How to Analyze a Poem: Part 1

So you would like to know how to analyze a poem, perhaps for school purposes, personal improvement, or even just for fun. Well, you've come to the right article. Peom Analysis is subjective and meaningful. Have you ever just read a poem and thought, 'what does that even mean?' Well that's because most poets don't like to hand their thoughts on a silver platter, you gotta work for it buddy. Though I said that, I'm also here to spoon feed you the process. So in a simpler structure, poem analysis can be done by following a few steps.

1. active reading (or make your job harder by passively reading first)
2. similes and metaphors
3. popular sayings
4. motifs and themes
5. connotation and denotation, personification
6. imagery, symbolism
7. message

Let's start off by an example of a poem to analyse and go step by step.

To be or not to be?

Do not cry.

Crying is for the weak hearted.

Do not show emotion.

Emotion is for the strong hearted.

Anger is for the passionate.

Violence is for the dominant.

Do not like pink.

Colours have genders, one is superior.

Pink is female.

Blue is male:

The sky is blue.

They may be soldiers but we are the weapons.

Machinery without hearts we should be,

To kill and fight as we please.

We are of few words,

For that is how we must be.

To be the robots or not to be?

Our families and mothers teach us you see,

To be the villians or not to be?

Or to be the heroes we wish to be?

It all comes down to destiny,

Peace comes from the foundation of ambiguity.

"Female" cannot be spelt without "male" as

gender cannot be without a pair.

We can be the heroes,

If society taught equality.

We are misunderstood:

We were born as children and learnt everything we know,

Blank slates on which writing began to show.

To be in control and controlling is what we learnt to know.

Teach us something else and we continue to grow,

Winter may seem endless till the sky begins to show.

-UniqueFAYS (yes, I wrote it)

Step 1: Active reading. By that I mean is to get into that habit of not mindlessly reading poems and to actually be paying attention to the details. Now, this is where I recommended a precursor, passive reading. Passive reading is the mindless reading I was talking about. Sometimes, in your first read-through of something, especially in confusing and heavy pieces od writing, the first time you read it is a doozy. Your mind is used to skimming over confusing stuff and only picks up stuff you can understand. That's why I call it passive, it's the type of reading we do on day-to-day, reading things word by word and forming sentences in our head to comprehend it. That's good for a precursor, because you give your mind a chance to get exposed to the writing, but it won't you help you in anything further than that. It's adds an extra step but I recommend it if you're new to analysizing. Then comes the second read-through, active reading. In this read-through, you often read slower than the first time, and try to pick up on noticeable things. For example, when active reading, try to keep not of recurrings ideas, words, examples, rhymes, etc. In the poem example, we can see that the word emotion occurs multiple times, and different types of references to emotion can be seen. Pink and blue colours, and genders have been mentioned a lot too. If you look at the rhyming schemes, you can notice that the poem gets easier to read as you progress because the rhyming picks up, keep that in note, why does the rhyming suddenly pick up? Initially, there were only a few, quite awkward rhymes then as if a witch turns on, the narrator becomes poetic, and quite passionate too. If you look at the structure, either as the poem in a whole or in individual sentences, the narrator had short sentences in the beginning, all lines ending with periods. Then the sentences elongate, and we can see lines ending with commas. And coincidently (or as you'll learn, not really), this shift in structure, happens around the same time that the shift in the rhyming scheme occurs, and the use of language. The word "hearts" is also seen a lot. I recommend keeping a pencil and paper handy and just write down whatever pops out into view, whatever you notice. There is a lot more to pick up on, and all of it will be organised as we go through the steps.

Step 2: Similes and metaphors. You can recognise similes and metaphors already but just in case, similes are direct comparisons made between two things or ideas, and metaphors are indirect. A good rule of thumb is to look for words such as "like", "as", "similar", "resembles", etc., which are often used in similes. While in metaphors, you look for "is", "are", "becomes", etc. In the poem, we see lots of direct statements being made, which is a hint to metaphors. 'Pink is female', 'blue is male' can be seen as metaphors. Colours are obviously not binary living beings, so calling them as such is making a direct comparison between the two. Anytime you see a metaphor, marking an "M" above it is a good visual marker. 'We are the weapons', 'to be the robots', 'children' and 'blank slates' are directly compared as being the same thing so that is also a metaphor. Some metaphors are not written in one line, like the 'children' and 'blank slates' example, so don't make the mistake of looking for them one line at a time. A good thing to notice is the grammar structure of the poem to lead you in your analysis. If the poem has commas and periods like this one, most likely the writer is hinting at you to continue reading the poem to the next period, to get an idea. Sometimes there won't be any grammer structure, which means you'll have more freedom with connecting and forming your own ideas about the poem, so in that case, you have to be more vigilant with finding connections made between different lines of the poem. Another thing in grammer structure you can look out for are capitals, it could be a hint the writer is giving you for something their trying to emphasize. Try looking for the capitalized words in this poem.

Step 3: Popular sayings. Popular sayings are what they are, things people say often and are well-known. Looking out for popular sayings can be a good idea to figure out themes and hidden messages. In the poem, one popular saying is 'do not cry'. Have you heard of that before? Ever gotten an owie, and someone told you to not cry? For men, have you ever been told to 'man up' if you you did? Hmm (wink wink nudge nudge)... Even in the title 'to be or not to be' is a popular saying and reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which, the main character of the same name is contemplating whether to die or not, because life is hard for the man. Even the metaphor 'children are born as blank slates' is a popular saying. Popular sayings are a good way to notice what the writer is trying to hint at.

Step 4: Motifs and themes. Motifs are any recurring ideas, that can help build a theme, which is a central topic or message being conveyed within the writing. You built a foundation for finding motifs in the previous steps. Some motifs you can find are: pink and blue, genders, machinery/robots, soldiers, villains/heroes, families/society, emotions/hearts, teaching/learning, personality traits, contemplation/questions, etc. Looking at these motifs, what themes can you come up with? Dichotomy of genders is one, there lots of comparisons being made when looking at pink and blue, and female and male. "People are taught everything they know" is another theme. You can see how the narrator admits to being taught by society, mothers, and by families how to behave and be who they are. Victimization is another theme, you can sometimes pick up on a resentful tone by the narrator that they blame others for how they are and who they became. They claim to be 'misunderstood', and 'violence' is also another thing they admit to. Violence always comes with victims, but in this sense, the narrator is claiming to be a victim of their own violence, for they didn't choose to be that way. Choice or the lack thereof is another interesting theme to examine. The narrator initially states a lot of statements that sound like orders, and the reference to soldiers and weapons makes the narrator seem army-like. In the army, you don't make choices as much as you follow orders. The narrator states 'for that is how we must be', not much of a choice there.

The second part of the analysis will be continued seperately, in "How to Analyze a Poem: Part 2". Head on over to that story for the remaining analysis, which delves deeper into the meaning of the words than we have done so far.

To be continued...