How to Read and Analyze Poetry

Many people find reading poetry a daunting task. Here are eight skills that you should use when trying to interpret a poem.

  1. Read the poem aloud with appropriate phrasing and intonation. Practice the following:
  2. DO NOT PAUSE AT THE END OF A LINE unless there is a mark of punctuation
  3. PAUSE one beat for a comma or a dash
  4. PAUSE two beats for a period, colon, semicolon, or question mark
  1. Read poem aloud to determine the proper rhythm. Traditional poetry has a set rhythm established by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Reading it aloud will help you to determine how it sounds best.
  1. Look up unfamiliar words and allusions in a poem. An allusion is a reference to a person, even, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art.
  1. Consider the possible symbolic significance and multiple connotations of a word.
  2. Connotations are ideas suggested by, or associated with, a word. These associations go beyond the dictionary definition. For example, the word “snake” may be defined as a member of the reptile family; however, for many people the word snake suggests, or is associated with, someone or something that is slimy, low-down, and dangerous.
  3. Symbolic Significance of a Word: Some words, in addition to having a connotation, also have a symbolic significance because of past associations. For example, as a result of the Garden of Eden story, a snake is associated with evil, particularly an evil tempter. In Western literature and everyday usage, animals and colors have frequently been used as symbols, as have the seasons of the year, times of a day, geographic terrain, natural elements, and natural and man-made objects. But remember, as Sigmund Freud is reputed to have said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
  1. Identify the sound patterns created in a poem and recognizing how these sound patterns may reinforce a meaning. Below are several common techniques for creating sound patterns.
  2. Alliteration – the repetition of the initial consonant sound in closely placed words.
  3. Assonance – the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds.
  4. Rhyme- found at the end of a line is called “end rhyme” while rhyme within a line of verse is called “internal rhyme.”
  5. Rhyme Scheme – refers to the pattern of end rhymes in a stanza or poem. The rhyme scheme is usually indicated by letters of the alphabet A through G. A is used to denote the word sound at the end of the first line, B to denote the next word sound and so on.
  1. Recognize the use of ellipsis and inversion as working tools to paraphrase a unit of thought
  2. Ellipsis occurs when a word that is required for complete clarity has been left out, but the sentence can still be understood.
  3. An inverted sentence is one in which the verb comes before the subject in the sentence.
  1. Identify the poem’s speaker and audience. Regardless of the age or sex of the poet, we must determine who is speaking in the poem. Once you identify the speaker, it becomes easier to understand the poem. It makes a huge difference whether the speaker is an old soldier, a young girl, or the poet him/herself. You also need to determine who it is that is being addressed. Is the person being addressed another poet? The American public? Humanity in general?
  1. Consider how images may reinforce meaning and invoke mood. Images are created using similes, metaphors, and/or descriptive words. Most often, readers do not see the images within a poem until they have read it several times. Being able to visualize the images within a poem is very important as these images are often interlocked with the poem’s meaning.