What is Poetry?

One modern poet, when asked the question 'What is poetry?', replied that poetry, unlike prose, is a form of writing in which few lines ran to the edge of the page! The American poet Robert Frost contended that 'poetry is the kind of thing poets write'. While these replies, at first, may not seem serious, they inadvertently reveal two important aspects of poetry: the first quotation indicates the arrangement of the words on the page as an important element of poetry, while the second emphasizes that there is a special 'poetic' way of using language. A working definition may, therefore, be that poetry emerges form the interplay between the meaning of words and their arrangement on paper; or – as the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it - 'poetry is the best words in their best order'.

Although poems come in all shapes and sizes, they share certain characteristics. Imagery, metaphors and symbols make poetry dense with meaning. Sound features, such as rhyme, rhythm and repetition, give the language a special musical quality. The standard rules of grammar and syntax are often ignored, so that the language may be used in a striking or original way.

Poetry, like all literature, is a writer's attempt to communicate to others his emotional and intellectual response to his own experiences and to the world that surrounds him. The poet puts words together to make the reader feel what he has felt and experience what he has experienced.

Why Analyze Literature?

Literary analysis, in its broadest sense, is any attempt to understand a literary text. Every time we close a book and think about what we have read we are doing some form of literary analysis. An analytical approach to literature involves careful observation and drawing conclusions. It is not simply a question of tearing a poem or story asunder and labelling the parts; it entails discovering patterns of meaning and becoming aware of the writer's intentions. Literary analysis is a way of learning more about how literary texts are structured. The more we learn about the art of writing, the more receptive and responsive we become as readers. The analytical approach also provides the vocabulary we need to define and communicate our responses to literary texts. We must know the definitions of terms such as setting, character, plot and point of view in order to express and exchange opinions.

Analyzing Poetry

1. Discuss the main idea of the poem.

2. What is the mood of the poem?

3. Find words & phrases in the poem which build up the feeling of... (gloom, sadness, joy, love, etc.)

4. Is the poet saying anything about himself or is the poem an objective description of a...?

5. Speak about the poet’s attitude to the society; in so doing cite some facts of his biography which may have a bearing on the poet’s mood.

6. Speak on the poet’s influence on other poets.

7. Try to remember any translations of the poem. Comment on them.

8. What is your impression of the poem.

9. Comment on the arrangement of the poem.

10. Speak on the language of the poem.

11. Speak on the setting of the poem. Pick out the words that suggest a

romantic (medieval) setting.

12. Pick out archaic forms of the words used in the poem and speak on

the effect achieved.

13. Speak about the associations that the words “...” call forth.

14. Explain the use of the capital letter in the word “...”.

15. Speak on the effect achieved by the use of epithets, similes or

metaphors. Speak of the mood they create.

16. What is the moral of the poem?

17. Do you share the poet’s point of view?

18. Cite the lines which impressed you and comment on them.

19. Speak on the rhythm of the poem and its rhyming scheme.

20. Speak on the message of the poem.

21. Say what you know about the trend in literature this poet represents.