Analyzing Poetry: the Five-Step Approach

Most students are far more comfortable reading and discussing prose than poetry, though that's usually a product of their lack of familiarity with the latter. We'll be dealing exclusively with poetry this quarter, and some pretty challenging poetry to boot, so it's best to start developing your analytic abilities now.

This is a quick and simple five-step plan that should be fairly helpful as you work your way through the readings. While the poetry of the New York School has very different aims from traditional poetry, and not all of these characteristics will fit, it's a good start:

1. What is happening in the poem?

• Literally: What is the poem’s action?
• Figuratively: What metaphors drive the poem’s message?

2. Comment on the poem’s music: What do you hear in this poem?

• the poet’s voice, the language used
• use of rhyme and near rhyme
• the poem’s rhythms, its cadence, its momentum
• use of alliteration and assonance
• performative enjambments (line breaks)

(All of these elements add emphasis to certain words, images and ideas. Why?)


3. Are there any memorable images? What do you see in this poem?


4. What general themes does the poet touch upon?


5. Ultimately, what is the poet/poem trying to say?


If you're interested in a far more comprehensive introduction to poetry, definitely check out Edward Hirsch's multi-part essay "How to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry)," available through the Poetry Foundation website.

Also, here's a link to a poetics glossary to help you sort out any unfamiliar terms you might come across, and a primer on poetic forms and techniques, which will be particularly useful, as poets like Ashbery, Koch, Berrigan and Mayer will get a lot of use out of forms like the sonnet, the sestina and the pantoum.

Here are a few poems we can read and listen to in class, and take a shot at analyzing:

Ted Berrigan: Whitman in Black

For my sins I live in the city of New York
Whitman’s city lived in in Melville’s senses, urban inferno
Where love can stay for only a minute
Then has to go, to get some work done
Here the detective and the small-time criminal are one
& tho the cases get solved the machine continues to run
Big Town will wear you down
But it’s only here you can turn around 360 degrees
And everything is clear from here at the center
To every point along the circle of horizon
Here you can see for miles & miles & miles
Be born again daily, die nightly for a change of style
Here clearly here; see with affection; bleakly cultivate compassion
Whitman’s walk unchanged after its fashion.

(Whitman in Black: MP3)



Frank O'Hara: Poem

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

(Poem: MP3)