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The Why and How of Poetry Analysis
Why Analyze Poetry?
Why analyze anything?
Real Life Analysis
It might help you save some money.It might help you get a job or into college.
It might help you help a friend. It might help you make sense of the world
around you.
It Might Help You Get A Job
Help Wanted Ads – Is this the job you think it is?Application – What kind of answers are they hoping for?
It might help you help a friend.
What are they saying? What do they mean?
It might help you make sense of the world around you.
Politicians are notorious for cryptic speech!“ When you pick up that ballot to vote, you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation. Over the next few years big decisions will be made in Washington on jobs, the economy, taxes and deficits, energy, education, war and peace—decisions that will have a huge impact on our lives and on our children’s lives for decades to come.” Obama quoted by The New Yorker
People from other cultures might explain things differently!
So Why Poetry? Analyzing poetry lends itself to analyzing all kinds of texts you will come into contact with in life. It forces you to pick out specific elements, model them and use them back up
your understanding.
At the end of the day poems are expressions of the human condition. There are few more valuable life skills than being
able to understand others.
Poetry requires us to look beyond the words on the page and see what it is actually saying.
How to Analyze Poetry: LEST
Literal Emotional
Stylistic Thematic
The Road Not TakenBy Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.
Back Yourself Up
Emotional:“Trodden black”“I doubted” “I shall be telling this with a sigh”“Sorry I could not travel both”
Defending your impression is lifelong skill.Use examples. Cite evidence.
Noticing the techniques authors use leads to appreciation and an ability to mimic great writers.
Stylistic
Frost uses: Rhyming, Visual Imagery, Repetition, First Person Narration
Theme Theme is defined as a main idea or an
underlying meaning of a literary work that may be stated directly or indirectly.
Possible Themes of The Road Not Taken1. Choosing the unpopular route can be
rewarding. 2. Choosing the less traveled route can lead
to problems. 3. Be your own person. 4. Explore the unknown.
This is the part where we understand not just what is being said but what the author means to convey. We
put the text into the context of real life.
