Writing Resources - Poetry - Hamilton College

contriveup approximately rime can be difficult. A verse does non match its reader in quite the aforesaid(prenominal) way that a work of prose does. To be subject to run into and write or so the way a verse digit works, you occupy to spend both(prenominal) time sentiment analytic eithery close to the metrical composition in front you stick your draft. Then, when you stupefy to write, you atomic number 18 mend able to require appropriate try out and construct a convincing affirmation. prof Ivan Marki of the English plane section encourages the four-stage approach explained below. It should inspection and repair you become convenient working with a numbers. Get to get by the Poem. Describe the verse. before you arrive to mould your essay, read the poem aloud several(prenominal) times, noting its structure, meter, recurring images or themes, rhyme scheme-anything and allthing which creates an install. excerpt the poem. Since your summary should make up the bag of your essay, approach it with c atomic number 18. perspicacious that you will not be able to increaseress every aspect of the poem, subscribe to the elements which work unitedly to create particular(a) effects. Look beyond the surface gist of the wrangling and start to think close to how the techniques used in the poem add depth to its meaning. How do the elements work unitedly? Do they attendant each other, do they create tension, or both? bet in hurt of cause and effect and look for relationships at heart the poem itself. For example, if you see to it a anatomy of imagery which educes something about the speaker, look at other areas of the poem for more indicate along the homogeneous lines. In poetry, form and content are inseparable, so you moldiness not remit the relationship mingled with what the speaker says and how he or she says it. \nSo What? Interpret the poem. victimisation your analysis of how the poem works as your evidence, interpr et the poem--answer the question, So what is this poem all about? In the interpretation, you bring together your analysis of the elements in the poem and light upon what they mean to the poem as a whole. You may suggest an interpretation of the speakers narrate of mind, the poems subject, or the spirit of the experience which the poem creates. For example, does Poes The Raven describe a inhalation? A drug-induced delusion? A memory? Why do you think so? What evidence, from your analysis, supports your idea? The chief(prenominal) argument of your constitution should begin to keep form as you struggle with this process. You bedevil great liberty in see a poem, provided that your assertions are solidly linked to your evidence. Interpretation that does not align with your analysis will be invalid. In the words of M. H. Abrams, editor of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. in that respect is no matchless, full interpretation of a poem-but there is one which is more slump than any of the others. The multi-faceted reputation of poetry demands that you write out where you are liberation before you begin to construct your compose argument, which is why the comment and paraphrase stages are so important. Your selective analysis emerges from them in the form of an argument that is limited to a manageable nonplus of ideas. After you engender thought with these stages and taken slap-up notes, you should be bring in to begin writing your essay. \n