TPCASTT Poetry Analysis
TPCASTT Poetry Analysis
Poem Title: Author:
|Title: | |
|Consider the title before reading the poem and predict what the poem may be | |
|about. | |
|Paraphrase: | |
|Translate the poem into your own words. Focus on one syntactical unit at a | |
|time, not necessarily on one line at a time. Or write a sentence or two for | |
|each stanza of the poem. | |
|Connotation: | |
|Contemplate the poem for meaning beyond the literal. What do the words mean | |
|beyond the obvious? What are the implications, the hints, and the | |
|suggestions of the particular word choices? | |
|Attitude: | |
|Observe both the speaker’s and the poet’s attitudes (tone). Diction, images,| |
|and details suggest the speaker’s attitude and contribute to understanding. | |
|Shifts: | |
|Rarely does a poet begin and end the poetic experience in the same place. As| |
|is true of most of us, the poets understanding of an experience is a gradual | |
|realization, and the poem is a reflection of that epiphany. Trace the | |
|changing feelings of the speaker from the beginning to the end, paying | |
|particular attention to the conclusion. To discover shifts, watch for key | |
|words: but, yet, however, although. Punctuation: dashes, periods, colons, | |
|ellipsis. Stanza and/or line divisions: change in line length or stanza | |
|length or both. Irony: sometimes irony hides shifts. Effect of structure | |
|on meaning, how the poem is built, changes in diction (slang to formal or | |
|vice versa), the crux (one crucial part of the work that stands out, perhaps | |
|expressing the complete idea all by itself.) | |
|Title: | |
|Now examine the title again, this time on an interpretive (read between the | |
|lines) level. | |
|Theme: | |
|In identifying theme, recognize the human experience, motivation or condition| |
|suggested by the poem. | |
The Journey
-by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice---
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do---
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
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