How to Read and Analyze a Poem
It's not easy to analyze a poem. After all, a poem is not a neatly constructed five-paragraph essay with
a thesis statement at the beginning to tell you what it's all about. Poems usually do have themes, but
they also try to create an emotional effect and make an association between things and ideas not often
joined. Sometimes students faced with an assignment or test that requires analyzing a poem feel lost:
what to make of all the words, images, patterns whirling around in the text?
There are some approaches that will help. Even though a poem does not usually tell you directly what
it means (otherwise it would be prose) the poet leaves you a trail of clues, crumbs from the same
thematic cookie. Here are some specific strategies you can try to collect those crumbs.
1. Read the poem once to get a feel for the poem. It is necessary that you read a poem several
times before you understand it. The first time is just to get the feeling of the poem and then
each time after try to break it down stanza by stanza or line by line if needed.
2. Look up any words you do not understand. This is important because there may be more
than one meaning for a word, and you need to understand the language the author uses. You
should also consider the connotation of certain words because the author may be evoking a
particular feeling.
3. Who is the speaker of the poem? Identify the speaker of the poem, keeping in mind that the
author is not necessarily writing from his or her own point of view; the speaker could be almost
anyone. Is the speaker a child or an adult? A man or a woman? Is the speaker an inanimate
object? What is the speaker’s tone? Look for clues in the poem to help you identify the
speaker. Some clues might include the topic of the poem, word choice, structure, punctuation
or capitalization.
I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy’s garden
and go to the mountains with
your grandmother and go barefooted
4. What is the theme of the poem? Remember the theme of the poem is the central idea of the
work, which can be expressed in a few words. Try to paraphrase the poem as a whole to help
you understand the meaning. Use clues in the poem to help you identify the theme.
5. What does the title mean? Don't ignore it. Poets don't always choose a title that states their
theme, but they often do. It may help you find the theme of the poem, or at least identify the
key image representing the theme. If the title does seem to be telling you something, it never
hurts to relate that meaning to the rest of the poem. What parts of the poem seem to echo,
expand on or "explain" the title?
For example, would you understand the theme of Langston Hughes’ “Suicide’s Note” without
the title? What in the rest of the poem supports the title?
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
6. Look for any Figures of Speech:
Some of the most common figures of speech are the metaphor, the simile, and the symbol.
Focusing your attention on these can help you find patterns and meaning in the poem.
Metaphor - A metaphor can be fairly obvious or conventional: an old Rolling Stones song has the
chorus "she's a rainbow" which evidently means that "she", like a real rainbow, is beautiful, colorful,
rare. Or it can be more difficult or even surreal.
Suppose a poem begins "My friend is a refrigerator." It's possible the poet has a close emotional
relationship with a kitchen appliance, but more likely that the poem will explore the character of the
friend. To make meaning out of this metaphor, think of what a refrigerator is like. It might help you to
brainstorm words and feelings connected with "a refrigerator." It's usually big, with a somewhat blank
or bland exterior (which most people dress up with magnets, posters, etc.). Inside, though, there are
good things to eat and drink; and there are different levels of heat: the freezer, the main compartment,
the butter keeper, and so on. Sometimes people hide jewels or money (diamonds inside ice cubes, for
example), assuming that burglars would never look there. They do.
So the poet might be saying through this metaphor something like my friend does look all that
interesting or unusual on the outside, but "open him up" and inside you'll find some things to savor,
and a much more complex person than you might have guessed. So, although this metaphor might
seem more surreal or disconnected, it actually does hold some meaning.
Simile - You can explore similes the same way suggested above for metaphors: look for the qualities
and associations of the second half of the simile, what the more familiar thing, person, emotion, etc. is
being compared to. Finding what's common between the two parts of the simile may be easy, as in the
Robert Burns line "My love is like a red, red rose," or more challenging. In the short poem "Dream
Deferred," Langston Hughes asks:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Here he's saying "a dream deferred" might dry up like a raisin in the sun. The comparisons here are
more complex, because we have a kind of before-and-after state for the subject "dream" and the thing
is it compared to. A new dream is fresh, full of emotions like a shiny grape is plump with sweet juice;
but a dream deferred becomes old, wrinkled, discolored. Of course, being a good poet, Hughes took
only three short lines to express what takes a full paragraph of prose to explain.
Symbols -A symbol is an object or pattern referred to several times throughout a poem. It may even be
in the title. The poet intends the symbol to stand for more than just its usual meaning as a tree, stone,
drop of water, gun, etc. Many images are obvious because they have so often been used to convey
certain meanings in the past. Burns wasn't the only one to use a rose as a symbol of romantic love or a
woman's beauty: Dante did the same thing in his epic poem "The Inferno", and so do the florists who
stock their shelves with roses every Valentine's Day. Many birds, flowers, trees, gems, etc. are
conventional symbols or emotions or other things: the robin symbolizes spring, the willow (especially
the weeping willow) sadness, gold stands for wealth and endurance (gold doesn't rust or tarnish).
Now let's try the techniques on a short poems often found in anthologies. It is William Blake's "A
Poison Tree."
A Poison Tree
I
I
I
I
was angry with my friend.
told my wrath, my wrath did end.
was angry with my foe.
told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles
And it grew both day and night
Till it bore a an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Suppose you had to analyze this poem. What is it saying? And how do metaphors, similes and symbols
support or help make that meaning?
We won't try a technical analysis of this poem, although that would be easy to do, given its four-line
stanzas (quatrains) and regular rhyme scheme. First, there are no similes. This poem works with
metaphors and symbols. The opening stanza is very simple and straightforward. It tells us that the
speaker or narrator of the poem was angry twice once with a friend and once with an enemy. With the
friend, he shared his feelings ("I told my wrath") and that solved the problem and ended his anger. But
with the enemy (or "foe,") he tried a different tactic: "I told it not, my wrath did grow."
In the second stanza, this process of hiding his anger and letting it grow becomes a series of metaphors
connected with the idea that the anger becomes a "poison tree," Like a real tree, needs sun (smiles) and
water (tears) and so on. The fact that this is, however, a symbolic tree, is made obvious by statements
like "it grew both day and night."
A way to make all this obvious is to take notes as you read the poem and organize them under
headings: put all the metaphors that relate to the tree under a heading: Tree of Wrath. Now look at
what they suggest. Is it something negative or positive? Beautiful or frightening? The words connect
with lying and trickery (deceitful wiles) and negative feelings like wrath and sorrow.
Eventually, the tree produces an apple. Now our tree symbol joins a long tradition, because Blake
knew the Bible well, and Eve is supposed to have plucked an apple from the tree of knowledge of good
and evil and given it to Adam. This caused their expulsion from Paradise, making that tree a kind of
"poison tree" too. If you're wondering what other meanings a symbol has had in culture, look up in a
dictionary of symbols or on the Internet.
So we know from this famous "first apple tree" that apples can be dangerous, even a kind of weapon.
Remember the wicked witch/queen who gives Snow White a poisoned apple, putting her into a coma?
And that's what happens here. Drawn by the beautiful fruit, the enemy steals and eats the apple, and
then lies "outstretched beneath the tree."
So, if we add up all these tree and fruit metaphors and symbols, the poem can be interpreted to be
echoing the saying "revenge is a dish best served cold." By taking his time, plotting and scheming and
pouring all his fears and tears into the tree, the poem's narrator gets back at his enemy more effectively
than he could have in a direct, face-to-face confrontation. And the fact that he is capable of taking this
revenge shows that he, too, is in a way a "poison tree," or has eaten from one. Christians are supposed
to love their enemy and turn the other cheek, but the speaker of this poem has more in common with
the Bourgeois, who used to poison their enemies during elaborate banquets, or Montresor, the
protagonist of Poe's story "The Cask of Amontillado," whose ingenious scheme condemns his former
friend, Fortunato, to a horrible death.
In other words, a thorough analysis of this poem would show that its theme is human evil-throughrevenge of the narrator, who took such a secret and effective revenge on his enemy.
Poetry Terms
Alliteration
The repetition of the initial consonant sounds
(Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers)
Allusion
Reference to a person or event in mythology or history; used to add meaning
(the rain fell and the thunder roared as if Zeus were angry at the world)
Apostrophe A speaker directly addresses an absent person or personified quality, object or idea.
(To the moon…Blow, blow thou winter wind)
Assonance
The close repetition of vowel sounds
(meat and cheese pleases Pete and me)
Blank verse Unrhymed lines of poetry
Caesura
A pause or break in a line of poetry
(two roads diverged in the woods and I- I took the one less traveled by)
Couplet
Two lines of verse that rhyme
Concrete
A poem in the form of the poem’s topic
poem
Consonance The repetition of a consonant sound two or more times in short succession
(all mammals named Sam are clammy)
Connotation The feeling or images associated with a word
(“home”= comfort, family, love)
Denotation
The factual meaning of the word or line without emotional coloring
(“house” and “home” have similar dictionary definitions)
Hyperbole
An exaggeration
(I am so hungry I could eat a horse!)
Imagery
Sensory details to paint a picture in the reader’s mind
(icicles, chilled hanging from the frozen wall)
Metaphor
A comparison of two unlike things without using like or as; noun=noun
(Juliet is the sun)
Octave
Eight lines of poetry grouped together
Onomatopoeia Words that sound like what they describe
(slurp, bang, ding-dong, zoom, wham)
Oxymoron
Two opposite ideas working together
(burning ice-cream, jumbo shrimp, plastic silverware)
Personification Giving human qualities to inanimate objects
(the chocolate cake winked at me as I walked by)
Prose
A short composition having the intention of poetry but written in paragraph
form rather than verse
Quatrain
Four lines of a poem grouped together
Refrain
A repeated word, phrase, line or group of lines at a fixed position in the poem
Repetition
Repeating the same words or phrases
(lollipop, lollipop, oh lolly, lollipop)
Rhyme Scheme
Any fixed pattern of rhymes characterizing a whole poem or its stanzas
End rhyme- The end sounds are exactly alike ( I do not like green eggs and ham;
I do not like them Sam I am! )
Masculine rhyme- The rhyme involves one syllable ( head, read )
Feminine rhyme- The rhyme involves two or more syllables ( turtle, fertile )
Approximate rhyme -The sound is similar to make a rhyme, does not need to be exact
(But morning let us pass,
Outgrows his nervous laugh)
Internal rhyme - Rhyming words within a line
(at first we feared, then the ice-cream appeared and we all cheered)
Rhythm
A particular pattern of stress in a poem or kind of poetry
Sestet
Six lines of poetry grouped together
Simile
Comparing two unlike things using like or as
(she is as fun as a barrel of monkeys)
Sonnet
A poem of 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme
Stanza
A division of a poem, a grouping of lines
Symbol
An object that is used to represent something else
(red rose= passion, flag= patriotism)
Theme
The central idea or message
Tone
The attitude or feeling of the speaker
Understatement Saying less than one means
(ready to eat Thanksgiving dinner you say, “This looks like a nice snack!”)