Closely Reading Poetry and Prose

When we closely read poetry and prose, we are exploring specific themes or patterns within a text, learning about language and rhetorical technique, and understanding how writers craft their work, all of which helps us to gain a deeper understanding of the text. With these practices in mind, once you’ve finished reading a text, you should already have the foundations of your analysis. In other words, you’ve already begun the writing process!

Reading (and Re-Reading)

• Slowly read the poem aloud. On the initial reading, read the poem at least twice, but should also  read it multiple times.
• Poetry and prose are not always logical, so read intuitively and logically.
• Look for patterns.
• Annotate words, phrases, and sections that seem important to you. Annotation is on of the first steps of analysis.
• Make connections between phrasing that loses you and that speaks to you to make meaning.
• Summarize the poem in your own words and/or rewrite or translate the poem as prose.

Analyzing Poetry

As you read the poem, begin to analyze its meaning.

• Annotate and Respond: Highlight or underline content that stands out to you. Then, respond to the poem with questions about its meaning. Keep in mind that your interpretation of a poem may contradict that of your peers.
• Make Connections: Writing brings our own unique perspective to intellectual problems, and as you read, you will make connections. Seemingly random connections may prove to be points of entry into a poem. Include them in your response annotations.
• Translate: As you read, you will likely encounter places in a poem that “lose” you. Translating texts into everyday language will help you to better understand the poem. Make every effort to stay true to the poet’s overall rhetoric as you translate.

Rhetorical Patterns of Poetry

• What is the subject (or subjects) that the poem is addressing?
• Who is the speaker of the poem?
• What is the poem’s larger context?
• What genre or mode of poem are you reading?
  • Lyrical mode uses associative, vivid language, expresses strong thoughts and feelings, and is usually focused inwardly.
  • Narrative mode tells a story.
  • Dramatic lyric mode uses lyric and narrative elements.
  • Descriptive mode describes the world around the speaker using elaborate imagery and adjectives.
  • Elegy poems reflect on death or loss.
  • A soliloquy is a monologue in which a character speaks to him or herself.

Form and Structure

• Is the poem a closed or fixed form, which follows a pattern of lines, meter, rhymes, or stanzas (sonnets, villanelles)? Or, is it open form, which is free from structure?
• What is the stanzaic makeup? In other words, how are the series of lines grouped together and separated from each other? What are the number of lines in each of the stanzas?
• What literary devices, such as repetition, punctuation, or section divisions, can you detect?

Language

Look closely at the language in the poem. Poets are often trying to help us see things in a way we may not have before. Think about how their language makes something surprising or new.

• Is the language in the poem multi-syllabic, formal or informal, elaborate, or some combination of various language types? Language helps you to determine the tone.
• What is the tone of the poem? Tone helps you to determine the mood.
• What images stand out and why? What does the image embody? Images provide a relationship between emotion and idea.
• How does metaphor to alter or layer the poem?

Literary and Figurative Devices

Understanding the literary or figurative devices at work in poetry allow you infer meaning and provide you with a conceptual vocabulary that facilitates focused analysis. Review the Literary and Figurative Devices page in order to identify literary terms to analyze the poem.

Adapted from “Poetry Close Reading” from Purdue OWL and from the American Academy of Poets.