Analyzing poetry is an extremely important thing to do, because it enhances your overall enjoyment of the piece. It also improves your understanding of it. There are actually several ways to analyze poetry. Three of the ways to analyze poetry are as follows: Looking at the tone of the poem, looking at the style of the poem, and looking at the diction of a poem.
The first way to analyze poetry is to look at the tone of it. To begin, theme is the attitude which an author or narrator takes in a poem or piece of literature. It’s the main idea the author wishes to express. You can tell tone by looking at the choice of words or phrases used in the poem. Take the poem “I Hate It” as an example. The tone in it is anger. You can tell this by looking at its title, for one. Other ways of finding out what the tone of this poem would be looking at the word usage. The word hate is used constantly in the piece. Since hate is used a lot to describe strong dislike and anger, you can use what you've learned in your everyday life and contexts clues to figure out. Looking at theme is, indeed, one way to analyze poetry, but it’s not the only one.
The second way to analyze a piece of poetry is to look at the style of the poem. Examples of some of these styles are limericks, haikus, acrostics, free verses, and sonnets. Each style has its own requirements that it’s supposed to meet. Limericks are made up of five verses and they rhyme with an a-a-b-b-a pattern, while haikus are made up of three un-rhyming lines with 5 syllables on the first and third lines, and seven on the second. As you can see, the general format of the two is totally different, but that's not the only thing that's not the same. Each style has a different thing it focuses on. Limericks usually focus on things such as nonsense, and humor. Haikus, on the other hand, usually focus on nature. As you can tell, a poem's topic can also be decided by its style type. A monody, such as Isabelle Rose, isn't going to focus on things such as bliss and happiness. This is because monodies are poems that lament on another person's death. Looking at the style of a poem can help you analyze it, but we've yet to cover the last of the three ways to analyze poetry.
The last, but definitely not the least, way of analyzing poetry is looking at the diction of it. The diction is basically a fancy way of saying the word choice in a piece of literature or a poem. There are different types of diction that can be used in a poem. Abstract, concrete, connotation, and denotation. Word choice is very important. It expresses ideas, and helps specify the theme of a poem. In the poem “The Fish”, both connotation and denotation are shown. This was the last of the three ways to analyze poetry that will be discussed in this paper.
In order to understand and enjoy poetry to the fullest, you must know how to analyze poetry. I learned that you really can understand a poem better if you read it, then analyze it and read it again. There are several ways to analyze poetry. So, the next time you get confused about a piece of literature, there are many ways to go about it. The three ways I would suggest to you are to look for the tone of the poem, find the style of the poem, and observe the diction of the poem in order to find the true meaning of your poem, and then being able to enjoy it to your fullest extent.
Above is the Analyzing Poetry essay I had to write for my English class. And let me tell you, it was NOT a fun assignment. So, I hope you liked it! (I only spent one night on it.)
