poetry essay template

How to write a poetry essay

• August 26, 2023

Whether you love literature or are just curious, this guide will help you understand, enjoy, and talk about poetry. So, let’s start exploring the world of lines and symbols, where each one tells a story to discover.

Here are the steps on writing a poetry essay.

Choose a poem

The first step is, of course, to choose a poem to write your essay . 

It should be one that you find interesting, thought-provoking, or emotionally resonant. It’s important to select a poem that you can engage with and analyze effectively.

• Choose a poem that genuinely captures your interest. Look for poems that evoke emotions, thoughts, or curiosity when you read them.
• Consider the themes addressed in the poem. It should offer ample material for analysis.

When choosing a poem

So for this guide, let’s choose Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” You’ll see a short excerpt of this poem for your understanding. 

Poem example for poetry essay

Because i couldn not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson

       Because I could not stop for Death –        He kindly stopped for me –        The Carriage held but just Ourselves –        And Immortality.        We slowly drove – He knew no haste        And I had put away        My labor and my leisure too,        For His Civility –        We passed the School, where Children strove        At Recess – in the Ring –        We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –        We passed the Setting Sun –        The poem continues....

This poem is intriguing due to its exploration of mortality, the afterlife, and eternity. The imagery and language in the poem provide ample material for analysis, making it a suitable choice for a comprehensive essay.

After carefully choosing the poem that interests you, understanding the poem is the biggest key to writing an effective and nice poetry essay.

Understand the poem

Reading the poem several times to grasp its meaning is the most important part of a good analysis. You must first analyze the structure, rhyme scheme , meter and literary tools used in the poem.

For a solid understanding, you should:

• Read the poem multiple times to familiarize yourself with its content. Each reading may reveal new insights.
• Identify the central themes or messages the poem conveys.
• Study the rhyme scheme and meter (rhythmic pattern) of the poem.
• Consider how the structure, including its stanzas, lines, and breaks, contributes to the poem's meaning and impact.

For example

Remember, understanding the poem thoroughly is the foundation for a well-informed analysis. Take your time to grasp the poem’s various elements before moving on to the next steps in your essay.

Now that we have a clear understanding of the poem, let’s move into writing the introduction. 

Write a catchy introduction

• Begin with an attention-grabbing hook sentence that piques the reader's interest.
• Provide the necessary information about the poem and its author. Mention the poet's name and title of the poem.
• Offer some context about the poem's time period, literary movement, or cultural influences.
• Present your thesis statement , which outlines the main argument or focus of your essay.

Poetry essay introduction example

Introduction

Thesis statement for poetry essays

A thesis statement is a clear and concise sentence or two that presents the main argument or point of your essay . It provides a roadmap for your reader, outlining what they can expect to find in your essay.

In the case of a poetry essay, your thesis statement should capture the central message, themes, or techniques you’ll be discussing in relation to the poem.

Why is the thesis important for a poetry essay?

By reading your thesis statement, your audience should have a clear idea of what to expect from your poem analysis essay.

When creating a thesis statement, keep these in mind: 

• Start by identifying the key elements of the poem that you want to discuss. These could be themes, literary devices, emotions conveyed, or the poet's intentions.
• Based on the key elements you've identified, formulate a central argument that encapsulates your main analysis. What is the poem trying to convey? What are you trying to say about the poem?
• Your thesis should be specific and focused. Avoid vague or broad statements. Instead, provide a clear direction for your analysis.

Poetry essasy thesis statement example

....(introduction starts) ....(introduction continues) ....(introduction continues) In "Because I could not stop for Death," Emily Dickinson employs vivid imagery, personification, and an unconventional perspective on mortality to explore the transcendence of death and the eternity of the soul. Thesis statement, which is usually the last sentence of your introduction

Analyze language and imagery

Language and image analysis in poetry involves a close examination of the words, phrases and literary devices used by the poet. In this step you must uncover the deeper layers of meaning, emotion and sensory experiences conveyed by the poet’s choice of language and imagery.

Why language and imagery?

• Start by identifying and listing the literary devices present in the poem. These could include metaphors, similes, personification, symbolism, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and more.
• For each identified device, explain its significance. How does it contribute to the poem's meaning, mood, or tone?
• Analyze how the literary devices interact with the context of the poem. How do they relate to the themes, characters, or situations presented in the poem?
• Discuss how the use of specific language and imagery influences the reader's emotional response and understanding of the poem.

Continuing with Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death,” let’s analyze the use of imagery:

Language and imagery analysis example

Lines chosen for analysis

Discuss themes in body paragraphs

Exploring themes helps you grasp the deeper meaning of the poem and connect it to broader human experiences. Understanding the themes allows you to uncover what the poet is attempting to convey and how the poem relates to readers on a universal level.

In this step, you will likely dedicate multiple body paragraphs to the analysis of various aspects of language and imagery. Each body paragraph should focus on a specific literary device, phrase, or aspect of language and imagery.

Here’s how you can structure the body paragraphs.

Poetry essay body paragraphs example

Body Paragraph 1: Identify and Explain Literary Devices

Body Paragraph 2: Context and Interaction with Themes

Body Paragraph 3: Reader's emotional response and understanding

Provide evidence from the poem

Providing evidence involves quoting specific lines or stanzas from the poem to support the points you’re making in your analysis. These quotes serve as concrete examples that demonstrate how the poet uses language, imagery, or literary devices to convey specific meanings or emotions.

• Select lines or stanzas from the poem that directly relate to the point you're making in your analysis.
• Introduce each quote with context, explaining the significance of the lines and how they contribute to your analysis.
• Use quotation marks to indicate that you're using the poet's language.
• After providing the quote, interpret its meaning. Explain how the language, imagery, or devices used in the quoted lines contribute to your analysis.

Providing evidence example

In your essay, you should include several quotes and interpret them to reinforce your points. Quoting specific lines from the poem allows you to showcase the poet’s language while demonstrating how these lines contribute to the poem’s overall expression.

Write a conclusion

Conclusion paragraph is the last sentence of your poem analysis essay. It reinforces your thesis statement and emphasizes your insights.

Additionally, the conclusion offers a chance to provide a final thought that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. In your conclusion, make sure to:

• Start by rephrasing your thesis statement. Remind the reader of the main argument you've made in your essay.
• Provide a concise summary of the main points. Avoid introducing new information; focus on the key ideas.
• Discuss the broader significance or implications. How does the poem's message relate to readers beyond its specific context?
• End with a thoughtful reflection, observation, or question that leaves the reader with something to ponder.

Poetry essay conclusion example

In your essay, the conclusion serves as a final opportunity to leave a strong impression on the reader by summarizing your analysis and offering insights into the poem’s broader significance.

Now, it’s time to double check what you’ve written.

Proofread and revise your essay

Edit your essay for clarity, coherence, tense selection , correct headings , etc. Ensure that your ideas flow logically and your analysis is well-supported. Remember, a poetry essay is an opportunity to delve into the nuances of a poem’s language, themes, and emotions.

• Review each paragraph to ensure ideas flow logically from one to the next.
• Check for grammar and punctuation errors.
• Verify that your evidence from the poem is accurately quoted and explained.
• Make sure your language is clear and effectively conveys your analysis.

By proofreading and revising, you can refine your essay, improving its readability and ensuring that your insights are communicated accurately.

So this was the last part, you’re now ready to write your first poem analysis (poetry) essay. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i include in the introduction of a poetry essay.

In the introduction, provide background information about the poem and poet. Include the poem’s title, publication date, and any relevant context that helps readers understand its significance.

Can I include my emotional responses in a poetry essay?

Yes, you can discuss your emotional responses, but ensure they are supported by your analysis of the poem’s literary elements. Avoid focusing solely on personal feelings.

Is it important to understand the poet's background when writing a poetry essay?

While it can provide context, your focus should be on analyzing the poem itself. If the poet’s background is relevant to the poem’s interpretation, mention it briefly.

What's the best way to conclude a poetry essay?

In the conclusion, summarize your main points and tie them together. Offer insights into the poem’s broader significance, implications, or lasting impact.

Recently on Tamara Blog

How to write a discussion essay (with steps & examples), writing a great poetry essay (steps & examples), how to write a process essay (steps & examples), writing a common app essay (steps & examples), how to write a synthesis essay (steps & examples), how to write a horror story.

A Full Guide to Writing a Perfect Poem Analysis Essay

01 October, 2020

14 minutes read

Author:  Elizabeth Brown

Poem analysis is one of the most complicated essay types. It requires the utmost creativity and dedication. Even those who regularly attend a literary class and have enough experience in poem analysis essay elaboration may face considerable difficulties while dealing with the particular poem. The given article aims to provide the detailed guidelines on how to write a poem analysis, elucidate the main principles of writing the essay of the given type, and share with you the handy tips that will help you get the highest score for your poetry analysis. In addition to developing analysis skills, you would be able to take advantage of the poetry analysis essay example to base your poetry analysis essay on, as well as learn how to find a way out in case you have no motivation and your creative assignment must be presented on time.

What Is a Poetry Analysis Essay?

A poetry analysis essay is a type of creative write-up that implies reviewing a poem from different perspectives by dealing with its structural, artistic, and functional pieces. Since the poetry expresses very complicated feelings that may have different meanings depending on the backgrounds of both author and reader, it would not be enough just to focus on the text of the poem you are going to analyze. Poetry has a lot more complex structure and cannot be considered without its special rhythm, images, as well as implied and obvious sense.

While analyzing the poem, the students need to do in-depth research as to its content, taking into account the effect the poetry has or may have on the readers.

Preparing for the Poetry Analysis Writing

The process of preparation for the poem analysis essay writing is almost as important as writing itself. Without completing these stages, you may be at risk of failing your creative assignment. Learn them carefully to remember once and for good.

Thoroughly read the poem several times

The rereading of the poem assigned for analysis will help to catch its concepts and ideas. You will have a possibility to define the rhythm of the poem, its type, and list the techniques applied by the author.

While identifying the type of the poem, you need to define whether you are dealing with:

• Lyric poem – the one that elucidates feelings, experiences, and the emotional state of the author. It is usually short and doesn’t contain any narration;
• Limerick – consists of 5 lines, the first, second, and fifth of which rhyme with one another;
• Sonnet – a poem consisting of 14 lines characterized by an iambic pentameter. William Shakespeare wrote sonnets which have made him famous;
• Ode – 10-line poem aimed at praising someone or something;
• Haiku – a short 3-line poem originated from Japan. It reflects the deep sense hidden behind the ordinary phenomena and events of the physical world;
• Free-verse – poetry with no rhyme.

The type of the poem usually affects its structure and content, so it is important to be aware of all the recognized kinds to set a proper beginning to your poetry analysis.

Find out more about the poem background

Find as much information as possible about the author of the poem, the cultural background of the period it was written in, preludes to its creation, etc. All these data will help you get a better understanding of the poem’s sense and explain much to you in terms of the concepts the poem contains.

Define a subject matter of the poem

This is one of the most challenging tasks since as a rule, the subject matter of the poem isn’t clearly stated by the poets. They don’t want the readers to know immediately what their piece of writing is about and suggest everyone find something different between the lines.

What is the subject matter? In a nutshell, it is the main idea of the poem. Usually, a poem may have a couple of subjects, that is why it is important to list each of them.

In order to correctly identify the goals of a definite poem, you would need to dive into the in-depth research.

Check the historical background of the poetry. The author might have been inspired to write a poem based on some events that occurred in those times or people he met. The lines you analyze may be generated by his reaction to some epoch events. All this information can be easily found online.

Choose poem theories you will support

In the variety of ideas the poem may convey, it is important to stick to only several most important messages you think the author wanted to share with the readers. Each of the listed ideas must be supported by the corresponding evidence as proof of your opinion.

The poetry analysis essay format allows elaborating on several theses that have the most value and weight. Try to build your writing not only on the pure facts that are obvious from the context but also your emotions and feelings the analyzed lines provoke in you.

How to Choose a Poem to Analyze?

If you are free to choose the piece of writing you will base your poem analysis essay on, it is better to select the one you are already familiar with. This may be your favorite poem or one that you have read and analyzed before. In case you face difficulties choosing the subject area of a particular poem, then the best way will be to focus on the idea you feel most confident about. In such a way, you would be able to elaborate on the topic and describe it more precisely.

Now, when you are familiar with the notion of the poetry analysis essay, it’s high time to proceed to poem analysis essay outline. Follow the steps mentioned below to ensure a brilliant structure to your creative assignment.

Best Poem Analysis Essay Topics

• Mother To Son Poem Analysis
• We Real Cool Poem Analysis
• Invictus Poem Analysis
• Richard Cory Poem Analysis
• Ozymandias Poem Analysis
• Barbie Doll Poem Analysis
• Caged Bird Poem Analysis
• Ulysses Poem Analysis
• Dover Beach Poem Analysis
• Annabelle Lee Poem Analysis
• Daddy Poem Analysis
• The Raven Poem Analysis
• The Second Coming Poem Analysis
• Still I Rise Poem Analysis
• If Poem Analysis
• Fire And Ice Poem Analysis
• My Papa’S Waltz Poem Analysis
• Harlem Poem Analysis
• Kubla Khan Poem Analysis
• I Too Poem Analysis
• The Juggler Poem Analysis
• The Fish Poem Analysis
• Jabberwocky Poem Analysis
• Charge Of The Light Brigade Poem Analysis
• The Road Not Taken Poem Analysis
• Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus Poem Analysis
• The History Teacher Poem Analysis
• One Art Poem Analysis
• The Wanderer Poem Analysis
• We Wear The Mask Poem Analysis
• There Will Come Soft Rains Poem Analysis
• Digging Poem Analysis
• The Highwayman Poem Analysis
• The Tyger Poem Analysis
• London Poem Analysis
• Sympathy Poem Analysis
• I Am Joaquin Poem Analysis
• This Is Just To Say Poem Analysis
• Sex Without Love Poem Analysis
• Strange Fruit Poem Analysis
• Dulce Et Decorum Est Poem Analysis
• Emily Dickinson Poem Analysis
• The Flea Poem Analysis
• The Lamb Poem Analysis
• Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Poem Analysis
• My Last Duchess Poetry Analysis

Poem Analysis Essay Outline

As has already been stated, a poetry analysis essay is considered one of the most challenging tasks for the students. Despite the difficulties you may face while dealing with it, the structure of the given type of essay is quite simple. It consists of the introduction, body paragraphs, and the conclusion. In order to get a better understanding of the poem analysis essay structure, check the brief guidelines below.

Introduction

This will be the first section of your essay. The main purpose of the introductory paragraph is to give a reader an idea of what the essay is about and what theses it conveys. The introduction should start with the title of the essay and end with the thesis statement.

The main goal of the introduction is to make readers feel intrigued about the whole concept of the essay and serve as a hook to grab their attention. Include some interesting information about the author, the historical background of the poem, some poem trivia, etc. There is no need to make the introduction too extensive. On the contrary, it should be brief and logical.

Body Paragraphs

The body section should form the main part of poetry analysis. Make sure you have determined a clear focus for your analysis and are ready to elaborate on the main message and meaning of the poem. Mention the tone of the poetry, its speaker, try to describe the recipient of the poem’s idea. Don’t forget to identify the poetic devices and language the author uses to reach the main goals. Describe the imagery and symbolism of the poem, its sound and rhythm.

Try not to stick to too many ideas in your body section, since it may make your essay difficult to understand and too chaotic to perceive. Generalization, however, is also not welcomed. Try to be specific in the description of your perspective.

Make sure the transitions between your paragraphs are smooth and logical to make your essay flow coherent and easy to catch.

In a nutshell, the essay conclusion is a paraphrased thesis statement. Mention it again but in different words to remind the readers of the main purpose of your essay. Sum up the key claims and stress the most important information. The conclusion cannot contain any new ideas and should be used to create a strong impact on the reader. This is your last chance to share your opinion with the audience and convince them your essay is worth readers’ attention.

Problems with writing Your Poem Analysis Essay? Try our Essay Writer Service!

Poem Analysis Essay Examples 

A good poem analysis essay example may serve as a real magic wand to your creative assignment. You may take a look at the structure the other essay authors have used, follow their tone, and get a great share of inspiration and motivation.

Check several poetry analysis essay examples that may be of great assistance:

• https://study.com/academy/lesson/poetry-analysis-essay-example-for-english-literature.html
• https://www.slideshare.net/mariefincher/poetry-analysis-essay

Writing Tips for a Poetry Analysis Essay

If you read carefully all the instructions on how to write a poetry analysis essay provided above, you have probably realized that this is not the easiest assignment on Earth. However, you cannot fail and should try your best to present a brilliant essay to get the highest score. To make your life even easier, check these handy tips on how to analysis poetry with a few little steps.

• In case you have a chance to choose a poem for analysis by yourself, try to focus on one you are familiar with, you are interested in, or your favorite one. The writing process will be smooth and easy in case you are working on the task you truly enjoy.
• Before you proceed to the analysis itself, read the poem out loud to your colleague or just to yourself. It will help you find out some hidden details and senses that may result in new ideas.
• Always check the meaning of words you don’t know. Poetry is quite a tricky phenomenon where a single word or phrase can completely change the meaning of the whole piece. 
• Bother to double check if the conclusion of your essay is based on a single idea and is logically linked to the main body. Such an approach will demonstrate your certain focus and clearly elucidate your views. 
• Read between the lines. Poetry is about senses and emotions – it rarely contains one clearly stated subject matter. Describe the hidden meanings and mention the feelings this has provoked in you. Try to elaborate a full picture that would be based on what is said and what is meant.

Write a Poetry Analysis Essay with HandmadeWriting

You may have hundreds of reasons why you can’t write a brilliant poem analysis essay. In addition to the fact that it is one of the most complicated creative assignments, you can have some personal issues. It can be anything from lots of homework, a part-time job, personal problems, lack of time, or just the absence of motivation. In any case, your main task is not to let all these factors influence your reputation and grades. A perfect way out may be asking the real pros of essay writing for professional help.

There are a lot of benefits why you should refer to the professional writing agencies in case you are not in the mood for elaborating your poetry analysis essay. We will only state the most important ones:

• You can be 100% sure your poem analysis essay will be completed brilliantly. All the research processes, outlines, structuring, editing, and proofreading will be performed instead of you. 
• You will get an absolutely unique plagiarism-free piece of writing that deserves the highest score.
• All the authors are extremely creative, talented, and simply in love with poetry. Just tell them what poetry you would like to build your analysis on and enjoy a smooth essay with the logical structure and amazing content.
• Formatting will be done professionally and without any effort from your side. No need to waste your time on such a boring activity.

As you see, there are a lot of advantages to ordering your poetry analysis essay from HandmadeWriting . Having such a perfect essay example now will contribute to your inspiration and professional growth in future.

A life lesson in Romeo and Juliet taught by death

Due to human nature, we draw conclusions only when life gives us a lesson since the experience of others is not so effective and powerful. Therefore, when analyzing and sorting out common problems we face, we may trace a parallel with well-known book characters or real historical figures. Moreover, we often compare our situations with […]

Ethical Research Paper Topics

Writing a research paper on ethics is not an easy task, especially if you do not possess excellent writing skills and do not like to contemplate controversial questions. But an ethics course is obligatory in all higher education institutions, and students have to look for a way out and be creative. When you find an […]

Art Research Paper Topics

Students obtaining degrees in fine art and art & design programs most commonly need to write a paper on art topics. However, this subject is becoming more popular in educational institutions for expanding students’ horizons. Thus, both groups of receivers of education: those who are into arts and those who only get acquainted with art […]

Poem Analysis Essay Guide: Outline, Template, Structure

Poetry analysis, which is similar to poetry review, involves analyzing the language and figures of speech used by a poet. It also entails sharing personal views regarding the poem and breaking down the poetic instruments utilized by the said poet. However, it’s not just about the words used (Headrick, 2014). It entails reading between the lines and understanding what made the poet come up with a particular poem. So it may require some background research on the author and history behind the creation of the poem.

Do not worry, we can take care of your academic needs! If you feel that you do not have enough time to complete the assignment then order a custom essay online from us. Our essay writers service have vast experience with this type of work. We have a wide range of free guides and blogs to help you so that you will have more time for the important things. If you still have doubts, you can easily check essayservice review on sitejabber.

What Is A Poetry Analysis?

Poetry analysis may define as a critical review given on a poem, a reflection on the depth and gravity of a poem. It revolves around multiple aspects of a poem starting from the subject of a poem, its theme (meaning), tone, literary devices or speech figures, form to the feeling of the poet to how a reader feels about the poem. It is not only the analysis of techniques used in a poem, but poetry analysis provides a broader and wider picture of the poem, its reality, its hidden meanings between the lines, a study of poet’s mind, feeling and intention behind a poem. Different techniques used in poetry analysis are helpful tools in investigating and reviewing the poem. Behind every review or analysis vital research on poet (author), era (time frame), possible reasons, the background behind the conceptualization poem is vital.

One should read, understand and develop a thesis. Writing services also recommend researching more on the poet and his past works to understand the root of this particular idea.

If you have been asked to write a poem analysis essay, then it means to examine the piece and further dissect it into key elements including its form, techniques used and historical value. Then further appreciating the poem and highlighting to others these points, and gaining a better understanding.

It is also important to show as many ideas as possible that relate to the poem and then create conclusions on this.

To start writing a poetry analysis essay let's look at the prewriting stage.

How to Choose a Topic for a Poetry Analysis Essay?

• In the subject of the poem we mainly focus on the reasons such as why is the poem written or what is it all about?
• What is the context, the central content of the poem?
• Who wrote the poem and why?
• When and where the poet did write the poem, what or who has influenced the poet and what are the key features of the poem?

A topic should be chosen based on the theme you want to write. The theme is the message that the poem is trying to convey. You need to look therefore for concepts and notions that pop up in the poem and come up with an appropriate theme based on those perceptions or "feelings". If you can’t still figure out what topic you should choose for your analysis, it is recommended that you go through other poems similar poems and get a suitable topic for your analysis. Don’t also forget to cite your poem well. And also use in-text citations while quoting from the poem.

Related: COMING UP WITH ESSAY TOPIC IDEAS .

Poem Analysis Essay Outline

To create a good essay, it is needed to plan out the structure of a poem analysis essay so the writing stage will be easier and faster.

Here is an outline of a poem analysis essay to use:

Opening paragraph - Introduce the Poem, title, author and background.

Body of text - Make most of the analysis, linking ideas and referencing to the poem.

Conclusion - State one main idea, feelings and meanings.

Poem Analysis Essay Introduction

To start an introduction to a poem analysis essay, include the name of the poem and the author . Other details like the date of when it was published can also be stated. Then some background information and interesting facts or trivia regarding the poem or author can also be included here.

Poem Analysis Essay Body

When writing the main body of text keep in mind you have to reference all ideas to the poem so include a quotation to back up the sentence, otherwise, it will be a wasted comparison and not count. Be clear with your statements.

Poem Analysis Essay Conclusion

Now, this is where you should take a step back from analyzing the individual elements of the poem and work out its meaning as a whole. Combine the different elements of the analysis and put forward one main idea.

What is the poet trying to say, and how is it enforced and with what feeling? Then look at the meaning and what timeframe does this evolve over?

For example, is it obvious from the start, or does it gradually change towards the end? The last few lines can be very significant within a poem and so should be included in the poem analysis essay conclusion and commented on the impact on the piece.

Remember that you can always send us a " write an essay for me " text and have your assignment done for you.

How to Analyze a Poem?

Before even thinking about your first draft, read the poem as much as possible. If it's possible, listen to it in the original form. This depends on many factors which include if the poet is still alive?

Also reading aloud can help identify other characteristics that could be missed and even to a friend or colleague will give a chance to more insight. It is important to remember that poetry is a form of art painted with only words, this said it could take time to fully appreciate the piece. So take note of any first thoughts you have about the poem, even if they are negative.

Your opinions can change over time but still mark these first thoughts down.

So that to analyze a poem properly, you have to pay attention to the following aspects:

Title of the Poem

So let's go deeper into the poem analysis essay and look at the title. The poet may have spent a lot of time thinking about naming the piece so what can be observed from this and what further questions can be asked?

• What are your expectations? For example, the poem could be titled “Alone” written by Edgar Allan Poe and from this it is natural to assume it will be sad. After reading further does the reality turn out to be different?
• What is the literature style used? So for example, the work could be called “His last sonnet” by John Keats. From appearance, it is possible to deduce that it could be in sonnet form and if not why did the poet choose to mislead the audience?
• What is the poem about? In the poem, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” by Elizabeth Barrett, it already states what could be included and what to expect but if it differs from the title what would this suggest?

Literal Meaning of the Poetry

According to our  to fully appreciate a piece, it is needed to understand all the words used. So, for example, get a good dictionary and look up all the unknown words. Then go through partly known words and phrases and check these too. Also, maybe check the meaning of words that are used a lot, but remember some text may have had a different meaning a century ago, so use the internet to look up anything that is not clear. Furthermore, people and places and any cultural relevance of the time should be researched too to get a deeper look at the poet's attitude towards the piece. Patterns might become visible at this point and maybe the theme of the poem.

Structure of the Poem

When looking at the structure of the piece this will reveal more information so pay close attention to this. Look at the organization and sections, this will unlock more questions:

• What does each part discuss?
• How do the parts relate to each other?
• Can you see formal separations?
• What logical sense does it have?
• Is there emotional sense that can be evaluated?
• Does having a strict format say anything about the poet?
• Also failing to have a strict structure does this reveal something?

Once you have observed the structure, it is possible to go deeper into the poem analysis essay and investigate how the speaker communicates the poem to the reader.

Tone and Intonation of the Poetry

So now it is possible to look at the poet and see what details can be obtained from them. Is it possible to see the gender or age of the speaker? Is there some race or religious references to pick up on? Then can we see if the speaker is directly communicating their thoughts and ideas to the reader? If not, what is the character the poet has created to convey the ideas or messages? Does the poet's persona differ to the character created and what can be analyzed from this? Also the mood of the speaker could be available now, are they happy or sad, and how can you find out this from the poem?

Once the poet is understood it is possible to move onto who or what the poem is designed for. Then you can see the purpose of the poetry, what does the poet want from the reader? It is also possible that the poet does not desire a response from the audience and is simply making a statement or expressing themselves.

For example, a poem about spring could just be a happy statement that winter has ended. Looking from the other side, this could be an attempt to attract someone's attention or maybe just an instruction to plow the field.

Purpose of the Poem

The subject of the poem can help identify the purpose, as this usually will be what the poet is describing. Then the theme can be identified also, and what does it say about the work? Are there any links between the theme and the subject and what can analyzed from that? The timeframe is also an important factor to consider, for example, the poet's goal back when it was written, may have changed and why? Furthermore, has the original purpose survived the test of time and can it be said to be the best indicator of success?

Language and Imagery of the Poetry

Until this point it was only possible to analyze the literal information available which is the denotative meaning.’ Now let's look at the imagery, symbolism and figures of speech, this is the connotative meaning.

This is where you should look for pictures described within the text and analyze why they have been depicted? So for example, if the poet thas decided to describe the moon this could set the time in the work or maybe the mood of the poem. Also look for groups of images described and patterns within this, what can be deducted from that?

So when looking for symbolism within the text this could be an event or physical object, including people and places that represent non-physical entities like an emotion or concept. For example, a bird flying through the air can be seen as freedom and escaping usual conforms.

Poetic devices

In your analysis you will look at techniques like metaphors, similes, personification and alliteration to include just a few. It's important to identify the actual device used and why it was chosen. For example, when comparing something within the text using a metaphor then look at how they are connected and in what way they are expressed? Try to use all available clues to gain better insight into the mind of the poet.

Music of the Poem

Poetry and music have deep connections and can be compared together due to the history and uses throughout the ages.

Here are some things to look out for to help with those comparisons:

• Meter - This can be available to investigate in different ways, for example, iambic pentameter has a strict five beats per line just like a musical score if used what does it say?
• Rhythm - Just like with music, poem can have a rhythm but if there is no given meter, it is needed to look closer and observe what this does to the work. For example, a particular beat that is fast could make the poem happy.
• Special effects - Looking for not so obvious signs where the poet has written in a way so you take longer to pronounce words. Also it is possible to grab your attention in other ways, for what reason has the writer done that?
• Rhyme - There are many different types of rhyming techniques used within poetry, once identified look at how it impacts on the work like make it humorous for example? Be careful to look for unusual patterns for example rhymes within the lines and not just at the end of the sentences, even reading out aloud might help find these and then what does it this say about the poem?
• Sound effects - The depiction of different sounds can be powerful and also using different voices, look at what impact this has on the piece and why?
• Breaking Rules - Rhyme and meter for example can have very specific rules but what if the poet decided to break these conventional techniques and make something new, what does this add to the work and why

How to Write a Poem Analysis Essay?

Below you will find a compelling guide on how to analyze poetry with handy writing tips:

• Choose a suitable poem - If possible, before you start, pick the main subject of your essay, a poem that you would like to analyze. The more you find it interesting, the easier it will be to handle the task.
• Read it fully - If you are wondering how to analyse poetry, the first step you can’t go without is carefully reading the chosen poem multiple times and, preferably, out loud.
• Always double-check the meanings - When reading a poem, don’t forget to check for the meanings of unknown (and known as well) words and phrases.
• Collect all the details you need - To write a compelling essay, you need to study the poem’s structure, contents, main ideas, as well as other background details.
• Explore hidden meanings - When analyzing poem, be sure to look beyond the words. Instead, focus on finding broader, hidden ideas that the author wanted to share through his piece.
• Make an outline - Once you have analyzed poem, outline your essay and write it following the plan.
• Proofread and edit - Finally, once your essay is ready, take your time to revise and polish it carefully.

Poetry Analysis Template

To write a winning poem analysis essay, use the template below or order an essay from our professionals.

Introduction

• Name of Poem
• Name of Poet
• Date of Publication
• Background or any relevant information

Form of poem

• Structure of poem
• Rhyme of poem

Meaning of poem

• Overall meaning
• How can we relate the poem to our life

Poetic Techniques

• Literary devices

Form of the Poem

Poems are written in some ways, here one need to identify which structure the poet has used for the poem. The forms of poems broadly are stanzas, rhythm, punctuation and rhymes. Carefully analyze the length and number of stanzas , does the rhythm impacts the meaning of the poem, is there many punctuations or little, either the rhyme is consistent, or it’s breaking and what is the rhyme contributing to the meaning of the poem or is it random.

Theme, Meaning or Message of the Poem

In this part, we focus on the topic, main issue or idea of the poem. There are layers of meaning hidden in a poem.

• Meaning: surface meaning that what is actually or physically happening in the poem which a reader can sense.
• Deeper Meaning: the central idea of the poem or what is it actually about.
• Theme: in poetry, there is always a hidden meaning in every line, which depicts the message about life.

Numerous topics can be covered in poems such as love, life, death, birth, nature, memory, war, age, sexuality, experience, religion, race, faith, creator and many others.

Tone of the Poem

The tone of the poem shows attitude or mood of the language used by the poet. Analyze the different shades of the language used in the poem for example; is it formal, judgmental, informal, critical, positive, bitter, reflective, solemn, frustrated, optimistic, ironic, scornful, regretful or morbid.

Literary Device used in the Poem

Find out what the different literary devices are or what sort of figures of speech is used by the poet . Analyze these techniques and suggest their use in the poem by the poet. The poem can contain a symbol, similes, metaphor, alliteration, allegories, oxymoron, assonances, dissonances, repetition, hyperbole, irony.

Conclusion or Feel of the Poem

Lastly, analyze the emotions and feelings linked with the poem; of the poet and what do you feel when you read the poem. This is the very critical part of reviewing a poem because we analyze the inner depth of the poem, the intention & feelings of the poet, the targeted audience, does the poem reflect the poet’s persona, perspective or it does not match with the poet.

Poetry Analysis Essay Example

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poem “Annabel Lee”

Written in 1849 and first published after the author’s death, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe is a beautiful story of true love that goes beyond life. In the poem, the author is commemorating the girl named Annabel Lee, whom he knew since childhood. Despite the young age, the love between the narrator and Annabel was so deep and true that even angels were jealous, and, according to Edgar Allan Poe, their jealousy was so severe that they killed the love of his life. The poem ends with young Annabel Lee being buried in a tomb, leaving the readers with a feeling that the author kept holding on to his love for her for many years after her death.

The two evident topics in the poem are love and loss. The entire narration revolves around the author’s agonizing memory, at the same time demonstrating to the readers the purity and power of true love that makes him cherish the memory of his beloved one even after she is gone. Apart from that, Edgar Allan Poe also discusses such issues of love as jealousy and envy. The author states that the love of the two teens was so strong that even angels in heaven were not half as happy as Annabel and Edgar, which caused them to invade the teens’ romantic “kingdom by the sea” and kill the girl.

The topics discussed in the poem, as well as the style of narration itself, give the poem a very romantic atmosphere. It follows the main principles of the romantic era in poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries, which Edgar Allan Poe was representing. At the same time, the author also gives his poem a sense of musicality and rhythm. The poem’s rhyme scheme puts emphasis on the words “Lee”, “me”, and “sea”. The repetition of these words gives the poem a song-like sound.

A significant role in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem is played by imagery, which emphasizes the author’s unique style. The main imagery used by Allan Poe in Annabel Lee is the Kingdom. The author uses this imagery to set the right tone for his poem and give it a sort of a fairytale feel. At the same time, this imagery is used to take the reader to a different place, though not specifying what exactly this place is. To confirm this - the author uses the phrase “the kingdom by the sea” multiple times in his piece, never specifying its meaning. This trick enables the readers to leave this to their own imagination.

Apart from the Kingdom, the author also operates with the imagery of angels and demons. The narrator blames them for their envy for their deep love, which resulted in the death of Annable Lee. Thus, the author gives a negative attitude towards this imagery. This brings us to another big topic of good and evil discussed in the poem.

Nevertheless, even though the angels’ intervention seems to be clear to the reader from what the author says, Poe’s choice of words doesn’t directly implicate their responsibility for the girl’s death. The narrator blames everybody for his loss. However, he does this in a very tactical and covert way.

In conclusion, it becomes clear that the narrator in Annabel Lee did not only pursue a goal to share his pain and loss. He also emphasizes that true love is everlasting by stating that his love for the gone girl lives with him after all these years. With all its deep topics, imagery, and musicality, Annabel Lee is now considered one of the best works by Edgar Allan Poe.

Frequently asked questions

She was flawless! first time using a website like this, I've ordered article review and i totally adored it! grammar punctuation, content - everything was on point

This writer is my go to, because whenever I need someone who I can trust my task to - I hire Joy. She wrote almost every paper for me for the last 2 years

Term paper done up to a highest standard, no revisions, perfect communication. 10s across the board!!!!!!!

I send him instructions and that's it. my paper was done 10 hours later, no stupid questions, he nailed it.

Sometimes I wonder if Michael is secretly a professor because he literally knows everything. HE DID SO WELL THAT MY PROF SHOWED MY PAPER AS AN EXAMPLE. unbelievable, many thanks

You Might Also Like

New Posts to Your Inbox!

Stay in touch

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved April 8, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/literary-analysis/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to write a thesis statement | 4 steps & examples, academic paragraph structure | step-by-step guide & examples, how to write a narrative essay | example & tips, what is your plagiarism score.

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing About Poetry

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

This section covers the basics of how to write about poetry, including why it is done, what you should know, and what you can write about.

Writing about poetry can be one of the most demanding tasks that many students face in a literature class. Poetry, by its very nature, makes demands on a writer who attempts to analyze it that other forms of literature do not. So how can you write a clear, confident, well-supported essay about poetry? This handout offers answers to some common questions about writing about poetry.

What's the Point?

In order to write effectively about poetry, one needs a clear idea of what the point of writing about poetry is. When you are assigned an analytical essay about a poem in an English class, the goal of the assignment is usually to argue a specific thesis about the poem, using your analysis of specific elements in the poem and how those elements relate to each other to support your thesis.

So why would your teacher give you such an assignment? What are the benefits of learning to write analytic essays about poetry? Several important reasons suggest themselves:

• To help you learn to make a text-based argument. That is, to help you to defend ideas based on a text that is available to you and other readers. This sharpens your reasoning skills by forcing you to formulate an interpretation of something someone else has written and to support that interpretation by providing logically valid reasons why someone else who has read the poem should agree with your argument. This isn't a skill that is just important in academics, by the way. Lawyers, politicians, and journalists often find that they need to make use of similar skills.
• To help you to understand what you are reading more fully. Nothing causes a person to make an extra effort to understand difficult material like the task of writing about it. Also, writing has a way of helping you to see things that you may have otherwise missed simply by causing you to think about how to frame your own analysis.
• To help you enjoy poetry more! This may sound unlikely, but one of the real pleasures of poetry is the opportunity to wrestle with the text and co-create meaning with the author. When you put together a well-constructed analysis of the poem, you are not only showing that you understand what is there, you are also contributing to an ongoing conversation about the poem. If your reading is convincing enough, everyone who has read your essay will get a little more out of the poem because of your analysis.

What Should I Know about Writing about Poetry?

Most importantly, you should realize that a paper that you write about a poem or poems is an argument. Make sure that you have something specific that you want to say about the poem that you are discussing. This specific argument that you want to make about the poem will be your thesis. You will support this thesis by drawing examples and evidence from the poem itself. In order to make a credible argument about the poem, you will want to analyze how the poem works—what genre the poem fits into, what its themes are, and what poetic techniques and figures of speech are used.

What Can I Write About?

Theme: One place to start when writing about poetry is to look at any significant themes that emerge in the poetry. Does the poetry deal with themes related to love, death, war, or peace? What other themes show up in the poem? Are there particular historical events that are mentioned in the poem? What are the most important concepts that are addressed in the poem?

Genre: What kind of poem are you looking at? Is it an epic (a long poem on a heroic subject)? Is it a sonnet (a brief poem, usually consisting of fourteen lines)? Is it an ode? A satire? An elegy? A lyric? Does it fit into a specific literary movement such as Modernism, Romanticism, Neoclassicism, or Renaissance poetry? This is another place where you may need to do some research in an introductory poetry text or encyclopedia to find out what distinguishes specific genres and movements.

Versification: Look closely at the poem's rhyme and meter. Is there an identifiable rhyme scheme? Is there a set number of syllables in each line? The most common meter for poetry in English is iambic pentameter, which has five feet of two syllables each (thus the name "pentameter") in each of which the strongly stressed syllable follows the unstressed syllable. You can learn more about rhyme and meter by consulting our handout on sound and meter in poetry or the introduction to a standard textbook for poetry such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry . Also relevant to this category of concerns are techniques such as caesura (a pause in the middle of a line) and enjambment (continuing a grammatical sentence or clause from one line to the next). Is there anything that you can tell about the poem from the choices that the author has made in this area? For more information about important literary terms, see our handout on the subject.

Figures of speech: Are there literary devices being used that affect how you read the poem? Here are some examples of commonly discussed figures of speech:

• metaphor: comparison between two unlike things
• simile: comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as"
• metonymy: one thing stands for something else that is closely related to it (For example, using the phrase "the crown" to refer to the king would be an example of metonymy.)
• synecdoche: a part stands in for a whole (For example, in the phrase "all hands on deck," "hands" stands in for the people in the ship's crew.)
• personification: a non-human thing is endowed with human characteristics
• litotes: a double negative is used for poetic effect (example: not unlike, not displeased)
• irony: a difference between the surface meaning of the words and the implications that may be drawn from them

Cultural Context: How does the poem you are looking at relate to the historical context in which it was written? For example, what's the cultural significance of Walt Whitman's famous elegy for Lincoln "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" in light of post-Civil War cultural trends in the U.S.A? How does John Donne's devotional poetry relate to the contentious religious climate in seventeenth-century England? These questions may take you out of the literature section of your library altogether and involve finding out about philosophy, history, religion, economics, music, or the visual arts.

What Style Should I Use?

It is useful to follow some standard conventions when writing about poetry. First, when you analyze a poem, it is best to use present tense rather than past tense for your verbs. Second, you will want to make use of numerous quotations from the poem and explain their meaning and their significance to your argument. After all, if you do not quote the poem itself when you are making an argument about it, you damage your credibility. If your teacher asks for outside criticism of the poem as well, you should also cite points made by other critics that are relevant to your argument. A third point to remember is that there are various citation formats for citing both the material you get from the poems themselves and the information you get from other critical sources. The most common citation format for writing about poetry is the Modern Language Association (MLA) format .

How to Write a Poetry Analysis Essay: Template, Topic, Sample

Poetry analysis is simply the process of reviewing the multiple artistic, functional, and structural pieces that make up a poem. Normally, this review is conducted and recorded within an analytical essay . This type of essay writing requires one to take a deeper look at both the choices that a poet made and the effects of those choices. In essence, these essays require an in-depth analysis of all parts that were used to form a work of poetry. Read the details from our essay writing service .

What Is A Poetry Analysis?

From an academic literary point of view, knowing the steps to follow to understand how to analyze poetry is essential. All kinds of jobs are usually found on the Internet, from relatively informal web articles to pedagogical documents in indexed journals. All of them typically coincide on one point: poems are a type of lyrical expression structured in verses. From that we can derive what a poem analysis essay should be about.

Therefore, when you have chosen a poem to analyze, it is crucial to review definitions such as stanza, lyrical object, rhyme, synalepha, syneresis, among others. In this way, poems can be classified, interpreted, and "measured." Of course, without pretending to form unanimous criteria, since a stylized narrative emerged from inspiration always has a tremendous subjective load for whoever reads it. A good poem analysis essay or any poetry analysis in general leaves some room for interpretation. It's better not to deal in absolutes which you can see in all poem analysis essay examples.

Poetry Analysis Essay Subject Matter

The final element to writing a poetry analysis essay is a part of the composition dedicated to the poems subject matter. This can be analyzed during the reader’s quest to determine the theme, tone, mood, and poems meaning. The subject matter – and the thematic elements that support the intended message behind the subject – is often an interpretive minefield. Often, people have different ideas about what a poet is trying to say by their use of a subject, so unless the message is implicitly stated, it is best to state multiple possibilities about what the poet may have meant and included evidence for these theories. As the essay is to be an analysis, opinions are to be avoided in favor of facts and conjectures that are backed by evidence from work.

How To Choose A Topic For A Poem Analysis Essay?

A great way to choose a topic for these type of assignments is to decide on a topic that would deal with information that one is already familiar with. For example, if the choice of the poem to analyze is up to the writer, then it may be beneficial for the writer to choose a poem that he/she has encountered before. If the choice is to be made between different subject areas within a poem, then the writer could find it easier to choose to focus on writing about an area that plays to his/her strengths, so that the statements made in the essay are conveyed clearly and confidently. Such assignments may seem like a daunting writing experience at first, but if the topic, outline, and paper are composed following the steps above, the essay should turn out very well.

The analysis essay is a challenging type of assignment. Your task is not to retell poetry in prose because a lyric poem is not a transposition of some prosaic intention. Still, while embodying a particular poetic state of the artist and analyzing the lyrics, you should also be able to "enter" a similar condition. To interpret in a poem analysis essay a work means to approach the author’s intention. This can be done by following the path of the so-called "slow reading" – from the first verse to the last, considering each line of poetry, its content and form, sound, images, the logic of development of the author’s feeling or thought as a step towards solving the author’s idea.

How To Write A Poetry Analysis Essay?

In order to compose a poetry analysis essay, one must first read the poem carefully. This reading allows one to become familiar with the poem helping produce a strong literary analysis essay . It is also an opportunity to make note of the rhyme scheme (if there is one), the type of poem (limerick, ode, sonnet, lyric, haiku, free verse, etc.) and other poetic techniques that the poet used (such as enjambment, meter, end-stopped lines, figurative language, etc.). All of those elements in the poem are essential to know when one is writing such an essay because they are a part of the poem’s structure and can affect the content. It is not a bad idea to read up on these poetic terms before writing an essay, since being knowledgeable about a subject can allow one to assume a more confident tone when composing a literary analysis essay on that topic. By following the guidelines provided in this blog you will not be wondering how to write a poetry analysis assignment any longer. It is also important to follow the poem analysis essay structure. It's not paramount but it will make your poem analysis essay writing much easier.

Poetry Analysis Essay Outline

An outline for a poetry analysis essay can be very simple, as it is just a guideline for the writer to build upon as the first draft is written. When starting your introductions it would probably be best to put the essays title at the top of a page, then place a Roman numeral one (I) underneath, preceding the word "introduction." Under this, one can list brainstormed ideas for the introductory paragraph. The final portion of your poem analysis essay introduction should be dedicated to the papers thesis statement.  Following the completion of that portion of the outline, one can move on to the body paragraphs of your example. Each of the Roman numerals used to label this part should denote a different subject area in respect to the poem that will be discussed in the essay. Letters under these numerals may be followed by subtopics within each subject area that are to be dealt within individual paragraphs (or sentences, if it is to be a shorter essay) within the body of the paper. At this point you are almost done with your poem analysis essay outline.

Introduction

It is necessary to add a poem’s title and author in the introduction to poetry essays. Other information, such as the date of printing, may be used. You can also include the poem’s or author’s additional details, as well as interesting facts or trivia.

Body Of Text

How to analysis poetry? When composing the main body of text, bear in mind that you must reference all the poem concepts, so add a quote to support the sentence; otherwise, the analogy would be a waste of time and will not be counted. Your comments must be explicit.

Now is the time to stand back from examining the poem’s elements and find out the poem’s general significance. It is bringing together the various aspects of the study into one key concept when writing about poetry.

What is the poet’s message, and how is it expressed, and with what emotion?

Then understand the context and how this evolves.

Is it clear from the outset, or does it progressively change as the story progresses? The last few lines of a poem can be significant, so they should be included in the poem review essay conclusion and discussed in terms of their influence on the work.

How To Analyze A Poem?

So how to analyze a poem? Commenting on a text is a way to verify what the author said and how he transmitted it, relating both concepts. You have to observe the connotations and the implicit meanings, interconnecting them with precise ideas. It is a moment when the reader establishes affinity with the text he reads, exposing his aesthetic sensitivity, articulating what the author said, the way he did it, with his subjectivity of those who analyze and comment.

When you analyze poem, the text must be coherent, resulting from the articulation of all aspects to be dealt with in the different analysis plans. Citations must appear in quotation marks. When it is not necessary to quote a complete verse or a complete sentence, you must use the sign [...] at the place where the transcription is interrupted. When it is desired to quote more than one verse, and that quote follows precisely the order of the analyzed poem, the respective verses must be separated using an oblique bar.

This is an essential step. Analyzing a poem, you need to understand the central message; the author’s primary emotion is trying to share with the poem’s recipient.

So now you can pay attention to the poet and see what information you can learn from them. Is it easy to get the speaker’s gender or age? Were there any racial or theological allusions to be found? Can we really tell whether the speaker is expressing their opinions and suggestions to the reader directly? If not, who is the poet’s character who is conveying the thoughts or messages? Your essay on poetry must include all the vital answers.

When you’ve figured out who or what the poem is about, you should go on to who or what the poem is about. Can the meaning of the poem be seen; what does the author expect from the audience? It’s pretty likely that the poet merely makes a comment or expresses themselves without expecting a reaction from the crowd.

A poem about March, for example, might be a cheerful declaration that winter is over. At the same time, it could be an intention to get somebody’s focus.

The analysis of poetic language is the most challenging part of the whole poetry essay. It has multiple openings, and the resources are very varied, so it is necessary to analyze the elements and assign them significant values.

Presenting a list of worthless poetic elements is not of great interest to the commentary of the poem. Analyzing poems, better share your images of what’s related to the topic.

Poetic Techniques

To analyse a poem successfully, you should remember the technical part of the task. If the poem has many metaphors, repetitions, or alliterations, it is in your best interests to highlight the emotional representation and expressiveness of the work you are interpreting. But don’t limit yourself to defining the style figures (for example, alliteration is the repetition of phonemes); this does not matter for the essay.

Technical Poetry Analysis Worksheet

After covering the technical aspects of a poem, it is best to learn about the poem's background. This means that one may find it beneficial to look up the poet, the date that the poem was written, and the cultural context surrounding the work. All of that information typically permits the reader a better understanding of the poem, and it seems self-explanatory that one who has an enhanced comprehension of the poem would have an easier time conducting an analysis of that poem.

Poetry Analysis Essay Tips

If you want to analyse poetry successfully, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Read the poem at least twice. This poetic analysis tip is general and applies to all text types: always read the text two times minimum. Read, in fact, as many times as necessary to understand poetry. We miss some critical points by doing just one reading, especially in poetry that expresses personal information.
• Identify the figures of speech. Another critical step is to pay attention to the figures of speech – this is precisely where you will find some information implied in the text. Pay attention to metaphors, antitheses, or any other model of speech that appears in the poem.
• Don’t let your opinion interfere with the interpretation. Precisely because it is a text with a lot of subjectivity, do not let your idea and conception of a specific theme interfere with the understanding of poetry. Always read neutrally concerning the poet’s point of view, without prejudice about the subject matter.
• Get to know the authors’ lives briefly. If you do this, you will have complementary information that will help you to interpret the poetry.
• Keep the habit of reading and try to analyze poems. Finally, keep the poetry reading habit. Reading is one of the most natural ways to get intimate with the language and its particularities.

Poetry Analysis Essay Template

1. Author and title of the poem .

2. Style : romanticism, realism, symbolism, Acmeism, sentimentalism, avant-garde, futurism, modernism, etc.

3. Genre : epigram, epitaph, elegy, ode, poem, ballad, novel in verse, song, sonnet, dedication poem, etc.

4. The history of the poem’s creation (when it was written, for what reason, to whom it was dedicated). How important is this exact poem in the poet’s biography.

5. Theme, idea, main idea .

6. The poet’s vocabulary (everyday, colloquial; bookish, neutral, journalistic).

7. Composition of the work .

- Analyze the micro-theme of each stanza. Highlight the main parts of the poetic work, show their connection (= determine the emotional drawing of the poem);

8. Description of a lyrical hero .

9. Your impressions of the work .

Poetry Analysis Essay Example

A good poem analysis essay example is an essential factor that can help you understand how to write an evaluative poetry essay. The poetry essay aims to test the ability to perceive and interpret the problems and artistic merits of the studied and independently read literary works, using the information obtained in studying the subject on the theory and history of literature. Let’s have a look at the analysis essay example of two poems.

The poem’s problem is an essential part of the poem structure and is determined by the formulation of the question in the text or the work’s subtext. This aspect of poetic work is not generally different from other literature types: the social and ethical questions are asked by the poets, and they also respond to "eternal" philosophical questions.

A poetry analysis worksheet can also be a specific set of parameters that the instructor has asked you to examine the work from. In this scenario, it is important to create a structure that will highlight the given set of instructions. An example of such a task would be "The Tyger" by William Blake. In this poem, one can examine it from the initial emerging theme examining the process of a tiger’s creation and unavoidably its end. This context lets us understand that no power other than God himself could create something as beautiful and terrifying as the tiger. However, some literary analysis essays will require you to adopt different interpretations of this subject matter. Some often compared the beauty and fear inspired by the tiger to the industrial revolution and new machinery being built at the time when Blake wrote this poem.

Another version of a poem background is that Blake explores the coexistence of good and evil and asks about the source of their existence, wondering how one creator could create both beauty and horror. Modern readers can resonate with this poem easily because the questions asked there are essential.

Sun Of The Sleepless

The author of the poem, George Byron («Sun of the Sleepless» taken as our poetry essay example), was born on January 22, 1788, in London into a titled but low-income family. The first education, from the biography of Byron, was received at a private school. Then he began to study at the classical gymnasium, the school of Dr. Gleni (there was a great desire for reading), the Harrow school. Byron wrote several poems in this school.

Metaphor is one of the linguistic, stylistic devices most often found in Byron’s lyrics; many of them indicate the poet’s peculiar style. In verse, the star illuminates the darkness that it cannot dispel. The meaning of Byron’s image: not hopelessness and bitterness of reproach, but the thought that the memory of happiness does not save, but even more "painfully" highlights the darkness.

Why Choose Us?

Considering how saturated the market is with regards to custom essay writing companies it is understandable why potential customers find it hard to choose or even consider this a reliable service. Despite the doubt and negative connotation of write essays for money , EssayHub has successfully provided this service for a decade. We understand your concerns regarding the actual worth of write my essay online service hence we have grown a strong sense of mutual respect and understanding with our customer base as well as our each essay writer in order to ensure everyone’s success. When pay for essay to EssayHub, you are not just entering a network that will get your essays done. Our community can help you grow individually as well as achieve academic success. Order essay online now and have no worries.

• Plagiarism Report
• Unlimited Revisions
• 24/7 Support

Offer of the decade FLAT 20% off + sign up bonus of $20 Order Now

• [email protected]
• +14159918581

Files Missing!

Please upload all relevant files for quick & complete assistance.

How to write Poetry Analysis Essay?- Structure & Writing Tips

Home / Blog / How To Write Poetry Analysis Essay?- Structure & Writing Tips

Introduction

Everything you need to know about writing a poetry analysis essay.

Poems are perhaps the most brilliant pieces of literature as they convey deep messages in just a few lines, often while maintaining a certain rhythm. It is quite obvious that you will require a certain level of skills to analyse poetry. If you are asked to develop a poetry analysis essay, there are a few things you need to know first.

What Is a Poetry Analysis Essay?

As you may have guessed already, poetry analysis can be defined as a critical review given on a poem, a reflection on the depth and significance of a poem. It generally revolves around different aspects of a poem, starting from the subject of a poem, its tone, theme, literary devices, the feeling of the poet, to how a reader feels about the poem.

It is not just the analysis of techniques used in the literary piece, but poetry analysis offers a broader and clearer picture of the poem, the hidden meanings between the lines, its reality, a study of the poet's mind, and the intention behind a poem. Through the poetry analysis, you need to investigate and review the poem.

Conduct some research on the poet, the era (time frame), the background behind the conceptualisation of the poem, and the possible reasons to develop an insightful poetry analysis essay.

Here You Can also Read About Essay Introduction

How to Structure a Poetry Analysis Essay? 

In order to produce a good poetry analysis essay, you need to plan out the structure of the content. It makes the writing services stage a lot easier and faster. Here are the major elements of a poetry analysis outline that you need to include in your essay :

• Opening paragraph: Introduce the poem, title, poet (or author) and background.
• Body paragraphs: Put across your analysis of the poem, linking ideas and referencing to the poem.
• Conclusion: State one main idea, feelings and meanings.

Here is a detailed overview of the various elements of the poetry analysis essay structure:

• Poetry analysis essay introduction:

You should start your essay by introducing your readers to the name of the poem and the author. You should also mention the year the poem was first published. To make the poem more comprehensive for the readers, you should also consider giving some background details and interesting facts or trivia about the poem or the poet (the author).

• Poetry analysis essay body:

When you write the main body of the essay, you need to reference all ideas to the poem. Consider including a quotation box to back up the sentence. This is where you need to discuss what you analysed in the poem. You need to be very clear with your statements.

• Poetry analysis essay conclusion:

In this segment, you need to take a step back from analysing the individual elements of the poem and work out its meaning as a whole. You need to combine the different elements of the analysis and highlight one main idea.

You will have to follow this outline to prepare your poetry analysis essay. However, if you haven’t prepared such an essay before, you will have to learn the steps of how to write a poetry analysis essay.

How to Write a Poetry Analysis Essay?

Now that you have a good understanding of the poetry analysis essay outline, follow the guide to develop a well-structured and insightful poetry analysis essay:

Choose a suitable poem:

If you are given the option to choose any poem for your analysis essay, use it to your advantage. Pick a poem that you find interesting and analyse it for the essay. It will be a lot easier to handle to task when you are familiar with the poem.

Read the text carefully:

The first thing you need to do after choosing the poem is to go through the poem carefully as many times as possible. You cannot miss any part of it, as you need to give a complete analysis of the whole text.

Always double-check the meanings:

When you are reading the chosen poem, do not forget to check for the meanings and significance of words and phrases. There can be hidden meanings to words and phrases that the poet (or author) wanted to convey. So, you need to identify those while reading the poem.

Collect all the necessary details:

To write a compelling essay, you need to have a good understanding of the poem's structure, content, main ideas, background details, and others. Note all those details for your essay and also collect relevant data about the author and the time when the poem was written.

Explore hidden meanings:

As mentioned before, you need to identify and explore the hidden meanings of words. You will have to look beyond the literal meanings of the words and find broader, hidden ideas that the author wanted to share through the poem.

Prepare an outline and draft the essay:

Once you are done gathering the necessary details and exploring the hidden meanings, it is time to prepare the outline for your poetry analysis essay and draft the content accordingly. Follow the similar outline discussed earlier in this blog. The outline will allow you to produce more structured and organised content for the analysis essay.

Proofread and edit:

Lastly, go through your essay a few times to ensure it covers all the necessary points and complies with all the major guidelines and instructions. Also, look for areas, which you believe could be written better and make the necessary changes.

This way, you can develop a quality poetry analysis essay on your own. However, if you want to look at a few examples of such essays, you can find such samples online. In fact, you won’t have to look anywhere else for essay-related assistance.

Here You Can also Read About  How To Conclude An Essay

Hire Professional Essay Writers for Quality Support

If you are still looking for some additional support with your essay paper, you can get in touch with the experts at essayhack.io. Here, you can find hundreds of qualified and skilled experts who have advanced knowledge of topics in their respective fields of specialisation. Receive informative, well-structured essays as per your requirements.

Moreover, you get to enjoy a bunch of additional benefits with every order at essayhack.io:

• Personalised essays as per your specific requirements
• On-time delivery of the solution, even under tight deadlines
• 100% plagiarism-free content with an on-demand report
• 24x7 active customer support with immediate response
• Complete privacy of data from third parties
• Free rework support on unfulfilled orders

So, why are you still waiting? Submit a well-written poetry analysis essay in the class with the necessary help from essayhack.io .

Do you want to share?

You might also like.

Top 100 Persuasive Essay Topics/Ideas for Students

Discursive Essay Topics for Students

How to Write an Essay Introduction?

How to Write a Law Essay: Writing Guide with Examples

How to Choose Ideal Argumentative Essay Topics to Work On

PEEL Paragraph a Guide to Write a Perfect Essay

100 Effective Persuasive Essay Topics

How to Write a Descriptive Essay?- Guide with Examples

Who Am I Essay : How to Write it?

Leave a reply, place order.

Want Impressive Essay Help?

Submit your requirements here

  -->Admin -->  Published On Oct 3, 2023 | Updated on Oct 4, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Sep 30, 2023 | Updated on Sep 30, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Sep 26, 2023 | Updated on Sep 26, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Sep 22, 2023 | Updated on Sep 26, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Sep 5, 2023 | Updated on Sep 11, 2023

Assignment Help

Dissertation

Research Paper

  -->Admin -->  Published On Apr 18, 2019 | Updated on Aug 10, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Sep 22, 2018 | Updated on Sep 12, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Feb 13, 2019 | Updated on Aug 10, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Apr 5, 2023 | Updated on Aug 10, 2023

  -->Admin -->  Published On Jun 22, 2020 | Updated on Aug 10, 2023

Subscribe Newsletter

You can place your order for free now. Simply submit your order and see what our writers can Subscribe to get regular update!

Thank you for commenting.

Thank you for subscribed newsletter.

Thank You For Commenting.

Get acquainted with the top essay helpers in the country and glide smoothly towards your academic goals with the necessary essay writing help online from US’s top professionals.

Want quick $20? Share your details with us.

Thank you for subscribing our newsletter

Have any Query? Contact with us

To learn how to write a poem step-by-step, let’s start where all poets start: the basics.

This article is an in-depth introduction to how to write a poem. We first answer the question, “What is poetry?” We then discuss the literary elements of poetry, and showcase some different approaches to the writing process—including our own seven-step process on how to write a poem step by step.

So, how do you write a poem? Let’s start with what poetry is.

What Poetry Is

It’s important to know what poetry is—and isn’t—before we discuss how to write a poem. The following quote defines poetry nicely:

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” —Former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove

Poetry Conveys Feeling

People sometimes imagine poetry as stuffy, abstract, and difficult to understand. Some poetry may be this way, but in reality poetry isn’t about being obscure or confusing. Poetry is a lyrical, emotive method of self-expression, using the elements of poetry to highlight feelings and ideas.

A poem should make the reader feel something.

In other words, a poem should make the reader feel something—not by telling them what to feel, but by evoking feeling directly.

Here’s a contemporary poem that, despite its simplicity (or perhaps because of its simplicity), conveys heartfelt emotion.

Poetry is Language at its Richest and Most Condensed

Unlike longer prose writing (such as a short story, memoir, or novel), poetry needs to impact the reader in the richest and most condensed way possible. Here’s a famous quote that enforces that distinction:

“Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

So poetry isn’t the place to be filling in long backstories or doing leisurely scene-setting. In poetry, every single word carries maximum impact.

Poetry Uses Unique Elements

Poetry is not like other kinds of writing: it has its own unique forms, tools, and principles. Together, these elements of poetry help it to powerfully impact the reader in only a few words.

The elements of poetry help it to powerfully impact the reader in only a few words.

Most poetry is written in verse , rather than prose . This means that it uses line breaks, alongside rhythm or meter, to convey something to the reader. Rather than letting the text break at the end of the page (as prose does), verse emphasizes language through line breaks.

Poetry further accentuates its use of language through rhyme and meter. Poetry has a heightened emphasis on the musicality of language itself: its sounds and rhythms, and the feelings they carry.

These devices—rhyme, meter, and line breaks—are just a few of the essential elements of poetry, which we’ll explore in more depth now.

Understanding the Elements of Poetry

As we explore how to write a poem step by step, these three major literary elements of poetry should sit in the back of your mind:

• Rhythm (Sound, Rhyme, and Meter)
• Literary Devices

1. Elements of Poetry: Rhythm

“Rhythm” refers to the lyrical, sonic qualities of the poem. How does the poem move and breathe; how does it feel on the tongue?

Traditionally, poets relied on rhyme and meter to accomplish a rhythmically sound poem. Free verse poems—which are poems that don’t require a specific length, rhyme scheme, or meter—only became popular in the West in the 20th century, so while rhyme and meter aren’t requirements of modern poetry, they are required of certain poetry forms.

Poetry is capable of evoking certain emotions based solely on the sounds it uses. Words can sound sinister, percussive, fluid, cheerful, dour, or any other noise/emotion in the complex tapestry of human feeling.

Take, for example, this excerpt from the poem “Beat! Beat! Drums!” by Walt Whitman:

Red — “b” sounds

Blue — “th” sounds

Green — “w” and “ew” sounds

Purple — “s” sounds

Orange — “d” and “t” sounds

This poem has a lot of percussive, disruptive sounds that reinforce the beating of the drums. The “b,” “d,” “w,” and “t” sounds resemble these drum beats, while the “th” and “s” sounds are sneakier, penetrating a deeper part of the ear. The cacophony of this excerpt might not sound “lyrical,” but it does manage to command your attention, much like drums beating through a city might sound.

To learn more about consonance and assonance, euphony and cacophony, and the other uses of sound, take a look at our article “12 Literary Devices in Poetry.”

https://writers.com/literary-devices-in-poetry

It would be a crime if you weren’t primed on the ins and outs of rhymes. “Rhyme” refers to words that have similar pronunciations, like this set of words: sound, hound, browned, pound, found, around.

Many poets assume that their poetry has to rhyme, and it’s true that some poems require a complex rhyme scheme. However, rhyme isn’t nearly as important to poetry as it used to be. Most traditional poetry forms—sonnets, villanelles , rimes royal, etc.—rely on rhyme, but contemporary poetry has largely strayed from the strict rhyme schemes of yesterday.

There are three types of rhymes:

• Homophony: Homophones are words that are spelled differently but sound the same, like “tail” and “tale.” Homophones often lead to commonly misspelled words .
• Perfect Rhyme: Perfect rhymes are word pairs that are identical in sound except for one minor difference. Examples include “slant and pant,” “great and fate,” and “shower and power.”
• Slant Rhyme: Slant rhymes are word pairs that use the same sounds, but their final vowels have different pronunciations. For example, “abut” and “about” are nearly-identical in sound, but are pronounced differently enough that they don’t completely rhyme. This is also known as an oblique rhyme or imperfect rhyme.

Meter refers to the stress patterns of words. Certain poetry forms require that the words in the poem follow a certain stress pattern, meaning some syllables are stressed and others are unstressed.

What is “stressed” and “unstressed”? A stressed syllable is the sound that you emphasize in a word. The bolded syllables in the following words are stressed, and the unbolded syllables are unstressed:

• Un• stressed
• Plat• i• tud• i•nous
• De •act•i• vate
• Con• sti •tu• tion•al

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables is important to traditional poetry forms. This chart, copied from our article on form in poetry , summarizes the different stress patterns of poetry.

2. Elements of Poetry: Form

“Form” refers to the structure of the poem. Is the poem a sonnet, a villanelle, a free verse piece, a slam poem, a contrapuntal, a ghazal , a blackout poem , or something new and experimental?

Form also refers to the line breaks and stanza breaks in a poem. Unlike prose, where the end of the page decides the line breaks, poets have control over when one line ends and a new one begins. The words that begin and end each line will emphasize the sounds, images, and ideas that are important to the poet.

To learn more about rhyme, meter, and poetry forms, read our full article on the topic:

https://writers.com/what-is-form-in-poetry

3. Elements of Poetry: Literary Devices

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

How does poetry express complex ideas in concise, lyrical language? Literary devices—like metaphor, symbolism, juxtaposition, irony, and hyperbole—help make poetry possible. Learn how to write and master these devices here:

https://writers.com/common-literary-devices

How to Write a Poem, in 7 Steps

To condense the elements of poetry into an actual poem, we’re going to follow a seven-step approach. However, it’s important to know that every poet’s process is different. While the steps presented here are a logical path to get from idea to finished poem, they’re not the only tried-and-true method of poetry writing. Poets can—and should!—modify these steps and generate their own writing process.

Nonetheless, if you’re new to writing poetry or want to explore a different writing process, try your hand at our approach. Here’s how to write a poem step by step!

1. Devise a Topic

The easiest way to start writing a poem is to begin with a topic.

However, devising a topic is often the hardest part. What should your poem be about? And where can you find ideas?

Here are a few places to search for inspiration:

• Other Works of Literature: Poetry doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it’s part of a larger literary tapestry, and can absolutely be influenced by other works. For example, read “The Golden Shovel” by Terrance Hayes , a poem that was inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”
• Real-World Events: Poetry, especially contemporary poetry, has the power to convey new and transformative ideas about the world. Take the poem “A Cigarette” by Ilya Kaminsky , which finds community in a warzone like the eye of a hurricane.
• Your Life: What would poetry be if not a form of memoir? Many contemporary poets have documented their lives in verse. Take Sylvia Plath’s poem “Full Fathom Five” —a daring poem for its time, as few writers so boldly criticized their family as Plath did.
• The Everyday and Mundane: Poetry isn’t just about big, earth-shattering events: much can be said about mundane events, too. Take “Ode to Shea Butter” by Angel Nafis , a poem that celebrates the beautiful “everydayness” of moisturizing.
• Nature: The Earth has always been a source of inspiration for poets, both today and in antiquity. Take “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver , which finds meaning in nature’s quiet rituals.
• Writing Exercises: Prompts and exercises can help spark your creativity, even if the poem you write has nothing to do with the prompt! Here’s 24 writing exercises to get you started.

At this point, you’ve got a topic for your poem. Maybe it’s a topic you’re passionate about, and the words pour from your pen and align themselves into a perfect sonnet! It’s not impossible—most poets have a couple of poems that seemed to write themselves.

However, it’s far more likely you’re searching for the words to talk about this topic. This is where journaling comes in.

Sit in front of a blank piece of paper, with nothing but the topic written on the top. Set a timer for 15-30 minutes and put down all of your thoughts related to the topic. Don’t stop and think for too long, and try not to obsess over finding the right words: what matters here is emotion, the way your subconscious grapples with the topic.

At the end of this journaling session, go back through everything you wrote, and highlight whatever seems important to you: well-written phrases, poignant moments of emotion, even specific words that you want to use in your poem.

Journaling is a low-risk way of exploring your topic without feeling pressured to make it sound poetic. “Sounding poetic” will only leave you with empty language: your journal allows you to speak from the heart. Everything you need for your poem is already inside of you, the journaling process just helps bring it out!

3. Think About Form

As one of the elements of poetry, form plays a crucial role in how the poem is both written and read. Have you ever wanted to write a sestina ? How about a contrapuntal, or a double cinquain, or a series of tanka? Your poem can take a multitude of forms, including the beautifully unstructured free verse form; while form can be decided in the editing process, it doesn’t hurt to think about it now.

4. Write the First Line

After a productive journaling session, you’ll be much more acquainted with the state of your heart. You might have a line in your journal that you really want to begin with, or you might want to start fresh and refer back to your journal when you need to! Either way, it’s time to begin.

What should the first line of your poem be? There’s no strict rule here—you don’t have to start your poem with a certain image or literary device. However, here’s a few ways that poets often begin their work:

• Set the Scene: Poetry can tell stories just like prose does. Anne Carson does just this in her poem “Lines,” situating the scene in a conversation with the speaker’s mother.
• Start at the Conflict: Right away, tell the reader where it hurts most. Margaret Atwood does this in “Ghost Cat,” a poem about aging.
• Start With a Contradiction: Juxtaposition and contrast are two powerful tools in the poet’s toolkit. Joan Larkin’s poem “Want” begins and ends with these devices. Carlos Gimenez Smith also begins his poem “Entanglement” with a juxtaposition.
• Start With Your Title: Some poets will use the title as their first line, like Ron Padgett’s poem “Ladies and Gentlemen in Outer Space.”

There are many other ways to begin poems, so play around with different literary devices, and when you’re stuck, turn to other poetry for inspiration.

5. Develop Ideas and Devices

You might not know where your poem is going until you finish writing it. In the meantime, stick to your literary devices. Avoid using too many abstract nouns, develop striking images, use metaphors and similes to strike interesting comparisons, and above all, speak from the heart.

6. Write the Closing Line

Some poems end “full circle,” meaning that the images the poet used in the beginning are reintroduced at the end. Gwendolyn Brooks does this in her poem “my dreams, my work, must wait till after hell.”

Yet, many poets don’t realize what their poems are about until they write the ending line . Poetry is a search for truth, especially the hard truths that aren’t easily explained in casual speech. Your poem, too, might not be finished until it comes across a necessary truth, so write until you strike the heart of what you feel, and the poem will come to its own conclusion.

7. Edit, Edit, Edit!

Do you have a working first draft of your poem? Congratulations! Getting your feelings onto the page is a feat in itself.

Yet, no guide on how to write a poem is complete without a note on editing. If you plan on sharing or publishing your work, or if you simply want to edit your poem to near-perfection, keep these tips in mind.

• Adjectives and Adverbs: Use these parts of speech sparingly. Most imagery shouldn’t rely on adjectives and adverbs, because the image should be striking and vivid on its own, without too much help from excess language.
• Concrete Line Breaks: Line breaks help emphasize important words, making certain images and ideas clearer to the reader. As a general rule, most of your lines should start and end with concrete words—nouns and verbs especially.
• Stanza Breaks: Stanzas are like paragraphs to poetry. A stanza can develop a new idea, contrast an existing idea, or signal a transition in the poem’s tone. Make sure each stanza clearly stands for something as a unit of the poem.
• Mixed Metaphors: A mixed metaphor is when two metaphors occupy the same idea, making the poem unnecessarily difficult to understand. Here’s an example of a mixed metaphor: “a watched clock never boils.” The meaning can be discerned, but the image remains unclear. Be wary of mixed metaphors—though some poets (like Shakespeare) make them work, they’re tricky and often disruptive.
• Abstractions: Above all, avoid using excessively abstract language. It’s fine to use the word “love” 2 or 3 times in a poem, but don’t use it twice in every stanza. Let the imagery in your poem express your feelings and ideas, and only use abstractions as brief connective tissue in otherwise-concrete writing.

Lastly, don’t feel pressured to “do something” with your poem. Not all poems need to be shared and edited. Poetry doesn’t have to be “good,” either—it can simply be a statement of emotions by the poet, for the poet. Publishing is an admirable goal, but also, give yourself permission to write bad poems, unedited poems, abstract poems, and poems with an audience of one. Write for yourself—editing is for the other readers.

How to Write a Poem: Different Approaches and Philosophies

Poetry is the oldest literary form, pre-dating prose, theater, and the written word itself. As such, there are many different schools of thought when it comes to writing poetry. You might be wondering how to write a poem through different methods and approaches: here’s four philosophies to get you started.

How to Write a Poem: Poetry as Emotion

If you asked a Romantic Poet “what is poetry?”, they would tell you that poetry is the spontaneous emotion of the soul.

The Romantic Era viewed poetry as an extension of human emotion—a way of perceiving the world through unbridled creativity, centered around the human soul. While many Romantic poets used traditional forms in their poetry, the Romantics weren’t afraid to break from tradition, either.

To write like a Romantic, feel—and feel intensely. The words will follow the emotions, as long as a blank page sits in front of you.

How to Write a Poem: Poetry as Stream of Consciousness

If you asked a Modernist poet, “What is poetry?” they would tell you that poetry is the search for complex truths.

Modernist Poets were keen on the use of poetry as a window into the mind. A common technique of the time was “Stream of Consciousness,” which is unfiltered writing that flows directly from the poet’s inner dialogue. By tapping into one’s subconscious, the poet might uncover deeper truths and emotions they were initially unaware of.

Depending on who you are as a writer, Stream of Consciousness can be tricky to master, but this guide covers the basics of how to write using this technique.

How to Write a Poem: Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a practice of documenting the mind, rather than trying to control or edit what it produces. This practice was popularized by the Beat Poets , who in turn were inspired by Eastern philosophies and Buddhist teachings. If you asked a Beat Poet “what is poetry?”, they would tell you that poetry is the human consciousness, unadulterated.

To learn more about the art of leaving your mind alone , take a look at our guide on Mindfulness, from instructor Marc Olmsted.

https://writers.com/mindful-writing

How to Write a Poem: Poem as Camera Lens

Many contemporary poets use poetry as a camera lens, documenting global events and commenting on both politics and injustice. If you find yourself itching to write poetry about the modern day, press your thumb against the pulse of the world and write what you feel.

Additionally, check out these two essays by Electric Literature on the politics of poetry:

• What Can Poetry Do That Politics Can’t?
• Why All Poems Are Political (TL;DR: Poetry is an urgent expression of freedom).

Okay, I Know How to Write a Good Poem. What Next?

Poetry, like all art forms, takes practice and dedication. You might write a poem you enjoy now, and think it’s awfully written 3 years from now; you might also write some of your best work after reading this guide. Poetry is fickle, but the pen lasts forever, so write poems as long as you can!

Once you understand how to write a poem, and after you’ve drafted some pieces that you’re proud of and ready to share, here are some next steps you can take.

Publish in Literary Journals

Want to see your name in print? These literary journals house some of the best poetry being published today.

https://writers.com/best-places-submit-poetry-online

Assemble and Publish a Manuscript

A poem can tell a story. So can a collection of poems. If you’re interested in publishing a poetry book, learn how to compose and format one here:

https://writers.com/poetry-manuscript-format

Join a Writing Community

writers.com is an online community of writers, and we’d love it if you shared your poetry with us! Join us on Facebook and check out our upcoming poetry courses .

Poetry doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it exists to educate and uplift society. The world is waiting for your voice, so find a group and share your work!

Sean Glatch

27 comments.

super useful! love these articles 💕

Indeed, very helpful, consize. I could not say more than thank you.

I’ve never read a better guide on how to write poetry step by step. Not only does it give great tips, but it also provides helpful links! Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Hamna! I’m so glad this guide was helpful for you.

Best guide so far

Very inspirational and marvelous tips

Thank you super tips very helpful.

I have never gone through the steps of writing poetry like this, I will take a closer look at your post.

Beautiful! Thank you! I’m really excited to try journaling as a starter step x

[…] How to Write a Poem, Step-by-Step […]

This is really helpful, thanks so much

Extremely thorough! Nice job.

Thank you so much for sharing your awesome tips for beginner writers!

People must reboot this and bookmark it. Your writing and explanation is detailed to the core. Thanks for helping me understand different poetic elements. While reading, actually, I start thinking about how my husband construct his songs and why other artists lack that organization (or desire to be better). Anyway, this gave me clarity.

I’m starting to use poetry as an outlet for my blogs, but I also have to keep in mind I’m transitioning from a blogger to a poetic sweet kitty potato (ha). It’s a unique transition, but I’m so used to writing a lot, it’s strange to see an open blog post with a lot of lines and few paragraphs.

Anyway, thanks again!

I’m happy this article was so helpful, Eternity! Thanks for commenting, and best of luck with your poetry blog.

Yours in verse, Sean

One of the best articles I read on how to write poems. And it is totally step by step process which is easy to read and understand.

Thanks for the step step explanation in how to write poems it’s a very helpful to me and also for everyone one. THANKYOU

Totally detailed and in a simple language told the best way how to write poems. It is a guide that one should read and follow. It gives the detailed guidance about how to write poems. One of the best articles written on how to write poems.

what a guidance thank you so much now i can write a poem thank you again again and again

The most inspirational and informative article I have ever read in the 21st century.It gives the most relevent,practical, comprehensive and effective insights and guides to aspiring writers.

Thank you so much. This is so useful to me a poetry

[…] Write a short story/poem (Here are some tips) […]

It was very helpful and am willing to try it out for my writing Thanks ❤️

Thank you so much. This is so helpful to me, and am willing to try it out for my writing .

Absolutely constructive, direct, and so useful as I’m striving to develop a recent piece. Thank you!

thank you for your explanation……,love it

Really great. Nothing less.

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

TPCASTT Poetry Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide

TPCASTT is a seven-step poetry analysis technique used to appreciate a poem in a holistic way. This method focuses on six major aspects of a poem where a single element is focused twice to connect the subject matter with the initial response to a piece of poetry. Teachers often employ this technique to encourage students to engage with the emotional, impressionist, and technical dimensions of a poem. In this article, the TPCASTT poetry analysis technique is explained with suitable examples. On top of that, there is an analysis of a poem using this method by the end and a graphic organizer specially prepared for our readers.

The acronym TPCASTT stands for:

• T – Title (Initial Reaction)
• P – Paraphrase
• C – Connotation
• A – Attitude/Tone
• T – Title (Conclusive Remark)

The third letter “C” is often substituted with “F”, which stands for figurative language. The acronym is read as “ TPFASTT ”.

Another variation of TPCASTT is “ TOASTT ”, where “P” or paraphrase is substituted with “O” or “own words”. It means to write the poem in your own words, similar to paraphrasing a poem. Alongside that, the third step finding the connotation (“C”) is excluded in “TOASTT” and rather students are encouraged to “Analyze” (“A”) the poetic devices only.

• O – Own words
• A – Analyze (Poetic Devices)
• T – Title & Tone

TPCASTT is a step-by-step poetry analysis method that focuses on the title (initial and final reactions), content (literal meaning), connotation, speaker’s attitude, poetic shifts, and theme of a particular poem. This technique encourages readers to engage with a poem at seven different levels:

• Initial engagement with the poem’s title without diving into the text.
• Reading through the lines and understanding the content at a literal level.
• Finding the connotations tied to different words or phrases with particular emphasis on structure, form, figurative language, sensory devices, etc.
• Determining the attitude or tone of the speaker from the word choice, rhyme, meter, poetic devices, etc., at a personal level.
• Searching for poetic shifts in the text that shapes the final meaning.
• Referring to the title again in order to establish a connection between one’s personal conjectures and the poem’s subject.
• Drawing a conclusion by finding the main theme, topic, or subject matter of the poem.

TPCASTT Steps Explained

Step one: t – title.

The first step of TPCASTT is finding out the meaning of the title of a poem without referring to the text. Students have to only respond to the title. They must answer the following questions in this step:

• What does the title mean?
• Why does the poet use such a title?
• What can be inferred from the title of the poem?

Poems without Titles

Some poems don’t have titles at all. In those cases, students are required to appreciate the first line as the title; for instance, Emily Dickinson’s poem number 640 does not have a title. In this case, we have to focus on the first line, “ I cannot live with You ” and appreciate it as its title.

This step can be skipped in case there is no title. However, we suggest that it is better not to skip this step. Students can note their personal responses to the following questions in this step:

• Why does the poet not use a title?
• If the first line is regarded as its title, what does it tell us about the overall poem?

It is important to note that there are two kinds of titles: interactive title and naming title. Let’s know more about these titles below:

Interactive Title

This kind of title is tied with the text. It helps readers to know what the poet is about to talk about in the poem. For example, the title of Maya Angelou’s poem “ A Brave and Startling Truth ” is an interactive title that interplays or affects the meaning. The title hints that the poet is going to speak about a “truth,” saying which is a brave task and it is, on the other hand, startling or astonishing.

Naming Title

This kind of title does not give enough information about the text. Poets use such titles for only naming purposes without giving out anything more about what they are going to say in the text. For instance, the title “ The Centaur ,” a poem by May Swenson, does not give enough insight into her subject. All readers can speculate that this poem is about the mythical centaurs having lower parts of a horse and upper parts of a human.

Step Two: P – Paraphrase

In the second step of TPCASTT poetry analysis, students have to read the poem. To paraphrase means expressing the meaning of a poem using different words to achieve greater clarity. Students have to rephrase the text in their own words. They can do it by going line-by-line or stanza-by-stanza.

It is important to note that summarizing is different from paraphrasing a poem. A summary is a brief account of the main points in a poem. Whereas, paraphrasing is rewriting the poem in simplified prose format by replacing the critical words with their close synonyms.

Paraphrase vs. Summary

Let’s read these lines from Anne Sexton’s ekphrastic poem “ The Starry Night ”:

The town does not exist except where one black-haired tree slips up like a drowned woman into the hot sky. The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.    Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die.

A simple paraphrase of these lines is:

The town does not exist except a tree with black hair rises up like a woman drowned in the hot sky. The town is silent. The night sky shines with eleven stars. Oh, what a starry starry night it is! I want to die overwatching such a starry night sky.

Summarizing these lines is a bit different than the word-to-word paraphrase. The summary reads:

The speaker describes the nonexistent town from Vincent van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night . The leaves of the cypress tree appear like a woman’s hair drowned in the bright sky. All the people in that town are fast asleep. The night sky contains only eleven stars as depicted in the painting. Watching the sky, the speaker expresses her strongest desire to die.

Step Three: C – Connotation

In the third step, students have to find the deeper meaning of the poem. This step requires deeper knowledge of poetic forms, figurative language, sound devices, and other technical aspects. Connotation stands for an idea or a feeling a word invokes in readers in addition to its literal meaning. So, in this poem, readers have to note their personal response to the meaning of specific words, lines, the use of figurative devices, etc.

To be more specific, this step of TPCASTT poetry analysis deals with identifying and analyzing the following aspects of a poem:

• Diction (word choice)
• Poetic Devices & Figurative Language (including metaphors, similes, alliteration, assonance, consonance, symbolism, etc.)
• Rhyme Scheme
• Punctuation

Let’s take these lines from Amy Lowell’s poem “ The Wind ”:

He shouts in the sails of the ships at sea, He steals the down from the honeybee, He makes the forest trees rustle and sing, He twirls my kite till it breaks its string.

The connotation of these lines reveals some interesting ideas. Firstly, Lowell is addressing the wind as a human being. She personifies the wind as a boy or man who shouts in the sails, steals the nectar, makes the forest tree rustle, and twirls her kite’s string.

Readers can also find there is a sing-song-like rhyme scheme in these lines. Moreover, the use of anaphora (use of “He” to begin each line) portrays the speaker’s excitement (mood) and the use of consonance creates internal rhyming. After reading these lines, it seems the speaker is depicting the playful side of the wind, unlike its destructive portrayal in other poems.

Connotation vs. Denotation

Readers are required to be aware of the main difference between connotation and denotation in this step. To be specific, the second step, “Paraphrase” actually deals with the denotation of a poem. Denotation simply means the literal or primary meaning.

Whereas, the connotation the third step deals with stands for the meaning beyond the literal level. Readers are encouraged to associate their feelings or share their ideas that a word or phrase in a poem can suggest. Therefore, the third step is more engaging than the second one as it requires critical thinking, novel ideas, and personal opinions.

There is another critical term sounding similar to connotation and denotation. It is annotation, which refers to the explanation or comment added to the lines or words in a poem. TPCASTT poetry analysis does not particularly include a step of annotating a poetic text. However, by using this method, students actually learn the art of annotating poetry. Therefore, TPCASTT is nothing other than a way of annotating a poem using a seven-step approach.

Step Four: A – Attitude

When students complete the third step, they acquire the deeper meaning and connotations of a poem. Thus, the fourth step and the following ones become easier. In this step, they are required to figure out the speaker’s attitude or tone.

There are broadly two kinds of attitudes: one is subjective (personal) and the other one is objective (not influenced by personal feelings).

Subjective Attitude

This kind of attitude can be seen when a speaker narrates their deeply personal events. In this case, poets use emotive language, intense mood, and first-person perspective. Read these lines from “ I wish I could remember that first day ” by Christina Rossetti and identify the speaker’s tone or attitude:

I wish I could remember that first day,  First hour, first moment of your meeting me,  If bright or dim the season, it might be  Summer or Winter for aught I can say;

In these lines, the speaker’s attitude toward the subject is emotional, nostalgic, and sad.

Objective Attitude

Poems dealing with broader issues or topics, other than one’s personal events, contain an objective attitude. The speaker’s tone reveals a sense of practicality, depth, and detachment. Let’s explore these lines of Gwendolyn Bennett’s poem “ To a Dark Girl ”:

I love you for your brownness, And the rounded darkness of your breast, I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice And shadows where your wayward eyelids rest.

These lines are more descriptive than emotional. The tone or attitude of the speaker is filled with appreciation, love, and empathy. If the speaker was the dark girl herself, she would have used more emotive language than the present speaker. However, readers can find a sense of subjectivity in these lines as well.

Step Five: S – Shifts

In the fifth step, students have to find the shifts or transitions in the text. The shift means a sudden change in the attitude (tone and mood), including the variation of rhythm and meter. Readers have to identify where the shift occurs and then they have to justify how it affects the meaning. Furthermore, they have to discuss how the poet shows the transition by tweaking the rhythm.

Let’s read James Weldon Johnson’s “ The Awakening ” and figure out where and how the shift occurs:

Broadly, the shift in the speaker’s attitude occurs in the second stanza. The first stanza reveals the speaker’s ignorance of his existence. When the second stanza begins, his tone suddenly changes, which is reflected in the use of words “gaily,” “sang,” “brushed,” “gladness,” etc. After having a dream, he has clarity over his existence. So, the shift or transition in the poem occurs in the second stanza. There are some minute shifts, which can be found in the last four lines of the first stanza.

Step Six: T – Title

In the sixth step, we have to look at the title again. Why is it important to revisit the title? After analyzing the text, technical aspects, and understanding the nuances, it becomes crucial to compare our primary reaction to the title (before reading and understanding the text) and the final assessment.

In this way, readers can avoid misinterpreting the poem. Besides, it also helps students to think critically about why the poet chose that specific title instead of choosing something else.

With regards to a poem without a title, readers can opt for a different method. They can justify why they think the first line is appropriate as its title or they can try to think about a title that seems fit as per their interpretations.

Step Seven: T – Theme

Last but not least, it is important to point out the main idea or topic of the poem around which the poet’s ideas orbit. In the last step, readers have to figure out the most important theme or themes (in case they find more) in the poem. They have to justify how the theme interplays with the subject matter of the poem.

Let’s read these lines from “ Fear ” by Kahlil Gibran and point out the major theme:

The main theme of the poem is overcoming fear. Gibran presents this theme through the image of a river waiting to enter the sea. According to him, one must take risks in order to overcome their greatest fear. Besides, readers can also find the theme of spiritual assimilation into the vastness of the creation by the image of the river becoming part of the ocean.

TPCASTT Poetry Analysis Example

Using the seven-step TPCASTT method, we are going to analyze William Shakespeare’s sonnet 116, also known as “Let me not to the marriage of true minds.” Without further ado, let’s TPCASTT the poem, which you can read below:

TPCASTT of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

Tpcastt template.

Here’s a TPCASTT template to help our readers organize their thoughts in one place while analyzing a poem. Students can fill this TPCASTT graphic organizer chart and refer to it while writing a poetry analysis essay.

If you want to analyze a poem using this strategy, head to our Poem Guides page. Then, choose any poet and explore their poem guides. To TPCASTT the poem, you can take help from our thoughts on that particular poem. But, always make sure to draw up the interpretation in your own words.

TPCASTT Pros & Cons

Let’s practice tpcastt.

Readers can easily implement the TPCASTT technique to analyze a poem efficiently. It is better to start with the poems written prior to the 20th-century. Then, one can dive into the wide array of modernist poetry of the past century and the contemporary period. Here is a list of a few poems that readers can TPCASTT with the help of our guides:

• “ Is My Team Ploughing ” by A. E. Housman
• “ The Arrow and the Song ” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “ Friends ” by Abbie Farewell Brown
• “ Talking in Their Sleep ” by Edith M. Thomas
• “ [little tree] ” by E. E. Cummings
• “ If I can stop one Heart from breaking ” by Emily Dickinson
• “ Equinox ” by Elizabeth Alexander

You can share your TPCASTT analysis of any poem with us in order to know whether you employed the technique correctly or not. Do use our graphic organizer to write your response and feel free to send it to us at [email protected] .

We’ll get back to you with our thoughts as soon as we can.

Questions & Answers

TPCASTT is a seven-step poetry analysis technique. It is a step-by-step approach to analyzing or annotating a particular poem. In the acronym, “T” stands for “Title”, “P” stands for “Paraphrase”, “C” stands for “Connotation, “A” stands for “Attitude”, “S” stands for “Shifts”, “T” stands for “Title”, and the last “T” means “Theme”.

We can easily analyze a poem by using the seven-step TPCASTT strategy. In the first step, readers have to note their initial response to the title (T) before reading the poem. Secondly, they have to paraphrase (P) the poem word-by-word. Thirdly, the connotations of the lines are noted down. Fourthly, they have to figure out the attitude (A) of the speaker. Then, they are required to find out the shifts (S) in tone and mood. Thereafter, they have to evaluate the title (T) again. Lastly, they are required to identify and justify the theme (T) of the poem.

In TPCASTT, examining the title of a poem for the first time helps us know what the poet is going to say or what the poem is about. It helps us to compare our initial response with the reevaluation of the title at the later stage of the analysis.

The second “T” in TPCASTT stands for the title. It is the sixth step of this poetry analysis method, where readers are encouraged to reevaluate the title of a poem after understanding the meaning.

In this poetry analysis technique, students are required to write the poem in their own words, by substituting the critical words with easily understandable words. They have to simplify the poet’s language line-by-line or stanza-by-stanza in order to have a better understanding of the poem.

Connotation means the meaning that a word invokes in addition to the literary or primary meaning. In this step, readers have to figure out the connotation of a particular line or word, with particular emphasis on form, figurative language, punctuation, sound devices, etc.

Attitude means how the speaker of a poem presents the subject matter, as interpreted by readers. It deals with the tone and mood of the speaker that is created using diction, meter, rhyme, figurative language, and syntax.

In TPCASTT, the shift means to identify the transition or change in the speaker’s tone and mood, rhythm, meter, etc.

In order to find a shift in a poem, readers have to note the change in meter, rhyme, or in the speaker’s attitude reflected in the word choice, syntax, and figurative language.

There are several techniques to analyze poetry. One of the easiest and most effective methods is TPCASTT where readers analyze a poem using a seven-step strategy. Some other techniques include SMILE, TPFASTT, TOASTT, etc.

TPFASTT is similar to the TPCASTT poetry analysis technique. In this poetry analysis technique, readers focus on the “Title” (T), “Paraphrase” (P), “Figurative Language” (F), “Attitude” (A), “Shifts” (S), “Title” (T), and “Theme” (T).

In TOASTT, “T” stands for “Title”, “O” stands for “Own Words” (similar to paraphrase), “A” stands for “Analyze” (the poetic devices), “S” stands for “Shifts”, “T” stands for “Tone” and “Title”, and the last “T” means “Theme”.

Useful Resources

• Check out A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver — With her passion and wit, Oliver wrote this ultimate guide to writing and understanding poetry.
• Check out How to Read Poetry Like a Professor — This didactic primer examines a wide array of poems and teaches readers the art of reading and analyzing poetry.

Share this:

At Poemotopia, we try to provide the best content that you can ever find. Each article is the fruit of a rigorous editorial process.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Questions? Call us: 

Email: 

• How it works
• Testimonials

Essay Writing

• Essay service
• Essay writers
• College essay service
• Write my essay
• Pay for essay
• Essay topics

Term Paper Writing

• Term paper service
• Buy term papers
• Term paper help
• Term paper writers
• College term papers
• Write my term paper
• Pay for term paper
• Term paper topic

Research Paper Writing

• Research paper service
• Buy research paper
• Research paper help
• Research paper writers
• College research papers
• Write my research paper
• Pay for research paper
• Research paper topics

Dissertation Writing

• Dissertation service
• Buy dissertation
• Dissertation help
• Dissertation writers
• College thesis
• Write my dissertation
• Pay for dissertation
• Dissertation topics

Other Services

• Custom writing services
• Speech writing service
• Movie review writing
• Editing service
• Assignment writing
• Article writing service
• Book report writing
• Book review writing

Popular request:

How to write a poem analysis essay fast.

April 26, 2021

However, don’t worry too much. We will show you how to write poem analysis essay quickly and do a great job. We will show you how to pick a good topic (topics will be provided as example) and how to start the paper. A quick guide will be provided to make things easier. We will also show you how to quote and cite in your poetry analysis essay assignment. Learning how to write an essay on a poem analysis requires that you learn how to properly quote and cite. Let’s begin!

But What Is a Poem Analysis Essay?

Before you learn how to start a poem analysis essay, you should make sure you understand the purpose of this paper. So, what is a poetry analysis essay?

Basically, the main goal of this academic paper is to review all – or just some specific – functional, structural and artistic parts of a poem. Reviewing a poem is usually done as part of an analytical paper. Most often, writing a poetry analysis essay requires you to perform an in-depth stylistic analysis and character analysis of the poem.

If you want write poetry analysis essay papers, you are strongly advised to start them with an outline. Why? Because a poetry analysis essay outline will keep you on track. You will not stray from the subject and topic. You will not forget important talking points. Basically, the outline will act as the backbone of your essay. It looks like a table of contents and contains all the most important ideas you’ve uncovered while doing the research. Yes, the outline should be created while you do the research for the poetry essay.

Poetry Essay Topics

The importance of topics cannot be understated. Learning how to write a poem analysis essay means learning how to pick the right topic for the job. The perfect topic is complex enough to warrant at least 500 words. It is not too narrow, but not too general either. Ideally, you should be able to find plenty of information about the topic online. Also, it is very important for the topic to be unique and interesting. The last thing you want to do is write an essay on a topic that has already been chosen by one of your classmates. We know, finding a great topic can be difficult. This is why we have a list of ideas for you right here (you can use them freely):

• Explore the battle within oneself theme in a specific poem
• Using places to represent an idea in a poem
• Explore the use of allusions in a poem
• Analyze The Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire
• Analyze a piece of prose poetry
• Analyze a piece of Jazz poetry
• Discuss assonance in a poem of your choice
• Analyze the use of consonance
• Study the use of rhymes in a poem
• The use of simile in modern poetry
• Onomatopoeia in a poem of your choice
• Analyze all uses of alliteration in a specific poem

Where Can You Find Great Poem Analysis Essay Examples?

Whether you need to write a rhetorical analysis essay on a poem or a poetry explication essay, you will need a good example. Even though you now know how to start the project, you probably don’t know how the end result should look like. This is why you need a few excellent poem analysis essay examples. Truth be told, the Internet is full of poorly written samples. Don’t make the mistake of using any of them. Instead, get in touch with us and request an example from our experienced academic writers. Our samples are 100 percent original, written for you.

Once you’ve read a good example, it’s time to learn the ways to analyze poetry on an essay. Of course, you can’t just copy and paste a poem entirely in your paper. You can, however, quote certain parts of the poem. By quoting, you are allowed to use parts of the poem in your academic paper. One thing to keep in mind is that every time you quote a part of a literary work, you need to cite it. This is done in the Works Cited list or the References section, depending on which format you are using. To learn how to analyze a poem in an essay, you must first learn how to quote and cite correctly. Failure to do so will lead to severe penalties.

How to Write a Poetry Analysis Essay Easily

Don’t forget: always start with a poem analysis essay outline. You now know how to pick a topic, where to get some examples, and how to properly quote, cite and reference a literary work in your paper. It’s time to see the main poetry analysis essay steps you need to take to write the paper. Think of the following steps as a poetry analysis essay template. You will be able to use these steps in all your future paper, of course. So, if you are looking to learn how to write a poetry analysis essay, here is what you need to do:

• Write the introduction . If you don’t know how to write a poem analysis essay introduction, you can learn everything about it on our blog. Basically, the introduction will present your thesis statement (what you want to achieve or demonstrate in your paper), as well as some background information about the topic.
• Write three (or more) body paragraphs . Each paragraph should discuss a single important idea. This idea should be stated at the start of the paragraph. The rest of each paragraph will be used to support the main idea, of course. Use quotes whenever necessary, as we’ve shown you above.
• Write the conclusion . This is the part where you will restate the thesis statement and then summarize all the most important ideas. Make it clear that the body of the essay has adequately supported the thesis. If necessary, you can end the conclusion with a strong call to action.
• Edit your work , cutting out any unnecessary parts. Make sure your writing flows well and don’t forget to transition smoothly from one section to the next.
• Proofread the paper at least twice to make sure you catch all typos or other errors.

Quoting and Citing Poems Correctly

Quoting and citing are different from style to style. In this blog post, we will analyze the correct way to quote and cite in APA style and MLA style. Don’t worry, it is not as difficult as you think. Let’s start with quoting in MLA style.

To quote a part of the poem in MLA, you will use this format: “quote” (source). Here are 3 examples:

• “And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.” (Eliot, lines 10-11)
• “Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.” (Bishop, lines 7-9)
• “Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,” (Ginsberg)

And here are the 3 entries you will need to insert into the Works Cited section of your essay:

• Eliot, T.S. “The Waste Land.” 1922. Poetry Foundation , https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land. Accessed 07 July 2021.
• Bishop, Elizabeth “One Art .” 1976. Poetry Foundation , https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art. Accessed 07 July 2021.
• Ginsberg, Allen “Howl.” 1956. Poetry Foundation , https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl. Accessed 07 July 2021.

When it comes to APA, style, quotes are similar to MLA (note the differences though):

• A short quote: “That there was hardly room ’tween-decks for half the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;” (Hayden, 1962)
• A long quote: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.” (Poe, 1945, lines 1-6)

The entries you need to make in the References list are as follows:

• Hayden, R. (1962). Middle Passage. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43076/middle-passage
• Poe, A.E. (1945). The Raven. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven

As you can see, writing a poem analysis essay is not overly complex. However, some poems are more difficult than others, so you may run into trouble. If this happens, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our writing service . We may not know your professor’s poetry analysis essay rubric, but we certainly know how to write an amazing essay on poetry. Give us a try!

Take a break from writing.

Top academic experts are here for you.

• How To Write An Autobiography Guideline And Useful Advice
• 182 Best Classification Essay Topics To Learn And Write About
• How To Manage Stress In College: Top Practical Tips  
• How To Write A Narrative Essay: Definition, Tips, And A Step-by-Step Guide
• How To Write Article Review Like Professional
• Great Problem Solution Essay Topics
• Creating Best Stanford Roommate Essay
• Costco Essay – Best Writing Guide
• How To Quote A Dialogue
• Wonderful Expository Essay Topics
• Research Paper Topics For 2020
• Interesting Persuasive Essay Topics

TPCASTT Poetry Analysis – The Best Way to Dissect a Poem

What is TPCASTT poetry analysis? This fairly easy-to-remember little acronymic expression is a template for the analysis of poetry. This makes it perfect for students who have started learning about poetry. This article will examine this TPCASTT template and explain what each of the letters stands for, how applicable it is as an analytical method, and will end with a brief demonstration of how it could be used. So, if you need to make use of TPCASTT poetry analysis in your studies, look no further as we explore how to use this useful analytical template below!

Table of Contents

• 1 A Look at TPCASTT Poetry Analysis
• 2.1 T for Title
• 2.2 P for Paraphrase
• 2.3 C for Connotations
• 2.4 A for Attitude/Tone
• 2.5 S for Shifts
• 2.6 T for Title (Again)
• 2.7 T for Theme
• 3 The Applicability of TPCASTT Poetry Analysis
• 4 An Example of TPCASTT Poetry Analysis
• 5.1 What Is TPCASTT Poetry Analysis?
• 5.2 Is TPCASTT Poetry Analysis Beneficial to a Student?
• 5.3 Is TPCASTT Poetry Analysis Easy to Learn?

A Look at TPCASTT Poetry Analysis

When you’re just starting out with poetry in an educational environment, it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to poetry. What do you analyze when you’re told to analyze, and how should you explore the various parts of a poem? The TPCASTT template gives you a perfect and easy-to-understand (and hopefully, as an acronym, an easy-to-remember) format for the analysis of poetry.

The TPCASTT poetry analysis approach is quite simple as each letter stands for a different part of the poem that you need to analyze. In brief, it can be laid out in the following way, but keep in mind, that each of these will gain elaboration later:

• T is for Title : A look at the title of the poem without any understanding of the contents found within it to try and gain an understanding of what the poem may be about based on the title alone.
• P is for Paraphrase : A breakdown of the poem’s more difficult components to better understand parts of it that may otherwise cause some students to struggle with aspects of the poem.
• C is for Connotation : A deeper breakdown of the connotative (or figurative) meanings of the poem. This is often the lengthiest part and gets through the bulk of the poem’s messaging.
• A is for Attitude/Tone : An examination of the general attitude that the writer of the poem is trying to get the reader to feel and understand. The use of “attitude/tone” is because these two terms can often be seen as synonyms.
• S is for Shift : An examination of the way in which the poem may shift its meaning or tone, such as transitioning from a lighter to a darker tone, or anything similar. This can aid in understanding the true message behind the poem.
• T is for Title (again) : A retrospective view of the title once again. The reason that the title is examined again is because now, with an understanding of the poem itself, there may be a new meaning to be found in the name of the poem.
• T is for Theme : An analysis of the main themes, or subject matter, of the poem now that the entire thing has been more readily broken down and can be easily understood. This is the final part of the analysis.

This short look at the entire acronym of the TPCASTT template is good for those who need a general overview, and these bullet lists can be beneficial for students who need a reminder. However, for a deeper dive into the actual approach, you will need to keep reading to examine how each of these can be used in greater depth.

This analysis technique is fairly comprehensive though, and so you are unlikely to miss anything particularly major if you do decide to make use of this particular style of analysis.

How to Perform a TPCASTT Poetry Analysis

Now that we have provided a briefly summarized view of the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach, let’s dive in with a deeper look at each of these aspects and discuss how they can be used in the abstract. Then we can move on to a look at their applicability, including upsides and downsides, before ending with a demonstration of this approach. So, let’s go through each of the letters that make up the TPCASTT template.

T for Title

The title is the very first thing that you will see in a poem, and that title can often be just as obscure as the text of the poem itself. Think of books and movies in this case. They will have a title, but that title is only truly understood, most of the time, once you have some understanding of the contents of the text. The same is true of poetry. So, when you perform a TPCASTT poetry analysis, you need to start by looking at the title.

What does the title suggest to you? What does it make you think about? Does it give you any hints about the poem’s contents? Does it hold any special meaning that you could possibly discuss? All of these aspects can be written out and prepared because your understanding of the title will change as you read through the poem.

It should also be noted that not all poem titles are all that significant.

There are poems that do not have titles at all, in which case, the first line is often seen as the “title”, in a sense. In addition, some poetry collections, such as the famous sonnet collection of William Shakespeare , do not name any poem, and so the poems are actually numbered. This is simply where they are in the collection of poems, but they have come to be known under their first line.

The title is an important part of the poem as it sets up what the poem is going to be about, and as you read the poem, you will gain a retrospective understanding of why that particular title had been used. However, we will get to that part of the TPCASTT template when we examine the title again near the end of the analytical approach.

P for Paraphrase

Paraphrasing is a term that refers to taking something that already exists and rewriting or retelling it in a shorter form. Basically, it’s a summarization. Being able to summarize a text becomes very important for any student, as one needs to understand how to break something down into its base components, but it is used a little differently in this sense.

Remember that poems are often written with a specific typography, meaning the layout of the lines, and it’s broken into stanzas. However, when you are trying to understand a poem, you may struggle with those parts of it, and so the TPCASTT poetry analysis technique involves breaking it down into a more easily readable text.

This means that you will take the poem as it is and rewrite it in your own terms.

This is especially helpful for sections that might be phrased in strange ways. You simply rewrite it so that it makes sense. This can also often mean taking harder words and finding synonyms for them. Many poets, especially the poets that schools like to give to their students, are intentionally difficult, feature higher-level vocabulary, and can be hard to parse. Paraphrasing lets you remove those barriers and actually understand what is being said in the poem.

This will allow you to find the meaning of the poem in more simple terms and in a simpler format. For instance, rewriting a poem as a paragraph, removing the rhyme and other techniques, and looking at the barebones poem. From there, you will be able to better understand the connotations that can be found in the poem.

C for Connotations

Connotation is a term that you will come across quite often in English classes, and it can often be easiest to understand it by looking at its exact opposite. The antonym of the word “connotation” is “denotation”, and it is not as commonly used, but its meaning helps to understand what you need to look for with connotations. Denotation is the dictionary definition of something, the basic meaning, the simple meaning, and the actual meaning of a word. Connotation is the way a word feels, what it suggests, the kind of metaphors it produces, and so on. For instance, red is a color, and that would be its denotative meaning, but red connotes a number of other things like love, war, fire, passion, and so on.

This is what you are going to be looking at. When you paraphrased the poem, you broke it down into easy-to-understand denotative pieces. Now, it’s time to look at the connotative pieces. You need to understand what the poem is actually trying to say. Why is it using a metaphor? Why is it using certain devices? Why has it been written in the first place?

Imagine a poem that says something like: “My love for you is a rose.”

We all know what a rose is, it’s a flower. However, it also has many layers, and so we can see it as a metaphor for a deep and multilayered love. We may not even be able to see the center of that love because it is surrounded by so many other parts. A rose never thought to represent that for people, but that is what it has come to mean.

This part of the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach is also the most important because you also need to break down why literary techniques are used. Why did the poet make use of imagery? Why did they use alliteration? Why did they use rhyme? There are many parts of a poem that can be interrogated in this way, and each of them is just as important as the last. You need to try and cut through the basic understanding of the poem, the simplistic reading, and look at it from a deeper perspective.

You will likely spend the longest time on this part of the TPCASTT template. From here, you’re actually most of the way done though. Because once you have understood the poem itself, once you have grasped its connotative meaning, you can easily sweep through the rest of this analytical approach.

A for Attitude/Tone

Now that you understand the connotations of the poem, it is easy to see the attitude/tone. The reason there are two different words here, and the second one does not actually start with the letter “A”, is because these two terms are often seen as synonyms for one another. They are not actually synonyms, and there are certain distinctions that can be drawn between attitude and tone, but they can often overlap with each other. So, let’s treat them as if they are completely the same because we’ll otherwise get bogged down in very precise and annoying definitions.

Attitude/tone, in basic terms, both refer to the feeling of a poem. What was the poet trying to express to you with the way they were speaking? Did they feel angry, sad, melancholic, nostalgic, or some other emotion? Any of these general moods can inform the way that the poet was trying to express what they wanted you to understand when you read their poem.

Do you feel the same way when reading this poem? Can you feel the anger, sadness, and so on?

This part of the TPCASTT template is very simple now that the connotations have been broken down and understood. You will easily be able to see the feeling that the poem is trying to produce. So, write that down, but be ready to argue why you claim that to be the case. This means that you need to make sure you have evidence from the poem. As a quick explanation of this, consider the following two words: “murder” and “kill”.

If there is a poem that uses one or another of these two words, why did it use that particular word? The tone of murder is far more severe than the tone of kill. You can kill by mistake. You cannot murder by mistake. Murder implies that a crime is premeditated, it was planned, and it was a desirable outcome. Kill is far more neutral. The result is the same, a dead person, but the way they wound up that way is very different based on which word is used. Pay attention to things like this when examining and analyzing the attitude/tone of the poem you are analyzing.

S for Shifts

This part of the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach is one of the easiest. You simply need to find the point at which some kind of a shift has occurred in the poem. Shifts are very common in poetry. In fact, there is a special word for a shift in a sonnet, and it’s called a volta. This is the point at which the original topic of the sonnet switches to another sonnet.

Imagine a poem that first uses highly emotive and idealized terms to describe love for someone, but then shifts to say that the poet’s love for that person may not last forever.

This is a topic shift, and they are very common in poems. However, that is only the most obvious shift. Shifts can also take place in the form of sudden changes in the stanza structure, a line break that is unusual, punctuation changes, and so on. In this part of the analysis, you need to find these changes in the tone and try to understand why they have happened. Why has the poet made use of these shifts?

T for Title (Again)

You have analyzed the poem at this point. You’re practically done! So, it’s time to look at the title again. When you first read the title, provided there was a title, you did not know what the poem was about and so you were basically guessing what the poem would be about. You have now read and analyzed the poem. You have finished going through most of the letters in the TPCASTT template.

This means that you can now re-examine that title.

Has the meaning changed? Do you now understand the title in a different way? Does it change the meaning of the poem as a whole now that you know the title? Has it made it harder to understand the poem? Were the words in the title even used in the poem? All of these questions should be interrogated and applied when performing this second-to-last part of the analysis of a poem.

T for Theme

The analysis is practically at an end and all the parts have been broken down into their composite parts. It’s now time for the final part of the analysis. That entails asking: “So, what was the poem about anyway?” The themes of the poem can now be seen. You have stripped away all of the connotations, examined the title on numerous occasions, and noted any shifts and poetic permutations.

What is the poem about? What is it trying to say? Is it about love? Is it about death? Is it about something else?

When you write about the theme, you need to give evidence from the text, as you should always do. However, once you have done so, you are officially at the end of the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach. You have moved your way through the template, and you can finally finish up your analysis.

The Applicability of TPCASTT Poetry Analysis

We have finished with our breakdown of the TPCASTT template and what each of the letters represents, but let’s ask a final question before we move on to the final section of this examination of the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach. That question is as follows: “How applicable is the TPCASTT poetry analysis system?”. Is it good? Is it beneficial to you as a student?

The answer to this is multifaceted. On one hand, this is a great approach because you get to have a comprehensive breakdown of an analysis tool that uses an acronym. Acronyms are great for having to remember things because they already sound, sort of, like a word. So, if you had to analyze a poem in an exam, it’s easier to remember an acronym like this than to have to remember a more in-depth approach. This is a great thing about it.

Various parts of the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach also presume that a poem will be difficult to understand.

One of the sections literally sees you changing words to help you understand the poem. This is because schools tend to choose harder poems. They use more intellectual poems, or influential poems, rather than poems that are enjoyable to read. Thanks to this, the TPCASTT template is very helpful. If the poem is hard, you probably want a highly formalized approach to analyzing it so that you don’t get stuck. The use of hard poems in schools does reinforce the idea that poetry is not for everyone, and so there are problems with that, but that is also a far longer conversation and one that will not be discussed right now.

However, another big problem with the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach is that it does not tell you how to turn this raw analysis into an adequate essay. A great analysis is all good and well, but if you can’t present it in a readable fashion, then it is ultimately pointless. So, the TPCASTT template only helps you with the baseline of an acceptable analysis, especially at the university level, but the analysis needs to be broken down into better component parts than those that are presented in the actual analysis.

In addition to this, because of the highly formalistic nature of this approach, it suggests that poetry analysis can be quite objective when it is not. The way you interpret a poem will be different from the way someone else interprets a poem. Neither of your interpretations is necessarily correct or incorrect, but they are both yours. The TPCASTT poetry analysis approach seeks to smooth that kind of individualized approach away to have you only focus on the same things.

This is useful for a school environment, but not for an environment that wants you to think for yourself. So, when using the TPCASTT template, remember that it should be seen as a tool rather than the perfect method to analyze poetry. Others will analyze in different ways, and those ways are no more correct or incorrect than using the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach.

An Example of TPCASTT Poetry Analysis

Finally, let’s do a short example here. It should first be noted that this is a bit of an unfair one as the below poem was written as an example of a joke. This is not an existing poem but one that is purely for illustrative purposes. So, let’s have a look at how the TPCASTT template could be used here.

Giving deference to an analysis style

May help you go the extra mile.

Sadly, it isn’t exactly a perfect thing

But it could make you the class king.

However, it won’t make your friends smile.

Firstly, there is no title, and so we may look at the first line in its place. This title tells us that it is about analyzing something and it also uses the term “deference” with regard to this analysis style. That term can help us with the paraphrasing component of this approach as we may want to understand what “deference” is, and in more simple terms, it could be replaced with “respect”. So, let’s do a proper paraphrasing of this poem below:

“We give some kind of respect to a specific analysis style because it could help us go further (implying an educational “extra mile”). However, the poem states that this is not a perfect analytical tool, but that it could help you make it to the top of the class. Lastly, it ends by saying that your friends may not like you for it if you’re very good at it.”

This basic paraphrasing of the poem allows us to see it without the pretenses of a poetic structure, but we do still need to look at those pretenses when it comes to the connotations of the poem.

When words like “deference” are used, it implies a high level of respect, or an unwillingness to try other things. The use of metaphors like “extra mile” is commonly used in accomplishments based on how hard someone has worked. Other statements like “it won’t make your friends smile” imply that being a teacher’s pet, and knowing how to analyze using this method, won’t necessarily get you any favorable looks from fellow students. In addition, the poem uses a limerick rhyme scheme or AABBA, which is usually used in comedic poems, and this implies that this poem should not be taken seriously.

Those are some of the connotations, and now that we have them, what is the attitude of the poem? It is clearly a joke. It’s trying to be more humorous rather than pretentious. However, it does use the word “deference”, which is a higher-level word in terms of ordinary vocabulary, and so its use may be to mock more pretentious varieties of poetry. The humorous and mocking tone is important here.

And so, we come to the shifts in the poem, and there is a shift in the final line. The first four lines describe the actual approach, but the final line jokingly ends the poem by claiming that knowing this analysis approach won’t help you to win any popularity contests. That shift contributes to the attitude of the poem. There is no title, so there’s no real need to come back to it in this particular case.

Lastly, the poem is about the TPCASTT poetry analysis approach. It’s meant to be a joke, and in the context of this article, it is clearly a light-hearted way to end it off. It is trying to have a metatextual theme. This means that the poem is about the article in which it can be found, and this means that it is a piece of commentary.

With that final piece of the article, we have come to the conclusion of our attempt to answer the question: “What is TPCASTT analysis?”. We have examined every component of this acronymic analytical template in this article and ended off with a demonstration of how to use it. Hopefully, this article will be beneficial to you if you too need to make use of this analytical approach.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is tpcastt poetry analysis.

This is an analytical approach to poetry that can be used by students. The method is useful because each of the letters in the TPCASTT template corresponds to a different part of the analysis. This approach helps a student by reminding them to look at the title on two occasions, paraphrase the poem, find the connotations, analyze the attitude, look for any shifts, and explore the theme.

Is TPCASTT Poetry Analysis Beneficial to a Student?

This analytical approach is beneficial because it can be more easily remembered by students. However, it does have some drawbacks. For instance, it does not show a student how to turn their analysis into a viable essay, it is highly formalistic, and it does not allow for a more individualized analysis of a poem.

Is TPCASTT Poetry Analysis Easy to Learn?

TPCASTT poetry analysis is very simple to learn because it makes use of an acronym. This acronym also sounds like it could be a word. For this reason, it can be more easily remembered when a student may need to perform an analysis in a more formalized setting, such as in an exam.

Justin van Huyssteen is a freelance writer, novelist, and academic originally from Cape Town, South Africa. At present, he has a bachelor’s degree in English and literary theory and an honor’s degree in literary theory. He is currently working towards his master’s degree in literary theory with a focus on animal studies, critical theory, and semiotics within literature. As a novelist and freelancer, he often writes under the pen name L.C. Lupus.

Justin’s preferred literary movements include modern and postmodern literature with literary fiction and genre fiction like sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, and horror being of particular interest. His academia extends to his interest in prose and narratology. He enjoys analyzing a variety of mediums through a literary lens, such as graphic novels, film, and video games.

Justin is working for artincontext.org as an author and content writer since 2022. He is responsible for all blog posts about architecture, literature and poetry.

Learn more about Justin van Huyssteen and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Justin, van Huyssteen, “TPCASTT Poetry Analysis – The Best Way to Dissect a Poem.” Art in Context. November 24, 2023. URL: https://artincontext.org/tpcastt-poetry-analysis/

van Huyssteen, J. (2023, 24 November). TPCASTT Poetry Analysis – The Best Way to Dissect a Poem. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/tpcastt-poetry-analysis/

van Huyssteen, Justin. “TPCASTT Poetry Analysis – The Best Way to Dissect a Poem.” Art in Context , November 24, 2023. https://artincontext.org/tpcastt-poetry-analysis/ .

Similar Posts

Volta in Poetry – When a Poem Takes a Sudden Turn

Couplet in Poetry – One of the Most Popular Rhyming Schemes

Consonance in Poetry – A Literary Device to Create Rhythm

Rhyme in Poetry – Basic and Complex Schemes to Know

Iambic Pentameter – Discover This Unique Poetic Meter

What Is Verse in Poetry? – Discussing the Structure of Poems

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

How to Write the AP Lit Prose Essay + Example

Do you know how to improve your profile for college applications.

See how your profile ranks among thousands of other students using CollegeVine. Calculate your chances at your dream schools and learn what areas you need to improve right now — it only takes 3 minutes and it's 100% free.

Show me what areas I need to improve

What’s Covered

What is the ap lit prose essay, how will ap scores affect my college chances.

AP Literature and Composition (AP Lit), not to be confused with AP English Language and Composition (AP Lang), teaches students how to develop the ability to critically read and analyze literary texts. These texts include poetry, prose, and drama. Analysis is an essential component of this course and critical for the educational development of all students when it comes to college preparation. In this course, you can expect to see an added difficulty of texts and concepts, similar to the material one would see in a college literature course.

While not as popular as AP Lang, over 380,136 students took the class in 2019. However, the course is significantly more challenging, with only 49.7% of students receiving a score of three or higher on the exam. A staggeringly low 6.2% of students received a five on the exam. 

The AP Lit exam is similar to the AP Lang exam in format, but covers different subject areas. The first section is multiple-choice questions based on five short passages. There are 55 questions to be answered in 1 hour. The passages will include at least two prose fiction passages and two poetry passages and will account for 45% of your total score. All possible answer choices can be found within the text, so you don’t need to come into the exam with prior knowledge of the passages to understand the work. 

The second section contains three free-response essays to be finished in under two hours. This section accounts for 55% of the final score and includes three essay questions: the poetry analysis essay, the prose analysis essay, and the thematic analysis essay. Typically, a five-paragraph format will suffice for this type of writing. These essays are scored holistically from one to six points.

Today we will take a look at the AP Lit prose essay and discuss tips and tricks to master this section of the exam. We will also provide an example of a well-written essay for review.  

The AP Lit prose essay is the second of the three essays included in the free-response section of the AP Lit exam, lasting around 40 minutes in total. A prose passage of approximately 500 to 700 words and a prompt will be given to guide your analytical essay. Worth about 18% of your total grade, the essay will be graded out of six points depending on the quality of your thesis (0-1 points), evidence and commentary (0-4 points), and sophistication (0-1 points). 

While this exam seems extremely overwhelming, considering there are a total of three free-response essays to complete, with proper time management and practiced skills, this essay is manageable and straightforward. In order to enhance the time management aspect of the test to the best of your ability, it is essential to understand the following six key concepts.

1. Have a Clear Understanding of the Prompt and the Passage

Since the prose essay is testing your ability to analyze literature and construct an evidence-based argument, the most important thing you can do is make sure you understand the passage. That being said, you only have about 40 minutes for the whole essay so you can’t spend too much time reading the passage. Allot yourself 5-7 minutes to read the prompt and the passage and then another 3-5 minutes to plan your response.

As you read through the prompt and text, highlight, circle, and markup anything that stands out to you. Specifically, try to find lines in the passage that could bolster your argument since you will need to include in-text citations from the passage in your essay. Even if you don’t know exactly what your argument might be, it’s still helpful to have a variety of quotes to use depending on what direction you take your essay, so take note of whatever strikes you as important. Taking the time to annotate as you read will save you a lot of time later on because you won’t need to reread the passage to find examples when you are in the middle of writing. 

Once you have a good grasp on the passage and a solid array of quotes to choose from, you should develop a rough outline of your essay. The prompt will provide 4-5 bullets that remind you of what to include in your essay, so you can use these to structure your outline. Start with a thesis, come up with 2-3 concrete claims to support your thesis, back up each claim with 1-2 pieces of evidence from the text, and write a brief explanation of how the evidence supports the claim.

2. Start with a Brief Introduction that Includes a Clear Thesis Statement

Having a strong thesis can help you stay focused and avoid tangents while writing. By deciding the relevant information you want to hit upon in your essay up front, you can prevent wasting precious time later on. Clear theses are also important for the reader because they direct their focus to your essential arguments. 

In other words, it’s important to make the introduction brief and compact so your thesis statement shines through. The introduction should include details from the passage, like the author and title, but don’t waste too much time with extraneous details. Get to the heart of your essay as quick as possible. 

3. Use Clear Examples to Support Your Argument 

One of the requirements AP Lit readers are looking for is your use of evidence. In order to satisfy this aspect of the rubric, you should make sure each body paragraph has at least 1-2 pieces of evidence, directly from the text, that relate to the claim that paragraph is making. Since the prose essay tests your ability to recognize and analyze literary elements and techniques, it’s often better to include smaller quotes. For example, when writing about the author’s use of imagery or diction you might pick out specific words and quote each word separately rather than quoting a large block of text. Smaller quotes clarify exactly what stood out to you so your reader can better understand what are you saying.

Including smaller quotes also allows you to include more evidence in your essay. Be careful though—having more quotes is not necessarily better! You will showcase your strength as a writer not by the number of quotes you manage to jam into a paragraph, but by the relevance of the quotes to your argument and explanation you provide.  If the details don’t connect, they are merely just strings of details.

4. Discussion is Crucial to Connect Your Evidence to Your Argument 

As the previous tip explained, citing phrases and words from the passage won’t get you anywhere if you don’t provide an explanation as to how your examples support the claim you are making. After each new piece of evidence is introduced, you should have a sentence or two that explains the significance of this quote to the piece as a whole.

This part of the paragraph is the “So what?” You’ve already stated the point you are trying to get across in the topic sentence and shared the examples from the text, so now show the reader why or how this quote demonstrates an effective use of a literary technique by the author. Sometimes students can get bogged down by the discussion and lose sight of the point they are trying to make. If this happens to you while writing, take a step back and ask yourself “Why did I include this quote? What does it contribute to the piece as a whole?” Write down your answer and you will be good to go. 

5. Write a Brief Conclusion

While the critical part of the essay is to provide a substantive, organized, and clear argument throughout the body paragraphs, a conclusion provides a satisfying ending to the essay and the last opportunity to drive home your argument. If you run out of time for a conclusion because of extra time spent in the preceding paragraphs, do not worry, as that is not fatal to your score. 

Without repeating your thesis statement word for word, find a way to return to the thesis statement by summing up your main points. This recap reinforces the arguments stated in the previous paragraphs, while all of the preceding paragraphs successfully proved the thesis statement.

6. Don’t Forget About Your Grammar

Though you will undoubtedly be pressed for time, it’s still important your essay is well-written with correct punctuating and spelling. Many students are able to write a strong thesis and include good evidence and commentary, but the final point on the rubric is for sophistication. This criteria is more holistic than the former ones which means you should have elevated thoughts and writing—no grammatical errors. While a lack of grammatical mistakes alone won’t earn you the sophistication point, it will leave the reader with a more favorable impression of you. 

Discover your chances at hundreds of schools

Our free chancing engine takes into account your history, background, test scores, and extracurricular activities to show you your real chances of admission—and how to improve them.

[amp-cta id="9459"]

Here are Nine Must-have Tips and Tricks to Get a Good Score on the Prose Essay:

• Carefully read, review, and underline key instruction s in the prompt.
• Briefly outlin e what you want to cover in your essay.
• Be sure to have a clear thesis that includes the terms mentioned in the instructions, literary devices, tone, and meaning.
• Include the author’s name and title  in your introduction. Refer to characters by name.
• Quality over quantity when it comes to picking quotes! Better to have a smaller number of more detailed quotes than a large amount of vague ones.
• Fully explain how each piece of evidence supports your thesis .  
• Focus on the literary techniques in the passage and avoid summarizing the plot. 
• Use transitions to connect sentences and paragraphs.
• Keep your introduction and conclusion short, and don’t repeat your thesis verbatim in your conclusion.

Here is an example essay from 2020 that received a perfect 6:

[1] In this passage from a 1912 novel, the narrator wistfully details his childhood crush on a girl violinist. Through a motif of the allure of musical instruments, and abundant sensory details that summon a vivid image of the event of their meeting, the reader can infer that the narrator was utterly enraptured by his obsession in the moment, and upon later reflection cannot help but feel a combination of amusement and a resummoning of the moment’s passion. 

[2] The overwhelming abundance of hyper-specific sensory details reveals to the reader that meeting his crush must have been an intensely powerful experience to create such a vivid memory. The narrator can picture the “half-dim church”, can hear the “clear wail” of the girl’s violin, can see “her eyes almost closing”, can smell a “faint but distinct fragrance.” Clearly, this moment of discovery was very impactful on the boy, because even later he can remember the experience in minute detail. However, these details may also not be entirely faithful to the original experience; they all possess a somewhat mysterious quality that shows how the narrator may be employing hyperbole to accentuate the girl’s allure. The church is “half-dim”, the eyes “almost closing” – all the details are held within an ethereal state of halfway, which also serves to emphasize that this is all told through memory. The first paragraph also introduces the central conciet of music. The narrator was drawn to the “tones she called forth” from her violin and wanted desperately to play her “accompaniment.” This serves the double role of sensory imagery (with the added effect of music being a powerful aural image) and metaphor, as the accompaniment stands in for the narrator’s true desire to be coupled with his newfound crush. The musical juxtaposition between the “heaving tremor of the organ” and the “clear wail” of her violin serves to further accentuate how the narrator percieved the girl as above all other things, as high as an angel. Clearly, the memory of his meeting his crush is a powerful one that left an indelible impact on the narrator. 

[3] Upon reflecting on this memory and the period of obsession that followed, the narrator cannot help but feel amused at the lengths to which his younger self would go; this is communicated to the reader with some playful irony and bemused yet earnest tone. The narrator claims to have made his “first and last attempts at poetry” in devotion to his crush, and jokes that he did not know to be “ashamed” at the quality of his poetry. This playful tone pokes fun at his childhood self for being an inexperienced poet, yet also acknowledges the very real passion that the poetry stemmed from. The narrator goes on to mention his “successful” endeavor to conceal his crush from his friends and the girl; this holds an ironic tone because the narrator immediately admits that his attempts to hide it were ill-fated and all parties were very aware of his feelings. The narrator also recalls his younger self jumping to hyperbolic extremes when imagining what he would do if betrayed by his love, calling her a “heartless jade” to ironically play along with the memory. Despite all this irony, the narrator does also truly comprehend the depths of his past self’s infatuation and finds it moving. The narrator begins the second paragraph with a sentence that moves urgently, emphasizing the myriad ways the boy was obsessed. He also remarks, somewhat wistfully, that the experience of having this crush “moved [him] to a degree which now [he] can hardly think of as possible.” Clearly, upon reflection the narrator feels a combination of amusement at the silliness of his former self and wistful respect for the emotion that the crush stirred within him. 

[4] In this passage, the narrator has a multifaceted emotional response while remembering an experience that was very impactful on him. The meaning of the work is that when we look back on our memories (especially those of intense passion), added perspective can modify or augment how those experiences make us feel

More essay examples, score sheets, and commentaries can be found at College Board .

While AP Scores help to boost your weighted GPA, or give you the option to get college credit, AP Scores don’t have a strong effect on your admissions chances . However, colleges can still see your self-reported scores, so you might not want to automatically send scores to colleges if they are lower than a 3. That being said, admissions officers care far more about your grade in an AP class than your score on the exam.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

• International
• Topical and themed
• Early years
• Special needs
• Schools directory
• Resources Jobs Schools directory News Search

Poetry Essay's Shop

• Add a resource

Poetry Essay aims to provide you with a range of English and Media resources to support students' learning.

124 Uploads

283k+ Views

47k+ Downloads

More about this author Less about this author

Featured resources

English Classroom Display Posters

Poetry Analysis Support - Essay Writing Template / Sentence Starters / Annotation Prompts

101 English Activities / Literacy Tasks – Starter, Main and Plenary Activities

Structure Poster – Structural Devices / Structural Techniques (GCSE / A Level) English Display

Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) – Production Log Prompts (AQA)

PEEL Paragraphs Sentence Starters Poster - English Display

Lesson Plan Template / Completed Example

‘A Christmas Carol’ – Context

Punctuation Explained Poster - English Display

Planning Table For Comparing Two Poems (GCSE / A Level)

Extended Project Qualification Posters - EPQ Display

Connectives / Conjunctions Poster - English Display

AQA Power and Conflict Poems - Analysed / Annotated In Detail - GCSE Grades 1-9

Seamus Heaney – ‘Blackberry-Picking’ – Annotation / Planning Table / Questions / Booklet

Sentence Types Poster - English Display

Media Studies A Level – 60 Independent Study / Homework Tasks

Owen Sheers – ‘Skirrid Hill’ – All Poems Analysed

Independent Learning Poster - Display

How To Analyse A Poem (GCSE / A Level)

Differentiation - 10 Quick Tips