop." But poets also commonly allow a sentence or clause to leak over into the
next line, a process called enjambment, and this has interesting effects on how a
phrase is read and how we react to it. The choice of words that come before and after
a line break may also be used to alter a poem's meaning. Here's an example of
enjambment:

Whenever I think of a pretty

Girl, I grow old.

Greater focus on the sound of words

The most obvious way poems make unique use of sound is through rhyme (if you
don't know what "rhyme" is, then 1) go back to kindergarten, and 2) OD on Dr.
Seuss). Full rhyme, rhyming the last word of each line, has become less frequent in
this century, as modern poets find the technique too simple and predictable. However,
looser types of half rhyme, matching some of the sounds between words at various
places throughout a poem, are still a fundamental component of most modern poetry.
Be conscious of when a modern poet uses rhyme, and ask yourself: what is his/her
purpose is in using it? For example, does it comment on tradition? Does it more
closely associate two images?

Rhythm (the flow and beat of a poem) is another important aspect of a poem's sound,
and a metered poem has a carefully prescribed rhythmic structure.

Density

Density refers to a poem's richness in texture that is, the level of mental effort
required to draw out its multiple levels of meaning and emotion. We read poetry more
slowly and carefully than other prose (when we read it at all) because of these
subsurface meanings that arise from what the words imply, their connotations, in
addition to what they mean literally, their denotations. Density is what can often
make a poem such a bitch to read.

Much of poetry's density comes from its focus on simile, metaphor and symbolic
language. While a simile compares two dissimilar things directly, using the words
"like" or "as" (you're as happy as a dog in heat), a metaphor implies that one thing
actually is another thing (you are a dog in heat). A symbol is a concrete thing that
stands in for another thing, usually an idea or quality. You probably learned about
these three things in eighth grade.

Associations

By associating concrete images in unexpected ways, poetry is able to get closer to

abstract concepts like Life and Love and Death, engaging our emotions rather than
our intellect. Poetry can thus do more than just signify, using the limited number of
words in our language. Instead it uses language to paint a picture. For example, in
Emily Dickinson's "The Chariot (Because I Could Not Stop for Death)," the image of
death coming for the narrator is conveyed by the image of a thoughtful coachman,
rather than a literal description of her death, and the poem is more haunting and
effective as a result.

Irony

Often a poem introduces distance between what happens or is said and what we
expect to happen or to perceive, causing us to feel the tension between the two
conflicting ideas. This uneasy (and sometimes amusing) distance, or disassociation, is
called irony. It's easier to illustrate than explain. Emily Dickinson uses irony in much
of her poetry, as when in "There's a certain slant of light" she refers to light as a thing
with weight, thus playing on the fact that light literally has no weight, and also that
the word "light" literally signifies the absence of weight.

2. LEARN SOME OF THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY

Meter

Meter is the regular rhythmic pattern of a poem. As we stated before, paying attention
to the rhythm of words is part of what makes a poem a poem. In English, the units of
rhythm are rather simple - speech may be broken down into patterns of stressed and
unstressed beats (that is, stressed and unstressed syllables). The basic unit of rhythm
in a poem is the foot, consisting of either two or three of these beats. Don't worry too
much about the foot. It's just cool to know.

Now, iambic pentameter is one of the most common types of meter, or metrical
schemes. The word pentameter is used because the line is broken up into five feet.
An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of one unstressed beat followed by a stressed one,
and is often given the notation "|u x|," where u is the unstressed beat and x the
stressed one (for example, "to-DAY". An example of how iambic pentameter is read
would be:
| i WANT| to GO | to REST | au RANT | this EVE |

Other common types of feet are the trochee, a stressed beat followed by an unstressed
one "|x u|" ("SWEET-ner"), and the spondee, two stressed beats in succession "|x x|"
("LET'S GO"). We will not discuss the familiar triple-x pattern: "|x x x|" - three beats
in a row means you're just playing with it. Get it? triple x beating man, we're sickos

Earlier poets were far more concerned than contemporary ones with meter. Many
poets wrote almost their entire body of work in a very limited number of metrical
schemes. Shakespeare, for example, wrote his sonnets and the poetic language of his
plays in iambic pentameter. So when he wrote, in his ironic "anti-sonnet" (praising his
beloved for everything she is not),

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,"

he was using iambic pentameter.

To demonstrate the concept of iambic pentameter, we can break this line into five
feet, each with an iamb, one unstressed followed by a stressed syllable, like so (read
the line aloud and compare the stressed and unstressed syllables with the chart above
them):

|u x |u x |u x |u x |u x| My mis- tress' eyes are noth ing like the sun,

Iambic pentameter is one of the most common metrical schemes in English, because

|u x |u x |u x |u x |u x| it sounds the most like or- di- nar- y speech.

However, much of twentieth-century poetry has been written in a style without a

carefully observed meter, called free verse.

Form

The form of a poem, like the meter, is a prescribed pattern, but in fact is even stricter,
often involving the meter, structure, rhyme scheme and tone of a poem. The basic unit
of form is the stanza, the series of lines that follow the form before it starts over
again. So think of a stanza in poetry as like each new verse or chorus of a song. Often,
a new stanza is preceded by a blank line. Even if you're not familiar with the form of
the poem you're reading, a pattern will still most likely become evident as you read
along.

Certain forms of poetry have become associated with particular subject matter, and so,
for example, while an earlier poet like Shakespeare might use the sonnet in its
conventional role as a love poem, a modern poet like W.B. Yeats could use the same
form ironically, to describe the rape of Leda by Zeus, in his poem "Leda and the
Swan." Poets are deep.

Modern free verse poetry (without regular meter) is also written in open form,
meaning that the form may vary throughout the poem. You may have begun to notice
that modern poets don't much like to follow a lot of rules. (Remember, however, that
they do follow some rules. The stuff you scribble in your diary may have some value
to you, but without some kind of discipline it most likely really is just scribbling.
Except for the part about which Backstreet Boy is cutest we all know that it's A.J.)

Common forms

Blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, is one of the simplest forms, in that
each line is essentially a new stanza. Shakespeare used blank verse for the poetry in
his plays (although not for his sonnets, which were rhymed).

We've provided a chart below of some of the longer forms. Note that this chart is in
no way complete - there are plenty of less common forms you may run into, and a lot
more information is available about these forms elsewhere. A poet may even create
his/her own form.

NameLines per stanzaDescription Couplet Two Each stanza is a rhyming pair of

lines

Triplet,
tercets

Three Triplets have three rhymed lines, while tercets have only two Quatrain Four
The commonest form in poetry, often thought of as A-B-A-B structure Sestet,
sestina Six Sestets may form part of a longer sonnet or sestina Rhyme royal Seven
Named for James I of Scotland, who composed in that form (and got to name it, 'cuz
he was the King) Ottava rima Eight Now usually reserved for comic poetry
Spenserian
stanza Nine Named for the author of the Faerie Queen Sonnet Fourteen Commonly
used in love poetry Villanelle Nineteen A particularly tricky form, with a complex
rhyme scheme

3. APPLY SOME TOOLS OF ANALYSIS

First of all, you're probably wondering why anyone would want to analyze a poem in
the first place. You're not alone; as far back as the late eighteenth century William
Wordsworth could lament that in our drive to understand all of nature and art, we
"murder to dissect."

Nevertheless, we believe that there is such a thing as a poet's craft, and that a
knowledge of the basics are the key to being able to understand that craft and even to
fully appreciate a sophisticated poem. (This does not, however, apply to the recent
poetic stylings of Jewel or T-Boz.)

We will focus here on what is sometimes called practical criticism. Its main function
is to do a "close reading" of a poem, examining carefully the features of the text itself
(such as those we've been discussing) to ferret out levels of meaning or to weasel out
levels of meaning, if you prefer another rodent.
The poem we're gonna look at is "My Last Duchess," by Robert Browning. If you're
not familiar with the poem, check it out now, and maybe even print it out, so you'll
know what the heck we're talking about.

Scanning the lines

Scanning (or scansion) is when you map out a line of poetry to figure out the meter
(like we did earlier). With "My Last Duchess" the meter is easy. It's almost all in
iambic pentameter. (The first line of a poem can often trick you, since the poet may
vary the meter a bit just to get out of the gate, as Browning does here.) What can we
say about this that's interesting (or perhaps we should rephrase that: what will interest
your English professor)? Well, take the little we've said about iambic pentameter and
run with it. It's conversational, and the words of this poem are all supposed to come
from a single speaker, the Duke, so that's one reason why the poet may have chosen
this meter. Another reason may be because Shakespeare and other dramatists had used
this meter in their dramatic works (as blank verse) - Browning's goal is to illustrate a
scene, and he has written many poems like this where a single character speaks. These
have come to be called his dramatic monologues.

Identifying the form

When examining a poem to identify its form, you'll want to be aware of some of the
common forms of poetry and the types of content with which they have become
associated. The Poetry Handbook is an excellent resource for this type of stuff.

You may recognize the form here as a series of couplets, each stanza a set of two
rhyming lines. With a little research you would learn that couplets written in iambic
pentameter are called heroic couplets. The heroic couplet was used by many great
poets for their epic works, up until the nineteenth century, when it fell from favor. So
Browning's use of the form in the mid-nineteenth century goes against the trend of his
time. As you read the poem, you may notice that the "dramatic irony" of a narrator
believing he is showing off his attractive qualities, when he is really revealing to his
listener that he is vain and evil, is paralleled by the irony of using an epic form of
poetry for a sordid monologue. This "interpreting poetry" stuff isn't so tough, so long
as you know how to look for the cool things.

Examining the diction

The diction of the poem is perhaps most interesting in the way it demonstrates the
narrator's imperiousness, the way he gives orders, with phrases like, "I gave
commands," from line 45 (we know the commands weren't nice, whatever they were).
Elsewhere the poet makes interesting use of lineation for the same effect. When line 2
ends in the words, "I call," they become a command. In line 15 the line again ends in
an enjambment, with the phrase "called that spot," instead of the full phrase "called
that spot/of joy into the Duchess' cheek"; the Duke makes an involuntary act - the
Duchess blushing - into a voluntary act of "calling" on his part. Ironically, this is the
one aspect of her character that he cannot control.

General observations
The central irony of the "My Last Duchess" is of course that the Duke wanted so
much to bring the Duchess's beauty within his own control, that he was willing to
destroy her (along with her beauty) to do it. A little bit like trying too hard to analyze
a poem, no?

There's been a lot of debate among scholars as to how much history, social context,
psychology, and gender concerns should be overlaid onto one's analysis. In any case,
some knowledge of the poem's subject matter can help in your reading - you'll want to
at least understand what the poet is literally talking about. Scholarly editions, like
those published by Norton and Oxford, offer useful footnotes that provide context and
define obscure or obsolete phrases.

Far more could be said about this poem, though not here in this SYW. We hope we've
at least given you a sense of the importance of understanding these basic elements of
poetry and their effects.