Writing About Poetry
  Various ways to go about it

1. Your first paragraph should spell out your overall understanding of the poem. Then go on to discuss how particular details/features fit into your general interpretation.

2. It’s often best to begin with speech situation and tone (who is speaking and what is being talked about), and/or to identify the poem’s genre and how it employs or breaks with generic conventions (If it’s a poem about romantic love, what details are suprising?}

3. The order in which the poem is written is usually significant - it may involve a dramatic unfolding of meaning or experience. Your analysis can follow this order, but it’s often helpful to move backwards and forwards through the poem.

4. Remember that you are writing for a reader - your essay needs to make sense to that reader and to convince him/her that your interpretation is a valid one (by quoting evidence).

5. Don’t rely too much on summary or paraphrase: quote from the poem and analyse what you have quoted in order to show how it contributes to your overall interpretation/argument.

6. Trust what the poem says: don’t assume, without good evidence, that the poem must mean something other than what it says. Avoid importing your own fantasies into the poem.

7. If something in a poem can be understood literally, then take account of that literal meaning and only then consider whether it can also be understood as metaphorical or symbolic.

8. Focus on interesting metaphors, allusions etc; try to show how they contribute to meaning, tone, effect.

9. There is little point merely stating that a poem uses particular formal features/devices of sound (eg, alliteration, blank verse): try to show how that feature/device contributes to meaning or effect in this particular poem. If you can’t see any connection between form and meaning then don’t try to force or invent a connection.

10. Phrases like ‘When I first read this poem, I thought’ and ‘on my second reading, however...’ are of little interest unless they reveal some feature of the poem itself (eg, ambiguity).

11 Don’t waste time on generalisations about poetry or information about poet or celebrations of the poem.

Adapted from Tom Furniss