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Critical Analysis of Poetry

The process of analyzing a poem

The elements of analysis discussed below are designed to help you identify the ways in which
poetry makes its meaning, especially its ‘parts’; they do not give a sense of how one goes
about analyzing a poem. It is difficult to give a prescription, as different poems call on different
aspects of poetry, different ways of reading, different relationships between feeling, images and
meanings, and so forth. My general advice, however, is this:

1. look at the title

2. read the poem for the major indicators of its meaning -- what aspects of setting, of topic,
of voice (the person who is speaking) seem to dominate, to direct your reading?
3. read the ending of the poem -- decide where it ‘gets to’
4. divide the poem into parts: try to understand what the organization is, how the poem
proceeds, and what elements or principles guide this organization (is there a reversal, a
climax, a sequence of some kind, sets of oppositions?)
5. pay attention to the tone of the poem - in brief, its attitude to its subject, as that is
revealed in intonation, nuance, the kind of words used, and so forth.
6. now that you’ve looked at the title, the major indicators of ‘topic’, the ending, the
organization, the tone, read the poem out loud, trying to project its meaning in your
reading. As you gradually get a sense of how this poem is going, what its point and drift
is, start noticing more about how the various elements of the poetry work to create its
meaning. This may be as different as the kind of imagery used, or the way it uses
oppositions, or the level of realism or symbolism of its use of the natural world.

Elements of analysis

Here then are some questions to apply to your analysis in order to see how the poem is making
its meaning

1. What is the genre, or form, of the poem?

Is it a sonnet, an elegy, a lyric, a narrative, a dramatic monologue, an epistle, an epic (there are
many more).

Different forms or genres have different subjects, aims, conventions and attributes. A love
sonnet, for instance, is going to talk about different aspects of human experience in different
ways with different emphases than is a political satire, and our recognition of these attributes
of form or genre is part of the meaning of the poem.

2. Who is speaking in the poem?

Please remember that if the voice of the poem says “I”, that doesn’t mean it is the author who
is speaking: it is a voice in the poem which speaks. The voice can be undramatized (it’s just a
voice, it doesn’t identify itself), or dramatized (the voice says “I”, or the voice is clearly that of
a particular persona, a dramatized character).

Identify the voice. What does the voice have to do with what is happening in the poem, what is
its attitude, what is the tone of the voice (tone can be viewed as an expression of attitude). How
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involved in the action or reflection of the poem is the voice? What is the perspective or ‘point
of view’ of the speaker? The perspective can be social, intellectual, political, even physical --
there are many different perspectives, but they all contribute to the voice’s point of view, which
point of view affects how the world of the poem is seen, and how we respond.

3. What is the argument, thesis, or subject of the poem

What, that is to say, is it apparently ‘about’? Start with the basic situation, and move to consider
any key statements; any obvious or less obvious conflicts, tensions, ambiguities; key
relationships, especially conflicts, parallels, contrasts; any climaxes or problems posed or
solved (or not solved); the poem’s tone; the historical, social, and emotional setting.

4. What is the structure of the poem?

There are two basic kinds of structure, formal and thematic.

Formal structure is the way the poem goes together in terms of its component parts: if there are
parts -- stanza’s, paragraphs or such -- then there will be a relation between the parts (for
instance the first stanza may give the past, the second the present, the third the future).

Thematic structure, known in respect to fiction as ‘plot’, is the way the argument or presentation
of the material of the poem is developed. For instance a poem might state a problem in eight
lines, an answer to the problem in the next six; of the eight lines stating the problem, four might
provide a concrete example, four a reflection on what the example implies. There may well be
very close relations between formal and thematic structure. When looking at thematic structure,
you might look for conflicts, ambiguities and uncertainties, the tensions in the poem, as these
give clear guides to the direction of meanings in the poem, the poem’s ‘in-tensions’.

5. How does the poem make use of setting?

There is the setting in terms of time and place, and there is the setting in terms of the physical
world described in the poem.

In terms of the physical world of the poem, setting can be used for a variety of purposes. A tree
might be described in specific detail, a concrete, specific, tree; or it might be used in a more
tonal way, to create mood or associations, with say the wind blowing mournfully through the
willows; or it might be used as a motif, the tree that reminds me of Kathryn, or of my youthful
dreams; or it might be used symbolically, as for instance an image of organic life; or it might
be used allegorically, as a representation of the cross of Christ (allegory ties an image or event
to a specific interpretation, a doctrine or idea; symbols refer to broader, more generalized
meanings).

You can consider this as a whole range of ideas, from specific, concrete, to abstract, allegorical;
from concrete - tonal - connotative - symbolic - to allegorical.

6. How does the poem use imagery?

“Imagery” refers to any sort of image, and there are two basic kinds. One is the images of the
physical setting, described above. The other kind is images as figures of speech, such as
metaphors. These figures of speech extend the imaginative range, the complexity and
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comprehensibility of the subject. They can be very brief, a word or two, a glistening fragment
of insight, a chance connection sparked into a blaze (warming or destroying) of understanding;
or they can be extended analogies, such as Donne’s ‘conceits’ or Milton’s epic similes.

Function of Conceit

Because conceits make unusual and unlikely comparisons between two things, they
allow readers to look at things in a new way. Similes and metaphors may explain things
vibrantly, but they tend to become boring at times because of their predictable nature.
Conceits, on the other hand, surprise and shock readers by making farfetched
comparisons. Hence, conceit is used as a tool in literature to develop interest in readers.

7. Are there key statements or conflicts in the poem that appear to be central to its
meaning?

Is the poem direct or indirect in making its meanings? If there are no key statements, are there
key or central symbol, repetitions, actions, motifs (recurring images), or the like?

8. How does the sound of the poetry contribute to its meaning?

Pope remarked that “the sound must seem an echo to the sense”: both the rhythm and the sound
of the words themselves (individually and as they fit together) contribute to the meaning.

9. Examine the use of language.

What kinds of words are used? How much and to what ends does the poet rely on connotation,
or the associations that words have (as “stallion” connotes a certain kind of horse with certain
sorts of uses)? Does the poem use puns, double meanings, ambiguities of meaning?

10. Can you see any ways in which the poem refers to, uses or relies on previous writing?

This is known as allusion (or intertextuality). Allusions are a type of poetic device that depend
on the reader possessing background knowledge on a thing that is not further explained. To
allude is to refer to something without explaining it, to hint at it. Allusions are subtle and
indirect, hinting at something you are expected to know without explicitly telling you what it
is. They are commonly used metaphorically but can also be used ironically. For example; you
do not have to be Albert Einstein to understand poetry; or I will be your Romeo if you will be
my Juliet (referring to the famous play The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William
Shakespeare.) Another example is that “Chocolate cake is my Achilles heel”. (The allusion here
is to “Achilles’ heel,” or the Greek myth about the hero Achilles and how his heel was his one
weakness. In this case, the speaker's “weakness” is chocolate cake.)

11. What qualities does the poem evoke in the reader?

What sorts of learning, experience, taste and interest would the ‘ideal’ or ‘good’ reader of this
poem have? What can this tell you about what the poem ‘means’ or is about? The idea is that
any work of art calls forth certain qualities of response, taste, experience, value, from the reader,
and in a sense ‘forms’ the reader of that particular work. This happens through the subject
matter, the style, the way the story is told or the scene set, the language, the images, the
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allusions, all the ways in which we are called by the text to construct meaning. The theorist
Wayne Booth calls the reader as evoked or formed by the text the “implied reader.”

13. What is the world-view and the ideology of the poem?

What are the basic ideas about the world that are expressed? What areas of human experience
are seen as important, and what is valuable about them? What areas of human experience or
classes of person are ignored or denigrated? A poem about love, for instance, might implicitly
or explicitly suggest that individual happiness is the most important thing in the world, and that
it can be gained principally through one intimate sexually-based relationship -- to the exclusion,
say, of problems of social or political injustice, human brokenness and pain, or other demands
on us as humans. It might also suggest that the world is a dangerous, uncertain place in which
the only sure ground of meaningfulness is to be found in human relationships, or it might
suggest on the other hand that human love is grounded in divine love, and in the orderliness and
the value of the natural world with all its beauties. What aspects of the human condition are
foregrounded, what are suppressed, in the claims that the poem makes by virtue of its inclusions
and exclusions, certainties and uncertainties, and depictions of the way the natural and the
human world is and works?