Poetry Analysis Format - Staff Portal Camas School District



Poetry Analysis Format Due Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Use the following pattern in your analysis of your own poem. Remember that you’re going to type up your formal analysis of your poem. This typed up version is. A blank form is available in the student sharing folder in the “Tomlinson” folder.

|Categories |Example |

|Title: What is the significance of the title?|“Introduction to Poetry” is the title of the poem for a few reasons. One, the word “Introduction” makes it clear |

| |that the people who are looking at poetry don’t have much experience with it. It also sounds like it could be the |

| |title of a college class for beginner poetry. |

|Summary: Write a paragraph or so summarizing |The speaker is relating the difference between what he wants his students to get from poetry and the process |

|the events/emotions discussed in the poem. |through which the students analyze. He wants the students to experience the poetry in a more emotional and |

| |personal way and he says that the students just want to try to figure out what it “means.” |

|Setting: What is the setting of the poem? |The setting of the poem isn’t entirely clear, but it could be a classroom. In my opinion, I think it’s more likely|

| |that the speaker is outside of his classroom (a home? An office?) and is thinking about his experiences in the |

| |classroom. |

|Speaker: Who is the person “telling” the |The speaker is a teacher or a professor, most likely a professor of English. I think he is a person who loves |

|poem? What attitude does the speaker have? |poetry, because he seems to want to share the fun, creative, curious process of poetry analysis (“I want them to |

|What are they like? Use examples to support |waterski/across the surface of a poem/waving at the author's name on the shore” seems to indicate that he actually|

|your claim. |has a personal relationship with poetry). He also seems frustrated with how his students are responding, because |

|** Please remember that if the voice of the |the word choice of “But all they want to do/is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of |

|poem says "I", that doesn't mean it is the |it” indicates that he does not like the way they analyze poetry. |

|author who is speaking! | |

|Audience: Who is the speaker speaking to? How|I’m not sure who he’s speaking to, but I think it seems like he’s speaking to an audience that would side more |

|do you know? |with his view of poetry (that it’s personal, nebulous, and fun) because otherwise they wouldn’t see the |

| |disappointment of the student format of analysis. |

|Tone: What is the overall mood of the poem? |In the beginning of the poem, it seems like the speaker is demonstrating a reverence and a sense of wonder for |

|What examples from the text support your |poems. He shows that with his use of phrases like, “I say drop a mouse into a poem/and watch him probe his way |

|claim? Where do you see the tone shift? |out,” that show almost a fantastical approach to poetry analysis. If the speaker felt that poetry was a cut and |

| |dry medium that had one right answer, I don’t think he would focus so much on the experience of poetry reading. |

| |The shift in tone occurs at the lines, “But all they want to do/is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a|

| |confession out of it.” The word “but” shows a change from the idealistic view he had in the beginning to the |

| |reality of the students’ reading experience. He chooses imagery of torture (“rope,” “confession,” and, well, |

| |“torture”) to indicate how dramatically different his students see the process of reading poetry. |

|Poetic Techniques: Which types of poetic |The poem is most noticeable for its use of imagery, particularly visual imagery. The poet uses “light” in two |

|language are present in your poem? Identify |different occasions (“I ask them to take a poem/and hold it up to the light” and “walk inside the poem's room/and |

|them and pick several examples of how that |feel the walls for a light switch”) and I think this is because he’s trying to share the process of bringing |

|technique was used. |knowledge to a poem, or, bringing “light” to the poem (so an example of light being use as a symbol). He also uses|

| |personification throughout the poem to effectively give life to a poem. I think he does this because he wants to |

| |express the idea that a poem is a living thing, not just words on a page. “They begin beating it with a hose/to |

| |find out what it really means” shows the poem as a torture victim, which communicates an idea that the students |

| |miss the real purpose of the poem. Lastly, the poem employs multiple metaphors, although most are indirect. For |

| |example, poems are compared to color slides (technically a simile- “I ask them to take a poem/and hold it up to |

| |the light/like a color slide”), a beehive (an image of frenzied activity- “press an ear against its hive”), a maze|

| |(an image of confusion and mystery- “I say drop a mouse into a poem/and watch him probe his way out”), and a body |

| |of water (again, an image of mystery and “hidden depths”- “I want them to waterski/across the surface of a |

| |poem/waving at the author's name on the shore”). |

|Theme: What do you think is the author’s |I believe Billy Collins wants his readers to understand that there’s not just one right way to read a poem. I |

|message of the poem? What does he/she want |think he sees that there is a common misconception that there is only one right view of a poem, and because of |

|the reader to believe or understand after |that, students beat a poem to death metaphorically trying to find “the answer.” I think Collins is saying that if |

|reading? |we just experience a poem rather than trying to “answer” a poem we’re more likely to enjoy and understand poetry. |

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