Comprehending Poetry

COMPREHENDING POETRY
Comprehending Poetry
Introduction
This module aims to instill confidence in students to read, study, and

enjoy poetry. In the previous chapters, you learned about the genres of
poetry. At this point, you will learn to read, comprehend and critically
analyze poems in English. This chapter is designed to introduce strategies as
well as guidelines in comprehending poetry.
This module will provide a foundation for the study of poetry at a
degree level by helping you to acquire information and critical skills required
to enjoy, comprehend, and analyze poems.
Learning Outcomes
For this lesson, you are expected to:

• Cognitive: analyze, evaluate, and comprehend the poem “The road
not taken”.
• Affective: appreciate the message of the poem by relating it to a real-
life situation.
• Psychomotor: apply the strategies and guidelines for comprehending
poetry to the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.
Learning Content
Definition of poetry
What is poetry?
Poetry is highly compressed language, but still uses punctuation and
complete sentences, as well as sound and rhythm. Poets work to strip out all
the extemporaneous words writers usually include as glue between the
essential words and that give us context about meaning. While the
language’s compression may make the poem seem difficult to understand,
most poems are, in the end, interpretable.
In an academic reading, it's best to approach a poem systematically.

Treat the poetry as if it were a puzzle that needed to be solved or a suitcase
that needed to be unpacked. While it is possible to read poetry for
enjoyment outside of school, we are seeking to construct defendable
interpretations in academia, which implies that we are attempting to agree
as a community on the full meaning of the poem being read and discussed.
In its reliance on figurative language, sound rhythm, and picture, the
most cherished and enduring poetry does not relinquish literal meaning. The
most successful poems combine literal and metaphorical meaning in a way
that is difficult to describe but still resonates with us—it is the tension
between the two that creates meaning.
How do we comprehend a poetry?
Here are the strategies and guidelines in reading and analyzing poetry.
STRATEGIES
Reading the Poem
1. Read the poem through 1-3 times and see how much of the author’s
meaning you can immediately grasp.
• Ask yourself:
• Who is speaking?
• Who is the audience?
• What is the topic?
• Where and when is the action taking place?
• What is motivating the speaker?
2. Then, go back through the poem, line by line. Define all the images and
symbols, if necessary, referring to outside reference works or to other
poems by the same author.
3. If you are still having difficulty understanding the poem, consider
“translating” each line into prose. Or substitute simpler words for the more
difficult ones. You may need a dictionary.
4. When you understand all the basic words and ideas in the poem, reread
the poem a few more times and pull it all back together again.
Interpreting the Poem
1. Look at the title—it’s often as important as any line.
2. Follow the punctuation like a road map.
3. Look for symbols, allusions and other clues to meaning.
4. Identify tone (based on diction) and any ambiguities.

5. Read first for literal meaning, and then for metaphorical meaning.
6. Look for recurring words, ideas, sounds.
7. Pay close attention to the closing lines.
Annotating the Poem
Annotating literature means taking careful, extensive notes on any important
plot or character clues, themes, and use of literary devices (rhyme, allusion,
alliteration, irony, metaphor, etc.), as well as your personal responses to the
work—noting the author’s tone, intended audience, speaker, etc.—and how
you react or think about it.
In the analysis of a poem, remember to consider “who is speaking to
whom,” “when and where is the poem taking place,” and “what is topic being
discussed,” and “what is the primary purpose—to persuade, to instruct, to
inform, to reflect, to discover, and/or to entertain?”
Writing the Literary Explication/Analysis
When writing an explication paper, we essentially write out a detailed
interpretation of a work of literature, particularly of shorter work like poetry.
This type of essay looks at all aspects of a poem—its surface meaning, as
well as its underlying tone and themes, any and all use of literary devices
and their influence on the poem.
General Vocabulary - (setting, character, tone, diction, narrative, pacing,
dialogue, monologue, point-of-view,
Verse (poem, couplet, epiphany, invocation, mimesis, muse, octave,
persona, poetic license, pun)
Meter (beat, caesura, enjambment, foot, iambic pentameter, refrain,
stanza)
Rhyme (alliteration, assonance, consonance, euphony, cacaphony, eye-
rhyme, half-rhyme, internal rhyme, masculine rhyme, feminine rhyme, true
rhyme)
Figurative language (allegory, allusion, ambiguity, anaphora, apostrophe,
conceit, connotation, denotation, contrast, dead metaphor, dramatic irony,
sophoclean irony, tragic irony, extended metaphor, hyperbole, implicit or
submerged metaphor, image, invocation, irony, cosmic irony, litotes,
metaphor, metonymy, mixed metaphor, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, pathetic
fallacy, parallelism, personification, romantic irony, sarcasm, simile, socratic

irony, symbolism, synecdoche, synaesthesia, transferred epithet, trope,
verbal irony)
Types of Poems (ballad, blank verse, burlesque, didactic, dramatic
monologue, elegy, emblematic, epic, epigram, epitaph, eulogy, free verse,
haiku, limerick, lyric, ode, prose poems, sonnet, villanelle).
Example of Poetry (Narrative poem)
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
❑ PRE-READING
About the author of the poem “The Road Not Taken”.
Robert Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco,
California. Robert Frost was an American poet and winner of four Pulitzer
Prizes. Famous works include “Fire and Ice,” “Mending Wall” “Birches”
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Home Burial.” His 1916
poem, "The Road Not Taken," is often read at graduation
ceremonies across the United States. As a special guest
at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Frost
became a poetic force and the unofficial "poet laureate"
of the United States.
Task 1 Unlocking of Difficulties

Directions: Match column A with the correct answer on column B.
1. Diverged a. felt uncertain about.

2. Undergrowth b. The result of the long hard use.
3. Trodden c. Separated from another route,
especially a main one, and go in a
different direction
4. Wear d. As good as the other one.
5. Doubt e. A dense growth of shrubs and other
plants, especially under trees in woodland.
f. Movement of the foot in walking.
❑ READING AND LISTENING PHASE

Task 2 Selection-Based Questions
Directions: Look for the answer to these following questions.
• What does the title state literally and what does it imply?
• Who is the speaker, the author or the persona or character created by
the author?
• What is the setting of the poem?
• What images does the poet create?
• what is the tone of the poem?
❑ POST-READING
Group activity 1
Instructions: Analyze and evaluate the poem “The Road Not Taken” by
writing an explication or short analysis
Group 1 – Stanza I
Group 2 - Stanza II
Group 3 - Stanza III
Group 4 - Stanza IV
Group Activity 2
Instructions: Put the poem into action by drawing a picture of what you
believe is happening in the poem “The Road Not Taken”
CRITERIA
❑ CREATIVITY 20 %
❑ RELEVANCE 30 %
❑ PRESENTATION 25 %
❑ ORIGINALITY 25 %
Total 100 %
Individual Activity
Instructions: Construct a three -paragraph reflection about the meaning of
the poem and how it will help you in making your decisions in the future.
RUBRICS
❑ Adherence to the theme. 20 %

❑ Paragraph is organized and logical. 20 %
❑ Grammar and spelling are used correctly. 10 %
100 %
Total
ASSIGNMENT
Create a short analysis of the poem “A poison tree” by William Blake.
REFERENCES
https://www.highlandhs.org/uploaded/Highland/Academics/Guide
_to_Interpreting_Poetry.pdf
https://www.studyallknight.com/teaching-students-to-comprehend-poetry-
in-7-steps/
https://poets.org/poem/road-not-taken
Prepared by:
Bangan, Leonard T.
BSEd 3B-English

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COMPREHENDING POETRY

This module aims to instill confidence in students to read, study, and

For this lesson, you are expected to:

In an academic reading, it's best to approach a poem systematically.

4. Identify tone (based on diction) and any ambiguities.

fallacy, parallelism, personification, romantic irony, sarcasm, simile, socratic

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And both that morning equally lay

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Task 1 Unlocking of Difficulties

1. Diverged a. felt uncertain about.

f. Movement of the foot in walking.

❑ READING AND LISTENING PHASE

❑ Adherence to the theme. 20 %

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