Ponder the Title Before Reading the Poem

TP-CASTT / Poetry Analysis

•Title:

–Ponder the title before reading the poem.

•Paraphrase:

–Translate the poem into your own words.

•Connotation:

–Contemplate the poem for meaning beyond the literal.

•This includes all poetic devices. Consider figures of speech, symbolism, diction, point of view, and sound devices (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and rhyme).

•Attitude:

–Observe both the speaker’s and the poet’s attitude (tone).

•Shifts:

–Note shifts in speakers and in attitudes.

•Key words (but, yet, however, although)

•Punctuation (dashes, periods, colons, ellipsis)

•Stanza divisions

•Changes in line or stanza length or both

•Irony

•Effect of structure on meaning

•Changes in sound that may indicate changes in meaning

•Changes in diction (slang to formal language)

•Title:

–Examine the title again, this time on an interpretive level.

•Theme:

–Determine what the poet is saying. In identifying theme, the reader will recognize the human experience, motivation, or condition suggested by the poem.

1.Gloss the poem on the back.

2.Apply the TP-CASTT strategy to Keats’ Ode to Melancholyand write up a brief, step by step analysis of it using the TP-CASTT to explain what it means.

3.Use John Keats’ poem Ode to Melancholy to explain the sentiment that Gene expresses in the first chapter when he’s returned to Devon and is reflecting on his time there: “Now here it was … Northern Lights across the black sky” (10).

4.You will turn in your GLOSS, TP-CASTT, and your comparative analysis/explanation of the page 10 quote and sentiment above.

Ode to Melancholy

John Keats