how to write a good poetry essay

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.

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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.

Poem by Langston Hughes

I loved my friend. He went away from me. There’s nothing more to say. The poem ends, Soft as it began— I loved my friend.

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!

Learn more about keeping a daily journal here:

How to Start Journaling: Practical Advice on How to Journal Daily

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

29 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

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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

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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.

I can’t thank you enough for this, it touched my heart, this was such an encouraging article and I thank you deeply from my heart, I needed to read this.

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How to Write a Poetry Essay: Step-By-Step-Guide

Table of contents

• 1 What Is A Poetry Analysis?
• 2 How to Choose a Poem for Analysis?
• 3.0.1 Introduction
• 3.0.2 Main Body
• 3.0.3 Conclusion
• 4.1 Title of the Poem
• 4.2 Poetry Background
• 4.3 Structure of the Poem
• 4.4 Tone and Intonation of the Poetry
• 4.5 Language Forms and Symbols of the Poetry
• 4.6 Poetic devices
• 4.7 Music of the Poem
• 4.8 Purpose of Poem
• 5 Poetry Analysis Template
• 6 Example of Poem Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe once said:

“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” 

The reader’s soul enjoys the beauty of the words masterfully expressed by the poet in a few lines. How much meaning is invested in these words, and even more lies behind them? For this reason, poetry is a constant object of scientific interest and the center of literary analysis.

As a university student, especially in literary specialties, you will often come across the need to write a poetry analysis essay. It may seem very difficult when you encounter such an essay for the first time. This is not surprising because even experienced students have difficulty performing such complex studies. This article will point you in the right direction and can be used as a poetry analysis worksheet.

What Is A Poetry Analysis?

Any poetry analysis consists in an in-depth study of the subject of study and the background details in which it is located. Poetry analysis is the process of decomposing a lyrical work into its smallest components for a detailed study of the independent elements. After that, all the data obtained are reassembled to formulate conclusions and write literary analysis . The study of a specific lyric poem also includes the study of the hidden meaning of the poem, the poet’s attitude and main idea, and the expression of individual impressions. After all, the lyrics aim to reach the heart of the reader.

The goal of the poetry analysis is to understand a literary work better. This type of scientific research makes it possible to study entire categories of art on the example of specific works, classify them as certain movements, and find similarities and differences with other poems representing the era.

A poetry analysis essay is a very common type of an essay for university programs, especially in literary and philological areas. Students are often required to have extensive knowledge as well as the ability of in-depth analysis. Such work requires immersion in the context and a high level of concentration.

How to Choose a Poem for Analysis?

You are a really lucky person if you have the opportunity to choose a poem to write a poetry analysis essay independently. After all, any scientific work is moving faster and easier if you are an expert and interested in the field of study. First of all, choose a poet who appeals to you. The piece is not just a set of sentences united by a common meaning. Therefore, it is primarily a reflection of the thoughts and beliefs of the author.

Also, choose a topic that is interesting and close to you. It doesn’t matter if it is an intimate sonnet, a patriotic poem, or a skillful description of nature. The main thing is that it arouses your interest. However, pay attention to the size of the work to make your work easier. The volume should be sufficient to conduct extensive analysis but not too large to meet the requirement for a poem analysis essay.

Well, in the end, your experience and knowledge of the poetry topic are important. Stop choosing the object of study that is within the scope of your competence. In this way, you will share your expert opinion with the public, as well as save yourself from the need for additional data searches required for better understanding.

Poem Analysis Essay Outline

A well-defined structure is a solid framework for your writing. Sometimes our thoughts come quite chaotically, or vice versa, you spend many hours having no idea where to start writing. In both cases, a poem analysis outline will come to your aid. Many students feel that writing an essay plan is a waste of time. However, you should reconsider your views on such a work strategy. And although it will take you time to make a poetry analysis essay outline, it will save you effort later on. While a perfect way out is to ask professionals to write your essays online , let’s still take a look at the key features of creating a paper yourself. Working is much easier and more pleasant when you understand what to start from and what to rely on. Let’s look at the key elements of a poem analysis essay structure.

The essence of a poetry essay outline is to structure and organize your thoughts. You must divide your essay into three main sections: introduction, body, and conclusions. Then list brainstormed ideas that you are going to present in each of these parts.

Introduction

Your essay should begin with an introductory paragraph . The main purpose of this section is to attract the attention of the reader. This will ensure interest in the research. You can also use these paragraphs to provide interesting data from the author of the poem and contextual information that directly relates to your poem but is not a part of the analysis yet.

Another integral part of the poem analysis essay introduction is the strong thesis statement . This technique is used when writing most essays in order to summarize the essence of the paper. The thesis statement opens up your narrative, giving the reader a clear picture of what your work will be about. This element should be short, concise, and self-explanatory.

The central section of a literary analysis essay is going to contain all the studies you’ve carried out. A good idea would be to divide the body into three or four paragraphs, each presenting a new idea. When writing an outline for your essay, determine that in the body part, you will describe:

• The central idea.
• Analysis of poetic techniques used by the poet.
• Your observations considering symbolism.
• Various aspects of the poem.

Make sure to include all of the above, but always mind the coherence of your poem literary analysis.

In the final paragraph , you have to list the conclusions to which your poetry analysis came. This is a paragraph that highlights the key points of the study that are worth paying attention to. Ensure that the information in the conclusion matches your goals set in the introduction. The last few lines of a poem usually contain the perfect information for you to wrap up your paper, giving your readers a ground for further thought.

Tips on How to Analyze a Poem

Now, having general theoretical information about what a poetry analysis essay is, what its components are, and how exactly you can make an outline, we are ready to move on to practical data. Let’s take a closer look at the key principles that you should rely on in the poetry analysis. As you might guess, just reading a poem will not be enough to make a comprehensive analysis. You have to pay attention to the smallest details to catch what other researchers have not noticed before you.

Title of the Poem

And although the poems do not always have a title, if the work you have chosen has a name, then this is a good basis for starting the poetry analysis. The title of the poetic work gives the understanding of what the poet considers to be the key ideas of his verse. In some cases, this element directly reflects the theme and idea of the poem. However, there are also common cases when the poet plays with the name, putting the opposite information into it. Look at the correlation between the title and the content of the poem. This may give you new clues to hidden meanings.

Poetry Background

To fully immerse yourself in the context of the verse, you need to study the prerequisites for its writing. Analyze poetry and pay attention to the period of the author’s life in which the work was written. Study what emotions prevailed in a given time. The background information will help you study the verse itself and what is behind it, which is crucial for a critical analysis essay . What was the poet’s motivation, and what sensations prompted him to express himself specifically in this form? Such in-depth research will give you a broad understanding of the author’s intent and make your poem analysis essay writing more solid.

This fragment of your poem analysis essay study also includes interpretations of all the difficult or little-known words. Perhaps the analyzed poem was written using obsolete words or has poetic terms. For a competent poem analysis, you need to have an enhanced comprehension of the concepts.

Structure of the Poem

Each lyrical work consists of key elements. The theory identifies four main components of a poem’s structure: stanza, rhyme, meter, and line break. Let’s clarify each of the terms separately so that you know exactly what you are supposed to analyze.

The stanza is also called a verse. This element is a group of lines joined together and separated from other lines by a gap. This component of the poem structure exists for the ordering of the poem and the logical separation of thoughts.

The next crucial element is rhyme. This is a kind of pattern of similar sounds that make up words. There are different types of a rhyme schemes that a particular poem can follow. The difference between the species lies in the spaces between rhyming words. Thus, the most common rhyme scheme in English literature is iambic pentameter.

The meter stands for a composite of stressed and unstressed syllables, following a single scheme throughout the poem. According to the common silabotonic theory, the poem’s rhythm determines the measure of the verse and its poetic form. In other words, this is the rhythm with which lyrical works are written.

Finally, the line break is a technique for distinguishing between different ideas and sentences within the boundaries of one work. Also, the separation serves the reader as a key to understanding the meaning, thanks to the structuring of thoughts. If the ideas went continuously, this would create an extraordinary load on perception, and the reader would struggle to understand the intended message.

Writing an essay about poetry requires careful attention and analysis. Poems, although short, can be intricate and require a thorough understanding to interpret them effectively. Some students may find it challenging to analyze poetry and may consider getting professional help or pay to do an assignment on poetry. Regardless of the approach, it is essential to create a well-structured essay that examines the poem’s meaning and provides relevant examples.

Tone and Intonation of the Poetry

The tone and intonation of the poem could be analyzed based on two variables, the speaker and the recipient. Considering these two sides of the narrative, you can reach a better overview of the analyzed poem.

The first direction is to dig deeper into the author’s ideas by analyzing thematic elements. Pay attention to any information about the poet that can be gleaned from the poem. What mood was the author in when he wrote it, what exactly he felt, and what he wanted to share? What could he be hiding behind his words? Why did the poet choose the exact literary form? Is it possible to trace a life position or ideology through analysis? All of this information will help you get a clue on how to understand a poem.

The analysis of the figure of the recipient is also going to uncover some crucial keys to coherent study. Analyze a poem and determine whether the poem was written for someone specific or not. Find out whether the poet put motivational value into his work or even called readers to action. Is the writer talking to one person or a whole group? Was the poem based on political or social interests?

Language Forms and Symbols of the Poetry

Having sufficiently analyzed the evident elements of the poem, it is time to pay attention to the images and symbols. This is also called the connotative meaning of the work. It can sometimes get challenging to interpret poems, so we will see which other poetic techniques you should consider in the poetry analysis essay.

To convey intricate ideas and display thoughts more vividly, poets often use figurative language. It mostly explains some terms without directly naming them. Lyrical expression works are rich in literary devices such as metaphor, epithet, hyperbole, personification, and others. It may sometimes get really tough to research those poem elements yourself, so keep in mind buying lit essay online. Descriptive language is also one of the techniques used in poems that requires different literary devices in order to make the story as detailed as possible.

To fully understand poetry, it is not enough just to describe its structure. It is necessary to analyze a poem, find the hidden meanings, multiple artistic means, references the poet makes, and the language of writing.

Poetic devices

Poetic devices, such as rhythm, rhyme, and sounds, are used to immerse the audience. The poets often use figurative techniques in various poems, discovering multiple possibilities for the readers to interpret the poem. To discover the composition dedicated to the precise verse, you need to read the poem carefully. Consider studying poetry analysis essay example papers to better understand the concepts. It is a certain kind of reader’s quest aimed at finding the true meaning of the metaphor the poet has hidden in the poem. Each literary device is always there for a reason. Try to figure out its purpose.

Music of the Poem

Many poems formed the basis of the songs. This does not happen by chance because each poem has its own music. Lyrical works have such elements as rhythm and rhyme. They set the pace for reading. Also, sound elements are often hidden in poems. The line break gives a hint about when to take a long pause. Try to pay attention to the arrangement of words. Perhaps this will reveal you a new vision of the analyzed poem.

Purpose of Poem

While you analyze a poem, you are supposed to search for the purpose. Each work has its purpose for writing. Perhaps this is just a process in which the author shares his emotions, or maybe it’s a skillful description of landscapes written under great impressions. Social lyrics illuminate the situation in society and pressing problems. Pay attention to whether the verse contains a call to action or an instructive context. Your task is to study the poem and analyze the motives for its writing. Understanding the general context, and especially the purpose of the poet will make your analysis unique.

Poetry Analysis Template

To make it easier for you to research, we have compiled a template for writing a poetry analysis essay. The best specialists of the our writing service have assembled the main guides that will serve as a layout for your essay. Choose a poem that suits you and analyze it according to this plan.

Introduction:

•     The title of the poem or sonnet
•     The name of the poet
•     The date the poem was first published
•     The background information and interesting facts about the poet and the poem
•     Identify the structure of the poem, and the main components
•     Find out the data about the speaker and recipient
•     State the purpose of the poem
•     Distinguish the topic and the idea of the verse

Figurative language:

•     Study the literary devices
•     Search for the hidden meanings

Following these tips, you will write a competitive poem analysis essay. Use these techniques, and you will be able to meet the basic requirements for quality work. However, don’t forget to add personality to your essay. Analyze both the choices of the author of the poem and your own vision. First of all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Do not limit yourself to dry analysis, add your own vision of the poem. In this way, you will get a balanced essay that will appeal to teachers.

Example of Poem Analysis

Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” is a powerful anthem of strength and resilience that has become an iconic piece of literature. The poem was written in the 1970s during the civil rights movement and was published in Angelou’s collection of poetry, “And Still I Rise,” in 1978. The structure of the poem is unique in that it is not divided into stanzas but is composed of a series of short phrases that are separated by semicolons. This creates a sense of continuity and momentum as the poem moves forward. The lack of stanzas also reflects the speaker’s determination to keep going, regardless of the obstacles she faces. The tone of the poem is confident and defiant, with a strong sense of pride in the speaker’s identity and heritage. The intonation is rhythmic and musical, with a repeated refrain that emphasizes the theme of rising above adversity. The language forms used in the poem are simple and direct. One of the most powerful symbols in the poem is the image of the rising sun… FULL POEM ANALYSIS

Our database is filled with a wide range of poetry essay examples that can help you understand how to analyze and write about poetry. Whether you are a student trying to improve your essay writing skills or a poetry enthusiast looking to explore different perspectives on your favorite poems, our collection of essays can provide valuable insights and inspiration. So take a look around and discover new ways to appreciate and interpret the power of poetry!

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5 Tips for Poetry Writing: How to Get Started Writing Poems

Hannah Yang

Poetry is a daunting art form to break into.

There are technically no rules for how to write a poem , but despite that—or perhaps because of it—learning how to write a successful poem might feel more difficult than learning how to write a successful essay or story.

There are many reasons to try your hand at poetry, even if you’re primarily a prose writer. Here are just a few:

• Practice writing stronger descriptions and imagery
• Unlock a new side of your creative writing practice
• Learn how to wield language in a more nuanced way

Learning how to write poetry may seem intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be.

In this article, we’ll cover five of our favorite tips to get started writing poetry.

How Do You Start Writing Poetry?

How do you write a poem from a new perspective, how do you write a meaningful poem, how do you write a poem about a theme, what are some different types of poetry, tip 1: focus on concrete imagery.

One of the best ways to start writing poetry is to use concrete images that appeal to the five senses.

The idea of starting with the specific might feel counterintuitive, because many people think of poetry as a way to describe abstract ideas, such as death, joy, or sorrow.

It certainly can be. But each of these concepts has been written about extensively before. Try sitting down and writing an original poem about joy—it’s hard to find something new to say about it.

If you write about a specific experience you’ve had that made you feel joy, that will almost certainly be unique, because nobody has lived the same experiences you have.

That’s what makes concrete imagery so powerful in poetry.

A concrete image is a detail that has a basis in something real or tangible. It could be the texture of your daughter’s hair as you braid it in the morning, or the smell of a food that reminds you of home.

The more specific the image is, the more vivid and effective the poem will become.

Concrete imagery: Example

Harlem by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Notice how Langston Hughes doesn’t directly write about dreams, except for the very first line. After the first line, he uses concrete images that are very specific and appeal to the five senses: “dry up like a raisin in the sun,” “stink like rotten meat,” “sags like a heavy load.”

He conveys a deeper message about an abstract concept—dreams—using these specific, tangible images.

Concrete Imagery: Exercise

Examine your surroundings. Describe what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell.

Through these concrete images, try to evoke a specific feeling (e.g., nostalgia, boredom, happiness) without ever naming that feeling in the poem.

Once you've finished writing, you can use ProWritingAid’s Sensory Check to see which of the five senses you've used the most in your imagery. Most writers favor one or two senses, like in the example below, which can resonate with some readers but alienate others.

Sign up for a free ProWritingAid account to try the Sensory Check.

Bonus Tip: Start with a free verse poem, which is a poem with no set format or rhyme scheme. You can punctuate it the same way you would punctuate normal prose. Free verse is a great option for beginners, because it lets you write freely without limitations.

Tip 2: Play with Perspective

A persona poem is a poem told in the first-person POV (point of view) from the perspective of anything or anyone. This could include a famous person, a figure from mythology, or even an inanimate object.

The word persona comes from the Latin word for mask . When you write a persona poem, it’s like you’re putting on a mask to see the world through a new lens.

If you’re a new poet and you haven’t found your own voice yet, a persona poem is a great way to experiment with a unique style.

Some persona poems are narrative poems, which tell a story from a specific point of view. Others are lyric poems, which focus more on the style and sound of the poem instead of telling a story.

You can write from the perspective of a pop star, a politician, or a figure from fable or myth. You can try to imagine what it feels like to be a pair of jeans or a lawn mower or a fountain pen. There are no limits except your own creativity.

Play with Perspective: Example

Anne Hathaway by Carol Ann Duffy

Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed … (from Shakespeare’s will)

The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, assonance; his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights I dreamed he’d written me, the bed a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste. In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose. My living laughing love— I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head as he held me upon that next best bed.

In this poem, Carol Ann Duffy writes from the perspective of Anne Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare.

She imagines what the wife of this famous literary figure might think and feel, with lines like “Some nights I dreamed he’d written me.”

The poem isn’t written in Shakespearean English, but it uses diction and vocabulary that’s more old-fashioned than the English we speak today, to evoke the feeling of Shakespeare’s time period.

Play with Perspective: Exercise

Write a persona poem from the perspective of a fictional character out of a book or movie. You can tell an important story from their life, or simply try to capture the feeling of being in their head for a moment.

If this character lives in a different time period or speaks in a specific dialect, try to capture that in the poem’s voice.

Tip 3: Write from Life

The best poems are the ones that feel authentic and come from a place of truth.

Brainstorm your own personal experiences. Are there any stories from your life that evoke strong feelings for you? How can you tell that story through a poem?

Try to avoid clichés here. If you want to write about a universal experience or feeling, try to find an entry point into that feeling that’s unique to your life.

Maybe your first hobby was associated with a specific pair of shoes. Maybe your first encounter with shame came from breaking a specific promise to your grandfather. Any of these details could be the launching point for a poem.

Write from Life: Example

Discord in Childhood By D.H. Lawrence

Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips, And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship’s Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.

Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned The other voice in a silence of blood, ’neath the noise of the ash.

Here, D.H. Lawrence writes about the suffering he endured as a child listening to his parents arguing. He channels his own memories and experiences to create a profoundly relatable piece.

Write from Life: Exercise

Go to your phone’s camera roll, or a physical photo album, and find a photo from your life that speaks to you. Write a poem inspired by that photo.

What does that part of your life mean to you? What were your thoughts and feelings at that point in your life?

Tip 4: Save the Theme for the End

In a poem, the last line is often the most important. These are the words that echo in your reader’s head after they’re done reading.

Many poems will tell a story or depict a series of images, allowing you to draw your own conclusions about what it’s trying to say, and then conclude with the takeaway at the very end. Think of it like a fable you might tell a child—often, the moral of the story comes at the end.

In sonnets it’s a common trend for the final couplet to summarize the theme of the whole poem.

Save the Theme: Example

Resumé by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

Here, Dorothy Parker doesn’t make the poem’s meaning clear until the very last line: “You might as well live.” The poem feels fun, almost like a song, and its true meaning doesn’t become obvious until after you’ve finished reading the poem.

Save the Theme: Exercise

Pick your favorite proverb or adage, such as “Actions speak louder than words.” Write a poem that uses that proverb or adage as the closing line.

Until the closing line, don’t comment on the deeper meaning in the rest of the poem—instead, tell a story that builds up to that theme.

Tip 5: Try a Poetic Form

Up until now, we’ve been writing in blank verse because it’s the most freeing. Sometimes, though, adding limitations can spark creativity too.

You can use a traditional poetic form to create the structure and shape of your poem.

If you have a limited number of lines to use, you’ll concentrate more on being concise and focused. Great poetry is minimalistic—no word is unnecessary. Using a form is a way to practice paring back to the words you absolutely need, and to start thinking about sound and rhyme.

The rules of a poetic form are never set in stone. It’s okay to experiment, and to pick and choose which rules you want to follow. If you want to use a form’s rhyme scheme but ignore its syllable count, for example, that’s perfectly fine.

Let’s look at some examples of poetic forms you can try, and the benefits of each one.

The haiku is a form of Japanese poetry made of three short, unrhymed lines. Traditionally, the first line contains 5 syllables, the second line contains 7 syllables, and the last contains 5 syllables.

Because each haiku must be incredibly concise, this form is a great way to practice economy of language and to learn how to convey a lot with a little. Even more so than with most other poetic forms, you have to think about each word and whether or not it pulls its weight in the poem as a whole.

The Old Pond by Matsuo Bashō

An old silent pond A frog jumps into the pond— Splash! Silence again.

The limerick is a 5-line poem with a sing-songy rhyme scheme and syllable count.

Limericks tend to be humorous and witty, so if you’re usually a comedic writer, they can be a great form for learning how to write poetry. You can treat the poem as a joke that builds up to a punchline.

Untitled Limerick by Edward Lear

There was an Old Man with a beard Who said, "It is just as I feared! Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!"

The sonnet is a 14-line poetic form, invented in Italy in the 13th century.

There are multiple types of sonnet. One of the most well-known forms is the Shakespearean sonnet, which is divided into three quatrains (4-line stanzas) and one couplet (2-line stanza).

Almost every professional poet has tried a sonnet at some point, from classical poets such as William Shakespeare , John Milton , and John Donne , as well as contemporary poets such as Kim Addonizio , R.S. Gwynn , and Cathy Park Hong .

Sonnets are great for practicing more advanced poetry. Their form forces you to think about rhyme and meter.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring barque, Whose worth’s unknown although his height be taken. Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The villanelle is a 19-line poem with two lines that recur over and over throughout the poem.

The word “villanelle” comes from the Italian villanella , meaning rustic song or dance, because the two lines that are repeated resemble the chorus of a folk song. Using this form helps you to think about the sound and musicality of your writing.

Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan’s men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

Try a Poetic Form: Exercise

Pick your favorite poetic form (sonnet, limerick, haiku, or villanelle) and try writing a poem in that structure.

Remember that you don’t have to follow all the rules—pick the ones that spark your imagination, and ignore the ones that don’t.

These are our five favorite tips to get started writing poems. Feel free to try each of them, or to mix and match them to create something entirely new.

Have you tried any of these poetry methods before? Which ones are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

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Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, The Dark, and elsewhere, and two of her stories have been finalists for the Locus Award. Her favorite hobbies include watercolor painting, playing guitar, and rock climbing. You can follow her work on hannahyang.com, or subscribe to her newsletter for publication updates.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the best 5 tips for writing poetry.

General Education

A poem is defined as “a composition in verse.” You’ve probably read poetry in school, like famous sonnets or even Romantic odes . 

Reading poetry can be tough, which means writing poetry can me even more intimidating! But guess what? It doesn’t have to be. That’s why we’ve put together this expert guide on how to write good poetry. In this article, we’re going to cover: 

• The definition of a poem 
• What makes writing poetry different than writing prose 
• The 5 tips for writing poetry that you need to know
• The best resources for writing poems of your own

So whether you’re an aspiring poet or just writing a poem as part of an assignment, we’ve got you covered with these poetry tips.

What Is a Poem?

You probably know a poem when you see one, but you might not have thought about what makes a poem a poem. 

There is no single definition of what makes a piece of writing qualify as a poem, but there are a few qualities that most poems share. 

For instance, most poems rely heavily on symbolic language and imagery to help the reader understand the poet’s meaning. Poets use comparisons like metaphors and similes to help readers make connections between the poem’s topic and its meaning, and they often paint vivid pictures with words. 

Furthermore, many poems have both rhythm and rhyme . That’s not terribly surprising since songs and poems are closely related! 

When poets write a poem, they often think about how words combine to create rhymes and beats that help the poem move at a certain pace. If you’ve ever studied iambic pentameter , then you’ve studied a poem’s rhythm. ( Sonnets are a great place to learn more about how a poem’s rhyme scheme, too.) 

Keep in mind that not all poems use these tools, and they certainly don’t use them all in the same way. But if you’re looking at a piece of writing that uses a combination of symbolism/imagery, rhythm, and/or rhyme, you might have a poem on your hands.  

What Makes Writing Poetry Different From Writing Prose?

You’ve probably written a lot more prose than poetry in your life. Prose is defined as writing that has no metrical or rhythmic structure. That’s just a fancy way of saying that prose is writing that is structured in similarly to how we speak. 

You’re really familiar with prose writing, even if you’re not aware of it. Your textbooks, your science reports, your history essays, the Harry Potter books, and your diary are all examples of prose writing. While there are lots of styles of prose writing, the thing they all have in common is that they use grammar rules to make the writing read similarly to spoken language.

This means you’ve probably written a lot more prose than poetry over your lifetime. That doesn’t mean you can’t write great poetry! You’ll just have to get used to a different style of writing.  

The process of writing good poetry can be pretty different from the process you’d use to write prose like an essay or term paper. Think of it this way: you’re not really trying to explain all of the ins and outs of a topic in a poem. Instead, when you’re writing a poem, you’re trying to get your readers to experience certain emotions . Poets use images and feelings--rather than logical arguments--to help convey their meaning.

Writing good poetry can be tough, but understanding poetic devices can make the process a lot easier!

The 3 Poetic Devices You Need to Write Good Poetry

One of the best ways to get a handle on writing poetry is to understand some of the major devices, or tools, that you can use to put your poem together. While there are literally dozens of poetic devices that poets use to write poetry, here are the three you need to know to get started.

Poetic Device 1: Metaphors 

In poetry, metaphors are one of the primary ways that poets use to create imagery, evoke tone, and even convey the poem’s themes and meanings. 

But what is a metaphor, exactly? Merriam Webster defines a metaphor as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.” In other words, a metaphor compares two seemingly unlike objects in order to create meaning. 

Here are three examples of metaphors to give you a better idea about how they work: 

• The assignment was a breeze. This metaphor compares a class assignment to a breeze, which is a gentle wind. While an assignment isn’t literally a gust of air, this comparison shows that the assignment was easy.  
• Linda’s temper was a wildfire. This example compares Linda to a wildfire in order to show how dangerous her temper can be. 
• Her eyes were a window to her soul. Of course, eyes can’t be a literal window. But they can give you insight into how a person is feeling and what they’re thinking. This metaphor uses the comparison between “eyes” and “a window” to show readers how observing a person can help us better understand who they are.

So why are metaphors an important aspect of how to write good poetry? 

Metaphors work by helping us create associations between two things in a figurative, or imaginative, way. Let’s take the example above that covers Linda’s temper. The poet could write, “Linda had a strong temper.” But that doesn’t quite explain how strong Linda’s temper is. Does she get mad, but then get over it quickly? Or is she the type that throws plates when she’s upset? 

By comparing Linda’s temper to a “wildfire,” the poet is able to give us a more specific--and more vivid!--picture of Linda when she’s upset. A wildfire is a fire that rages out of control, so we can definitely imagine what Linda is like once she gets mad. 

By using a metaphor, the poet makes it pretty clear that we wouldn’t like Linda when she’s angry. 

Poetic Device 2: Voice

Do you have a favorite comedian who just always makes you laugh because she comes up with a surprising way pointing things out? Or do you have a friend who says things in a really unique way that sticks with you? 

If you’ve experienced one of these things--or something similar!--then you’ve come in contact with someone who has a unique voice. 

The idea of voice is an important concept in poetry, too. Voice can be described as all the unique word choices and associations that make a piece of writing identifiable as being from a specific author or having a specific perspective . Poets spend a lot of time creating their voice so that their work stands out from the crowd. They can also use their voice to help shape the topics they write about. 

For instance, if a poet has a sarcastic voice, you know right away that they’re going to be tackling topics from a tongue-in-cheek perspective. And their poetry is probably going to be pretty substantially different than someone who has a more romantic voice. But even a sarcastic author may want to write a happy poem every once in a while. And that’s okay: they can just change their voice a little to fit the poem and its subject matter. 

Creating a voice for either yourself or a specific poem has a lot to do with the words you choose and the feelings you’re trying to convey . For example, if you want to write with a sad, melancholy voice, you’re probably going to say things like “the clouds wept on the sea” rather than “the sun shone on the daisies”! 

Poetic Device 3: Form

When it comes to advice for writing poetry, one of the best tips is to think about your poem’s form. The form of a poem is essentially how a poem looks on the page. 

For instance, many poems include line breaks as part of their form , meaning the poem’s lines end before they hit the right margin of the page or the end of a sentence. So instead of reading like a paragraph (like this one), the poem looks something like this: 

O’er the ocean billows, heaping      Mountains on the sloping sands,  There are ever wildly sweeping      Shapeless and invisible hands. 

— Excerpted from ”Music” by Alice Cary 

Ultimately, form can involve several things: how many lines per stanza and how many stanzas a poem has, which lines in a poem (if any) rhyme, whether or not lines are indented from the margin, and whether or not lines repeat. 

Things like line breaks and stanzas are part of formal poetic structures. Some poets decide not to use any of these things at all and write in free verse instead. Free verse just means the poem does not follow the rules of any traditional form . The poet is free to invent whatever overall structure she thinks is appropriate for the poem being written. Sometimes these can be individual words on different lines, or poems written in paragraph format. 

So how does form affect a poem? With traditional forms, readers have a clear idea of how the poem is structured . It’s a familiar format, which means your biggest task is to fill out the poem’s skeleton with the words and metaphors you come up with. Traditional forms also give readers a general idea of what the poem is going to be about. A sonnet, for example, is usually about love or relationships. 

Free verse, on the other hand, can feel a lot more open and unrestrained than a traditional poem that has line breaks and a rhyme scheme. Because free verse can seem like an unusual way to write a poem, it’s a good form for unique, untraditional, or unusual topics. 

If you’re just starting out in poetry, you may find it easier to write in a more traditional form . But in the end, the form of a poem is totally up to you! 

The 5 Best Tips for Writing Poetry

Now that we’ve discussed what a poem is and how it’s different from prose, how do you go about making one that will work? 

The thing about poetry is that there isn’t a single way to make a great poem. However, if you follow the expert tips for writing poetry below, you’ll be well on your way to writing poetry you’re proud of. 

Poetry Tip 1: Decide Where to Start

Because poems are often split into chunks--at least, if you’re using a more traditional form!-- you might find it helpful to start writing somewhere other than the beginning. 

For example, say you have a really pretty image of a sunset that you want to include in your poem. But you’re pretty sure you want to talk about the sunset at the end of the poem, not the beginning. That’s okay! Start writing your poem where the inspiration strikes you . You can always rearrange lines and stanzas later. 

You may also choose to start writing a poem by deciding on the poem’s theme or message rather than its content. Maybe you want to write about the joy you experience while running. Instead of worrying about saying the right thing the right way, you can start writing lines and thoughts that help you capture the feeling of running. Then you can start stitching those snippets into a longer poem. 

Poetry Tip 2: Pick a Form

Are you going to wing it, and let a structure form on its own? Or are you going to use a traditional form, like a Shakespearean sonnet , that has a very specific structure? 

The form you choose will have a pretty significant effect on your poem. For instance, sonnets (which traditionally include a little surprising shift in direction about halfway through called a volta ) work really well in telling short stories or conveying memories. But a free verse poem may be better suited for telling a more involved story. 

Keep in mind that these are just a few of the poetic forms you can use. If you want to explore different poetic forms, be sure to check out t he Academy of American Poets’s web page which has information on many of the most common poetic forms. 

Your poems come from your imagination, so don't be afraid to invite readers into your imaginary world. 

Poetry Tip 3: Create a Tiny World

When you’re writing poetry, your job is to engage the reader’s senses. You paint pictures for their imagination, encourage them to feel certain emotions, and can even engage their other senses like smell or taste through your descriptions. 

Put another way, your poem gives the reader a window into a tiny world you’re creating.

When you’re building your poem-world, think about how all the different elements work together. Are they playing nice or are they creating tension because they don’t belong together? How these elements interact can help create the tone of your poem. For example, if your poem features two dogs sleeping happily together in front of a fireplace, there’s a good chance your reader will feel happy and comfortable (rather than scared, angry, or sad).

You can also think about whether you’re giving the reader all the details they need to imagine your world correctly. For instance, if the scene you’re painting is damp and dark, you’ll want to include descriptive words that help your reader imagine the image you have in your head. The same is true if you have people in your poem. What are they doing? Where are they going? How are they feeling? Including these details can really help your poem come to life. 

Poetry Tip 4: Try Out Weird Ideas

One of the reasons poets like to write poetry is that you have the freedom to take risks in a way you don’t in any other written art form . 

When it comes to prose writing, the rules of grammar, logic, and structure often dictate what you can do. Take a historian who’s writing a book on George Washington’s life. Can you imagine what would happen if the writer said, “You know what? I’m going to stop writing about George Washington and talk about Elon Musk?” That wouldn’t be a very accurate history book!

Poets, on the other hand, have the freedom to explore ideas and situations that seem random or contradictory. Oftentimes, playing with the bounds of reality can make a poem even better. When you’re writing poetry, don’t be afraid to take risks in terms of your content, ideas, and form. Those risks often pay out! 

Poetry Tip 5: Revise

Poems are rarely written in a single sitting . Yes, we know poems are short, so they seem like they’re easy to write. But in actuality, poets spend hours thinking about which words to choose and how to make readers feel different emotions. That’s actually pretty painstaking work. In fact, many poems are revised dozens of times before they’re published. 

When you start writing poetry, make sure you give yourself enough time to come back to your poem and make tweaks. It’s usually best to come back to a poem after a few days so you can see it with fresh eyes. Keep all your drafts so you can compare them later, and don’t be afraid to try wildly new approaches when revising. 

Don’t think of revising as fixing all the grammatical mistakes you made; rather think about all the ways you can change your poem that can accomplish new things . Try rewriting it in a different form so you can see how effective the forms are for what you’re trying to get across. Try changing the metaphors, try rephrasing some of the lines that feel off to you. Try cutting it so that it’s shorter, or adding stanzas to make it longer. 

Poetry is about experimentation, so don’t be afraid to make changes to your poem to see what happens. 

Additional Resources for Writing Poetry

When it comes to advice on writing poetry, one of the best poetry tips we have is to encourage you to dive into helpful resources. We’ve put together a list of books, websites, and even email subscriptions that can help you learn more about poetry so you can become an even better poet.

Writing Poems by Robert Wallace and Michelle Boisseau

One excellent textbook that will give you an easy-to-understand list of poetic terms, tons of writing prompts, and tips for writing poetry Robert Wallace and Michelle Boisseau’s Writing Poems . They also include examples of poems that can help inspire your own writing. If you’re just getting started out writing poetry, this book is an invaluable resource. 

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Eavan Boland

If you want to learn more about the various poetic forms, The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms is the book for you. It has in-depth examples of many common (and not-so-common) poetic forms, and it explains the construction of each one. If you’re looking to experiment with the form of your writing, this book is a great pick. 

The Best American Poetry

If you want to start following the current trends of contemporary poetry, you can pick up the most recent copy of The Best American Poetry . This is an annual anthology that contains several notable poems published in that year for you to read. Like most things, poetry goes through trends and phases, so flipping through a few of these anthologies will give you an idea of what type of poetry is popular at the moment.

T he Poetry Foundation 

The Poetry Foundation is an organization dedicated to helping make poetry more accessible for everyone. To help with that, they publish hundreds of poems—both contemporary and classic—on their website every year. They also have biographies of famous poets, audio recordings of poems that you can listen to, and expert guides that help readers analyze famous poetry. Whether you’re learning about poetry or trying to write your own, The Poetry Foundation is a fantastic resource for you. 

Daily Poetry Emails

One of the best ways to understand poetry is by reading tons and tons of poems. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on poetry books and anthologies, though. There are plenty of organizations that will send poems to your email box for free every day! We’re big fans of the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day , but there are dozens of services you can sign up for. If you keep reading poetry, your own writing will get better, too. 

What's Next?

When you’re learning to write poetry, the best thing you can do is read lots of poems. Why not check out this list of the world’s most famous sonnets to get you started?

In this article, we talked about a few of the basic poetic devices you’ll need to write good poetry. But there are actually a lot of poetic devices out there ! This article explains the 20 must-know poetic devices that can help you in writing good poetry and in analyzing poems that are already written.

Speaking of poetry tips: reading a poem and figuring out its meaning can be pretty tricky sometimes. We’ve put together a step-by-step analysis of Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” that can help you better understand how poetry analysis works. Our experts walk you through the poem line by line and show you how to figure out a poem’s meaning on your own.

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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How to Write a Poem: Get Tips from a Published Poet

Ever wondered how to write a poem? For writers who want to dig deep, composing verse lets you sift the sand of your experience for new glimmers of insight. And if you’re in it for less lofty reasons, shaping a stanza from start to finish can teach you to have fun with language in totally new ways.

To help demystify the subtle art of writing verse, we chatted with Reedsy editor (and published poet) Lauren Stroh . In 8 simple steps, here's how to write a poem:

1. Brainstorm your starting point

2. free-write in prose first, 3. choose your poem’s form and style, 4. read for inspiration, 5. write for an audience of one — you, 6. read your poem out loud, 7. take a break to refresh your mind, 8. have fun revising your poem.

If you’re struggling to write your poem in order from the first line to the last, a good trick is opening with whichever starting point your brain can latch onto as it learns to think in verse.

Your starting point can be a line or a phrase you want to work into your poem, though it doesn’t have to take the form of language at all. It might be a picture in your head, as particular as the curl of hair over your daughter’s ear as she sleeps, or as capacious as the sea. It can even be a complicated feeling you want to render with precision — or maybe it's a memory you return to again and again. Think of this starting point as the "why" behind your poem, your impetus for writing it in the first place.

If you’re worried your starting point isn’t grand enough to merit an entire poem, stop right there. After all, literary giants have wrung verse out of every topic under the sun, from the disappointments of a post- Odyssey Odysseus to illicitly eaten refrigerated plums .

As Lauren Stroh sees it, your experience is more than worthy of being immortalized in verse.

"I think the most successful poems articulate something true about the human experience and help us look at the everyday world in new and exciting ways."

It may seem counterintuitive but if you struggle to write down lines that resonate, perhaps start with some prose writing first. Take this time to delve into the image, feeling, or theme at the heart of your poem, and learn to pin it down with language. Give yourself a chance to mull things over before actually writing the poem. 

Take 10 minutes and jot down anything that comes to mind when you think of your starting point. You can write in paragraphs, dash off bullet points, or even sketch out a mind map . The purpose of this exercise isn’t to produce an outline: it’s to generate a trove of raw material, a repertoire of loosely connected fragments to draw upon as you draft your poem in earnest.

Silence your inner critic for now

And since this is raw material, the last thing you should do is censor yourself. Catch yourself scoffing at a turn of phrase, overthinking a rhetorical device , or mentally grousing, “This metaphor will never make it into the final draft”? Tell that inner critic to hush for now and jot it down anyway. You just might be able to refine that slapdash, off-the-cuff idea into a sharp and poignant line.

Whether you’ve free-written your way to a beginning or you’ve got a couple of lines jotted down, before you complete a whole first draft of your poem, take some time to think about form and style. 

The form of a poem often carries a lot of meaning beyond the structural "rules" that it offers the writer. The rhyme patterns of sonnets — and the Shakespearean influence over the form — usually lend themselves to passionate pronouncements of love, whether merry or bleak. On the other hand, acrostic poems are often more cheeky because of the secret meaning that it hides in plain sight. 

Even if your material begs for a poem without formal restrictions, you’ll still have to decide on the texture and tone of your language. Free verse, after all, is as diverse a form as the novel, ranging from the breathless maximalism of Walt Whitman to the cool austerity of H.D . Where, on this spectrum, will your poem fall?

Choosing a form and tone for your poem early on can help you work with some kind of structure to imbue more meanings to your lines. And if you’ve used free-writing to generate some raw material for yourself, a structure can give you the guidance you need to organize your notes into a poem. 

A poem isn’t a nonfiction book or a historical novel: you don’t have to accumulate reams of research to write a good one. That said, a little bit of outside reading can stave off writer’s block and keep you inspired throughout the writing process.

Build a short, personalized syllabus around your poem’s form and subject. Say you’re writing a sensorily rich, linguistically spare bit of free verse about a relationship of mutual jealousy between mother and daughter. In that case, you’ll want to read some key Imagist poems , alongside some poems that sketch out complicated visions of parenthood in unsentimental terms.

And if you don’t want to limit yourself to poems similar in form and style to your own, Lauren has you covered with an all-purpose reading list:

• The Dream of a Common Languag e by Adrienne Rich
• Anything you can get your hands on by Mary Oliver
• The poems “ Failures in Infinitives ” and “ Fish & Chips ” by Bernadette Mayer.
• I often gift Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara to friends who write.
• Everyone should read the interviews from the Paris Review’s archives . It’s just nice to observe how people familiar with language talk when they’re not performing, working, or warming up to write.

Even with preparation, the pressure of actually producing verse can still awaken your inner metrophobe (or poetry-fearer). What if people don’t understand — or even misinterpret — what you’re trying to say? What if they don’t feel drawn to your work? To keep the anxiety at bay, Lauren suggests writing for yourself, not for an external audience.

"I absolutely believe that poets can determine the validity of their own success if they are changed by the work they are producing themselves; if they are challenged by it; or if it calls into question their ethics, their habits, or their relationship to the living world. And personally, my life has certainly been changed by certain lines I’ve had the bravery to think and then write — and those moments are when I’ve felt most like I’ve made it."

You might eventually polish your work if you decide to publish your poetry down the line. (If you do, definitely check out the rest of this guide for tips and a list of magazines to submit to.) But as your first draft comes together, treat it like it’s meant for your eyes only.

A good poem doesn’t have to be pretty: maybe an easy, melodic loveliness isn’t your aim. It should, however, come alive on the page with a consciously crafted rhythm, whether hymn-like or discordant. To achieve that, read your poem out loud — at first, line by line, and then all together, as a complete text.

Trying out every line against your ear can help you weigh out a choice between synonyms — getting you to notice, say, the watery sound of “glacial”, the brittleness of “icy,” the solidity of “cold”.

Reading out loud can also help you troubleshoot line breaks that just don't feel right. Is the line unnaturally long, forcing you to rush through it or pause in the middle for a hurried inhale? If so, do you like that destabilizing effect, or do you want to literally give the reader some room to breathe? Testing these variations aloud is perhaps the only way to answer questions like these. 

While it’s incredibly exciting to complete a draft of your poem, and you might be itching to dive back in and edit it, it’s always advisable to take a break first. You don’t have to turn completely away from writing if you don’t want to. Take a week to chip away at your novel or even muse idly on your next poetic project — so long as you distance yourself from this poem a little while. 

This is because, by this point, you’ve probably read out every line so many times the meaning has leached out of the syllables. With the time away, you let your mind refresh so that you can approach the piece with sharper attention and more ideas to refine it. 

At the end of the day, even if you write in a well-established form, poetry is about experimenting with language, both written and spoken. Lauren emphasizes that revising a poem is thus an open-ended process that requires patience — and a sense of play. 

"Have fun. Play. Be patient. Don’t take it seriously, or do. Though poems may look shorter than what you’re used to writing, they often take years to be what they really are. They change and evolve. The most important thing is to find a quiet place where you can be with yourself and really listen."

Is it time to get other people involved?

Want another pair of eyes on your poem during this process? You have options. You can swap pieces with a beta reader , workshop it with a critique group , or even engage a professional poetry editor like Lauren to refine your work — a strong option if you plan to submit it to a journal or turn it into the foundation for a chapbook .

Want a poetry expert to polish up your verse?

Professional poetry editors are on Reedsy. Sign up for free to meet them!

Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

The working poet's checklist

If you decide to fly solo, here’s a checklist to work through as you revise:

✅ Hunt for clichés. Did you find yourself reaching for ready-made idioms at any point? Go back to the sentiment you were grappling with and try to capture it in stronger, more vivid terms.

✅ See if your poem begins where it should. Did you take a few lines of throat-clearing to get to the actual point? Try starting your poem further down.

✅ Make sure every line belongs. As you read each line, ask yourself: how does this contribute to the poem as a whole? Does it advance the theme, clarify the imagery, set or subvert the reader’s expectations? If you answer with something like, “It makes the poem sound nice,” consider cutting it.

Once you’ve worked your way through this checklist, feel free to brew yourself a cup of tea and sit quietly for a while, reflecting on your literary triumphs. 

Whether these poetry writing tips have awakened your inner Wordsworth, or sent you happily gamboling back to prose, we hope you enjoyed playing with poetry —  and that you learned something new about your approach to language.

And if you are looking to share your poetry with the world, the next post in this guide can show the ropes regarding how to publish your poems! 

Anna Clarke says:

29/03/2020 – 04:37

I entered a short story competition and though I did not medal, one of the judges told me that some of my prose is very poetic. The following year I entered a poetry competition and won a bronze medal. That was my first attempt at writing poetry. I am more aware of figurative language in writing prose now. I am learning to marry the two. I don't have any poems online.

Comments are currently closed.

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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 .

Writing About Poetry

By seth ducharme ’92, get to know the poem, describe the poem.

Before you begin to organize your essay, read the poem aloud several times, noting its structure, meter, recurring images or themes, rhyme scheme-­anything and everything which creates an effect.

Paraphrase the poem

Again, before you begin to organize your essay, make sure you understand the language of the poem. Poetry, particularly from other time periods, often contains confusing syntax or vocabulary. Put into your own words those lines or phrases which are especially difficult. Resist the temptation to brush over the lines or phrases which seem unintelligible; these can be the most crucial parts of the poem. The Oxford English Dictionary is a good resource for defining difficult vocabulary.

How the Poem Works

Analyze the poem.

Since your analysis should make up the bulk of your essay, approach it with care. Knowing that you will not be able to address every aspect of the poem, select the elements which work together to create special effects. Look beyond the surface meaning of the words and start to think about how the techniques used in the poem add depth to its meaning. How do the elements work together? Do they complement each other, do they create tension, or both? Think in terms of cause and effect and look for relationships within the poem itself. For example, if you see a pattern of imagery which suggests something about the speaker, look at other areas of the poem for more evidence along the same lines. In poetry, form and content are inseparable, so you must not overlook the relationship between what the speaker says and how he or she says it.

Interpret the poem

Using your analysis of how the poem works as your evidence, interpret 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 show what they mean to the poem as a whole. You may suggest an interpretation of the speaker's state of mind, the poem’s subject, or the nature of the experience which the poem creates. For example, does Poe’s “The Raven” describe a dream? A drug-induced hallucination? A recollection? Why do you think so? What evidence, from your analysis, supports your idea? The main argument of your paper should begin to take form as you struggle with this process. You have great freedom in interpreting 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 , “There is no one, right interpretation of a poem—but there is one which is more right than any of the others.” The multi-faceted nature of poetry demands that you know where you are going before you begin to construct your written argument, which is why the description and paraphrase stages are so important. Your selective analysis emerges from them in the form of an argument that is limited to a manageable set of ideas. After you have thought through these stages and taken good notes, you should be ready to begin writing your essay.

Constructing Your Paper

Review your notes. Look for patterns and themes. Formulate a thesis statement that will allow you to explain the relationships and the effects of elements in the poem. If you can, indicate in the thesis the areas or features of the poem important to your argument (a pattern of imagery, for instance, or a series of crucial lines). Remember, your thesis statement must argue a point; instead of simply saying that a poet uses certain poetic devices, you must give some indication in your thesis as to how those devices work and what they do to the poem’s meaning. You do not need to go into elaborate detail in your thesis, but do show the relationship between the poem and your argument.

Introduction

Your first paragraph should make your reader comfortable with the poem by identifying the poet, offering a brief, general description of the poem and, most importantly, leading into the thesis and development of the argument by narrowing and limiting the subject. It may be helpful to imagine the introduction as a funnel, initially appealing to your reader from a wide perspective and then swiftly directing him or her into the body of your essay. Avoid sweeping, abstract statements or statements which you cannot concretely link to your thesis. The more quickly you get away from the general and focus on the specific, the sooner you will engage your reader.

The Development of Your Argument

The approach you undertake in your thesis determines the organization of the rest of the essay. Some arguments lend themselves to a linear presentation. For example, if you choose to trace the development of the speaker according to the recurrence of an image throughout the poem, you might want to go through the poem chronologically to show how that image changes in significance from line to line or stanza to stanza. You need not limit yourself to such a presentation, however. Many poems are difficult to explain chronologically; some poems are better suited to a non-linear argument which reflects cycles or other patterns in the poem. If you organize your argument according to the patterns you choose to address, your argument might move through the poem several times, according to the instances of the images and their contextual significance. For example, one word may have a formal relationship to numerous other words in the poem. The word “snow” has a relationship to the word “flow” in that they rhyme, and to the word “ice” in that they are both associated with winter. To discuss the significance of these relationships, you may find yourself jumping around the poem. That’s fine, as long as you make your argument clear and keep your thesis in sight.

Each paragraph should consist of a point which is credible, relevant to your thesis, and analytical. Remember that you are arguing for a certain position and need to convince your reader of that position. At the beginning of each paragraph, tell your reader the focus of your argument in that paragraph by starting with a topic sentence. The rest of the paragraph should address the assertion with convincing evidence. The effectiveness of your argument depends heavily on how well you incorporate evidence into your paragraphs.

Using Evidence

You cannot create a compelling argument without evidence to back it up, but you must present that evidence in the context of your own argument. Merely including a line or a passage in your paper without linking it to your argument will not be convincing. Try incorporating your evidence into a “sandwich” of information which will allow your reader to receive the full impact of the lines. Before the quotation, describe the evidence in terms of the poem. Where is it located in the poem? Is it part of a pattern? Let your reader know what he or she should be looking for. After the quotation, if the passage is particularly difficult to understand, you should explain problematic syntax or vocabulary. Then, you must analyze the quote and show how that quote supports the claims you are making in your thesis. This is the most important part of your paper; it is where you make your interpretation clear to the reader and where you prove your thesis. Don't assume that the quotation will speak for itself—it is your job to explain it.

Be sure to cite your evidence properly. Citing from a poem is different from citing from a prose text. Because the line form of poetry is so important, you must indicate where lines end by separating them with a slash mark “/”. If you are quoting more than three lines, single space the passage, indent, and present the passage as it appears in the poem. Follow the quotation with the appropriate line numbers enclosed in parentheses (see English Department handout on use of quotations and citations, available from the Department office and the Writing Center).

The Conclusion

Conclusions take many forms. In your conclusion you can emphasize crucial ideas, raise questions about the poem, or connect the poem to other literary works or experiences. This is where you can offer your interpretation of the poem, which by now should be convincing to your reader since you have presented your evidence in the body of the paper. You may raise new ideas in a conclusion, provided that they are solidly linked to the development of your argument. Remember, you have flexibility, but your conclusion should flow naturally from the body of your paper.

Final Thoughts

• If you have the choice of which poem to write about, pick one you like.
• Read the poem aloud. Your ear will notice things your eyes miss.
• Notice the way the poem looks on the page. The form of the poem may reveal something about the way it works.
• Be careful to make a clear distinction between the poet and the speaker. Even in poems that are written in the first person, you should be careful not to assume anything about the speaker that the poem itself does not suggest.
• Let your interpretation follow your analysis—avoid making unsupported assertions.
• Be selective with your evidence. Limit the length of your quotations to a workable size. Passages longer than a few lines will be impossible to explain in a single paragraph.  

Enjoy the Poem!

Poems are artistic expressions that demand that you appreciate them before you begin to reduce them to something explainable. Often, the most brilliant elements in a poem are very subtle and will be felt before they are understood. Remember, you are not just explaining what a poem does, you are explaining what it does to you. You are the medium in which the poem comes to life. Writing about poetry offers you a special opportunity to interact with a work of art.

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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:

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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.

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How to Write a Poetry Essay: Effective Writing Guide

What is a poetry analysis essay.

Almost every student has been given the task of writing a poetry analysis essay. At first, this seems like an incredibly arduous task, however, we ensure that there is nothing complicated associated with it. If you wish to learn how to write a poetry essay like a pro, don’t hesitate to read our entire review until its end. We will leave no questions unanswered.

In the simplest terms, in a poem analysis, the writer is required to review the poetical and figurative language used by a particular poet in one or several of his works. In other words, the creator of the essay will need to get familiar with the different types of figures used in poetry. Additionally, he will also need to read between the lines. As most of you know, poetry is never simple, and authors always try to convey some type of belief with their poems.

How to Analyze Poetry?

Writing a poem analysis essay can turn out to be quite an interesting task that will actually keep you engaged throughout the whole time. If you are someone who enjoys poetry, you know just how fascinating these texts can be. Poetic language is the one thing that makes poetry what it is. At first, you may think that there is no meaning in what the poet is trying to say. Nonetheless, after a while, you will probably manage to understand everything.

The latter is, in fact, the first thing you need to do when you write a poetry analysis essay. Another crucial thing is to get familiar with the various literary devices used in literature. This is something all colleges look for in essays . Being able to differentiate between the diverse stylistic devices proves that you are knowledgeable in this field and you have done your job of getting familiar with the writer’s style and vivid vocabulary. After all, these devices are inseparable parts of poems and affect the mood, setting, ideas, and overall theme of the respective work. Some of them are also used to create a rhyme in a paragraph. Here is a list of some of the most commonly used stylistic devices:

Poetry Essay Writing Style

The style of a poem analysis essay is another major thing to take into account before you start writing your text. If you are having difficulties with this particular step, you can always seek analytical essays writing help . Your review should contain all vital details with respect to the poem or poems. Therefore, you should be knowledgeable of the various stylistic devices used by the poet.

Although we listed some of them in the previous paragraph, the list is much longer than this. Also, it is important to get familiar with other words by the respective poet. This way, you will manage to determine his unique style and figure out the main ideas of his poetry.

Poem Analysis Essay Outline

Even though you can always use a website that writes essays for you , it is advisable to first get acquainted with the basic outline of a poetry essay. Below, we will mention the sections that should always be present in an essay of this type.

It goes without saying that every text should contain a title. When titling your essay , you should ensure that your heading is captivating and closely related to the main topic.

• Introduction

The introductory paragraph is of great importance, as well. It will give the reader a clear idea of what he/she is about to read. This paragraph basically contains the thesis of your essay, which is crucial as it reveals what you are about to discuss.

This is the longest part. When learning how to write a poetry essay, you should also focus on the skill of deciphering the author’s thoughts and explaining what each stylistic device is used for. Some of them are used for making word sounds, others are there to create a rhyme or message rhythm, and so on.

The body of your text should contain all these explanations. Here, writers should focus on the imagery, tone, style, and setting present in the text. To support your statements, you can cite the poet in some of your paragraphs. After reading the entire middle section of your poem analysis essay, the reader should be completely acquainted with your own views.

And finally, the order of the text should finish with a closing paragraph. In this part, the speaker should summarize the concepts written in the previous section. The finale should not be extensive. One paragraph is usually enough.

How to Write a Perfect Poetry Essay

As you already know, writing an analytical essay is not as hard as it seems at first. Nevertheless, some people are true perfectionists when it comes to delivering school or college work. That is why they often seek online services to assist them with creating the most impeccable text. Fortunately, there are many such platforms. Choosing a dependable one will surely help you write the best essay.

Even if you choose to seek help from professionals, it is still advisable to read several poems written by the poet whose work you should analyze. This will definitely help you describe your concepts if necessary. Plus, you may even find your next favorite author! We are quick to assure you that a poetry essay service is just as easy to find as a reliable law essay writing service . You should simply choose one that is most appropriate for you.

In the simplest terms, when analyzing poetry work, you should focus on many other things aside from the main idea of the text. Images, stylistic devices, setting, characters – all these things should be taken into account, as well. Even though the formation of the poetry essay may seem difficult at first, with enough practice, students usually manage to achieve the necessary result. However, in cases of trouble, one can always make use of the numerous reliable poetry essay writing services available. You can ask someone to write my assignment . We offer these services at affordable cost, and also you can find research papers for sale on our website. Check out our services to learn more.

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What Makes a Good Poem?

by Melissa Donovan | Feb 13, 2024 | Poetry Writing | 34 comments

How do you make a good poem?

In the world of art and entertainment, everything is subjective. Millions of fans loved that blockbuster film that dominated theaters a couple of years ago, but maybe you found it lacking in substance. Maybe some of the great works of literature you were forced to read in school left you wondering why they were considered important enough to be included in the curriculum. Maybe that song that your best friend plays over and over causes you nothing but agitation.

Poetry is no different. You might work your way through dozens of poems before you find one that speaks to you. And your favorite poem might be dismissed by your writer friends as campy or dull.

You can’t please everyone. No matter how great a poem is, someone, somewhere is going to hate it. That doesn’t mean the poem is good or bad; it just means it doesn’t appeal to everyone’s taste.

All Poems are Good

One some level, all poetry is good, because it’s a form of expression. There is real value in the act of making a poem, even if it doesn’t catch on with readers or get published. Many people come to poetry because it’s an accessible form of self-expression, and it’s highly therapeutic. Teens, in particular, find poetry writing to be a useful tool for navigating the dynamic thoughts and feelings they experience as they transition from childhood to adulthood.

The very act of writing a poem is a reward unto itself, and that is a good thing. But writing poetry as an act of creation and writing poetry that is meant to be read, appreciated, and valued are two different things.

Poetry that’s meant to be shared with the world will undoubtedly undergo scrutiny, from public criticism to reviews to audience reactions at an open mic. If we, as poets, want to create work that will be valued, then fortunately there are some things we can do to increase the likelihood that we’ll produce good poems that appeal to an audience.

The Guidelines of Good Poetry

It’s always important to note that some of the best art breaks the rules of conventional wisdom. For every piece of writing advice, there’s some example of written works that defied convention and succeeded. But guidelines are not rules. They are guides, meaning they are designed to help you find your way; they are not a roadmap etched in stone to be followed exactly.

The guidelines below are not guaranteed to produce a good poem, but they will certainly give you an advantage.

Rhythm and meter: One of the identifying features of poetry is its musicality. Whether or not a poem rhymes and regardless of whether it’s written to a metrical form, it should have rhythm and meter, a cadence. This can be achieved through the sounds of the letters, the number of syllables in the words, which syllables are stressed, and the length of the lines.

Word choice: Choosing the right word can mean the difference between a poem that soars and a poem that crashes. Words are to the poet what colors are to the painter, what clay is to the sculptor, what the instrument is to the musician. Words matter; choose them wisely.

Vivid images: Images show readers what’s happening rather than telling them. We don’t want to hear that the old man was sad; we want to see him struggling to hold back a sob and blinking away the tears in his eyes.

Economy of language: In most cases, if you can express something clearly and fully in a hundred words, you shouldn’t use a thousand. Concise language is more memorable and resonates more deeply than verbiage, which messy, confusing, and ultimately, forgettable.

Emotional and intellectual quality: Most readers want to have an experience, and they want to engage with a poem on an emotional or intellectual level. Better yet, give readers poetry that resonates on both levels. Make them think, and make them feel.

Engage the imagination: If everything is laid out in so much detail that nothing is left to the imagination, then it will be difficult for readers to participate in the poem, and remember — readers come to the page for an experience. Letting them use their imaginations makes a poem more personal, more immersive, and more enjoyable.

Read all the poetry:  The more poetry you read, the better your own poetry will become. Imagine a musician who doesn’t listen to music! Poets should take in poetry, know the canon, and understand their personal tastes and how to tell a good poem from a great one.

Make a Good Poem

What do you think makes a poem good? Do you focus more on your personal expression or on making poetry that others will appreciate? Share your thoughts about poetry by leaving a comment.

34 Comments

Thanks! Sharing…

Thanks, Bette.

Excellent article.. Thank you so much…

You’re welcome!

Lovely article. I’ve bookmarked it and will probably reread it a few times. Thanks.

Thanks, Elizabeth!

Great article. But I usually write following my vibes.. My gut feeling.

One of the things I love about writing is that there are so many ways to do it. We each get to discover what works best for us. I often follow my vibes or gut feeling, but I also sometimes need to be more strategic. Different methods for different projects!

Thank you so much for this. This is exactly what I was out here looking for…

You’re very welcome.

There’s a question, I think, of defining who the audience is. Much can be forgiven if the writing is intended to remain personal. Different considerations apply if intending to read to or be read by an audience.

Personally, I feel there is a great imbalance, with much that should be personal being presented to wide audience, without ever being written with them in mind.

I agree that writers should consider who a piece is for, especially before publishing it.

Thank you for this article. Word choice resonates the most with me as something that can really elevate a poem. Sometimes, there’s just that word that really creates an image or gets a message across, and it’s always great when you find it, either in your work or that of others.

I agree one hundred percent, Tina.

The tongue of the bell does not strike bronze to make its noise, it strikes the void within the form to evoke the sound of emptiness.

Thank you for sharing this.

Yes, every art form is subjective and is going to have its proponents and detractors. You can’t please everyone so please yourself.

From the very start, I found that rhyme placement was a way to grab the reader’s mind, and too many often detracted from the imagery or idea that I was trying to convey. So, some of my poems have very few, but when they occur, it’s effective.

I try not to use an unfamiliar word or words that can’t be immediately understood by the context unless, of course, that important rhyme gives exigence to incorporate the word “reticent” (or taciturn, for that matter).

Write about what moves you and you can’t go wrong.

I agree. I like these methods too.

I very been writing poetry since I was 14. But have kept it a secret. While in college my guide dence council who was a bread loaf teacher,challenged me to enter poetry contest. I won some Awards. But that was the only time. I don’t write inany rhyming style. Its bit like Whitman. Its gift i truly don’t comprehend.

Well, I’m not sure how long ago you were fourteen, but I’m curious about why you keep it a secret. Nobody should have to hide the things they enjoy doing, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone. With that said, I know that there can be various social pressures, and I don’t know your situation. In any case, I hope you keep writing and that it brings you peace and joy.

Great overview, and a very useful article. Thank you, and have a nice rest of the week, as a beautiful weekend! Michael

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your kind words.

To my mind a great poem presents the complex simply.

There are certainly great poems that simplify the complex.

I disagree with this article. In my PROFESIONAL opinion, not every poem is a good poem. Only what you perceive to be a good poem, is a good poem. ALSO, the message you get from a text has to be IMPACTFUL, possibly changing the world view the reader has as a WHOLE. this is but my PROFESSIONAL opinion though.

I’d be curious to know what your PROFESSIONAL qualifications are, exactly?

This article does not say “every poem is a good poem.” In fact, this entire article is saying that all poems are not equal in literary quality. You appear to have gotten hung up on the following statement: “One some level, all poetry is good, because it’s a form of expression.”

This remark simply acknowledges that the act of expression is a good thing. You can write a terrible poem, but the act of writing it, of expressing yourself, or doing something creative, is good. Writing is therapeutic, and a notebook full of poorly written poetry might not get published or win prizes, but it can be good for the author, in many ways.

This statement therefore contains an important qualifier that you decided to ignore when you shared your disagreement. Please read more thoroughly and carefully before coming to the comments to argue with ideas, especially if you’re going to misrepresent was was actually expressed in the original post.

I agree wholeheartedly about every poem is a good poem *for someone*, even if only the writer. Personally, I do not like free verse. To me it’s simply prose randomly broken into lines. Not that it’s not often poetic. I chanced upon someone reading a free verse poem on the radio. I did not realise it was a poem until someone mentioned the fact after the reading. Having said that, to someone who enjoys it, it is poetry. No one can say it isn’t unless everyone says so. Like modern classical music. Some say it’s not music, but as long as there are people who say it is, then it’s music. Poetry can rhyme or not, but in my opinion, it must have rhythm. Not random line lengths. My poetry has rhymes, no rhymes, but always rhythm. My opinion

Helpful essay. I often write poetry for my blog. I am often (but not always) too easily satisfied with what I have written. I am continuously surprised that some readers seem to really like the poems that I think are doggerel at best.

A useful article

Thanks, Robbie!

Thank you for this useful post on how to write a good poem. It serves as a checklist before hitting the ‘Publish’ or ‘Submit’ button.

Awesome piece!!! Thanks so much for sharing this!! Chuck 😁🎁🌹🌹

You’re welcome.

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Poetry & Poets

Explore the beauty of poetry – discover the poet within

How To Write A Poetry Essay Example

Background Information on Poetry Essay

Poetry essay is an analysis of poetic works. It is a written work that was created after studying different works of poetry. It focuses on the elements of a poem to analyze its content, style and historical context. Poetry essay should include both explanatory and analytical elements. It should also provide a personal opinion of the author, based on their research.

What are the Different Elements to Analyze a Poem?

When analyzing a poem, there are three key elements to keep in mind: structure, tone, and diction. It is important to understand these three elements because they will guide your essay writing. The structure of a poem is the physical components that impact how it sounds. This includes factors such as rhyme, meter, form and rhyme scheme. Tone is the attitude of the poem and can be expressed through the use of words and images. Lastly, diction is the choice of words used and can change meaning throughout the poem.

Analyzing Theme

One of the most important elements of a poem is its theme. The theme is the main idea of the poem that can be derived from either an interpretation or inference of the poem’s text. Examples of themes commonly seen in poetry include love, life, death, nature, and loneliness. A poem’s theme is an important factor when considering the overall meaning of the poem. It is important to note that multiple themes can be found within a single poem.

Analyzing Metaphors

A poem contains numerous metaphors that help convey its message. These metaphors can range from simple to complex and can help provide a better understanding of the poem’s meaning. Metaphors are a great way to get a sense of the poet’s feelings about a certain topic and can be used to explain the events of the poem. It is important to think about the context of the poem when analyzing metaphors in order to make sure that you fully understand their meanings.

Analyzing Symbolism and Imagery

Symbolism and imagery are two of the most powerful elements of a poem. Symbolism can be used to express feelings and emotions in a subtle way, while imagery is used to create vivid mental images in the mind of the reader. Together, these two elements can be used to help the reader better understand the poem’s message.

Understanding Context

The historical context of a poem can have a significant impact on its meaning. It is important to understand the time period in which the poem was written and the social, political, and economic events that were taking place during that time. This will give you a better understanding of certain aspects of the poem that may otherwise seem out of place or disconnected.

Using Figures of Speech

Figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, and personification are powerful tools in poetry. They can help to convey a deeper meaning than what is expressed on the surface. It is important to look for these figures of speech in a poem and consider how their presence may be impacting the overall message of the poem.

Sentence Structure, Punctuation, and Etc.

The sentence structure, punctuation, and other stylistic techniques used in a poem can contribute significantly to its overall meaning. Paying attention to these elements can help to provide a deeper insight into the poem’s message.

Putting Everything Together

When writing a poetry essay, it is important to use each of the elements discussed above in order to create a cohesive essay. You should focus on the background, structure, tone, diction, theme, symbolism, imagery, figures of speech and historical context of the poem in your analysis. Additionally, make sure to use proper grammar and punctuation in order to make your essay as effective as possible.

Example of Poetry Essay

John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” is a powerful piece of poetry that conveys a strong message about mortality. The poem is written in the form of a sonnet and follows an ABBAABBACDCDCD rhyme scheme. Donne uses metaphors and symbols to communicate his message in a very powerful way. The opening line, “Death be not proud, though some have called thee,” sets the tone of the poem and establishes the idea of death as something to be faced but not feared. The imagery in the poem is very vivid. Donne compares death to many different things, such as a walking person, slave, petty tyrant, engineer, and a sleep. By comparing death to sleep, Donne is communicating the idea of life being a step towards death, but death not being something that should be feared. He also uses the metaphor of death being a prisoner to communicate how it has no real power in the grand scheme of things. Donne’s use of diction is also important. He uses words such as “maudlin” and “defiance” to express the idea that death should not be feared. He also uses words like “wrangle,” “spies” and “usurpst” to express his disdain for death. This diction is crucial in conveying the poem’s meaning. In the closing couplet of the poem, Donne writes, “One short sleep past, we wake eternally/ And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” By using the phrase “one short sleep,” Donne is emphasizing the idea that death is but a short sleep and should not be worried about. It communicates the idea that life extends into eternity, and death has no real power over life. In conclusion, John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” is a powerful poem that conveys a strong message about mortality. Through the use of metaphors, symbols, diction, and imagery, Donne communicates the idea that life extends into eternity and death should not be worried about.

Techniques Used in Poetry Essay Writing

When writing a poetry essay it is important to consider different techniques to help convey your message. It is important to use figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, and personification to help emphasize the poem’s meaning. Additionally, pay close attention to the structure, tone, diction, symbolism, imagery and historical context of the poem to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the work. Using advanced grammatical structures and emotional triggers can also help engage the reader and leave a lasting impression. Lastly, be sure to use the active voice instead of the passive voice when constructing your sentences to make sure the essay is impactful.

Maintaining Poetry Essay Format

Maintaining the proper format for a poem essay is essential. A poem essay should be structured in an introduction paragraph, body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. The introduction paragraph should provide a brief overview of the poem and why it is important. The body paragraphs should focus on the different elements of the poem such as structure, tone, diction, and more. Make sure to provide consistent examples and develop the main points in each paragraph. Lastly, the conclusion paragraph should summarize the main ideas of the poem and make any necessary connections.

Creating a Thesis Statement

Creating a thesis statement when writing a poem essay is a crucial step. A thesis statement is a statement that expresses the main point of the essay. It should be clear and concise while also discussing the elements of the poem that you plan to analyze. It is important to ensure that the thesis statement is specific, as this will help provide a clear direction for the rest of the essay.

Creating Transitions

Transitions are important when writing a poem essay. They help to bridge the gap between different sections of the essay and provide a logical flow of ideas. It is important to use transitions that are effective and do not interrupt the natural flow of the essay. Examples of good transitions include words and phrases such as “moreover”, “in addition”, and “consequently”.

Minnie Walters

Minnie Walters is a passionate writer and lover of poetry. She has a deep knowledge and appreciation for the work of famous poets such as William Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and many more. She hopes you will also fall in love with poetry!

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• EXPLORE Random Article

How to Write About Poetry

Last Updated: October 11, 2022 References

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 5,134 times.

Poetry analysis is a common essay assignment in high school and college English classes. This is because writing about poetry helps you to hone important close reading and analytical skills, which are useful for a wide range of professions. Read the poem carefully and closely, and then craft your argument about the poem! Take time to revise what you have written to ensure that your poetry analysis is complete and insightful.

Analyzing the Content of the Poem

• Depending on the difficulty of the poem, it may take several read-throughs to fully understand what the poem is about. Take your time and read the poem as many times as you need to understand it.
• If you can, read the poem aloud so you can hear the rhythm and sounds in the poem. Sound is a very important part of poetry, so it's important to read it aloud.
• If you come across any words or phrases you don’t understand, look them up before you continue reading the poem.

If you get to choose the poem that you write about, choose one that you love! It will be much more fun to write about a poem that you really enjoy than one that seems safe or easy. Your paper is also likely to be better if you choose a poem you love!

• Syntax is the arrangement of the words in a sentence. For instance, you'd normally write, "Roses bloom all summer." However, a poet might write, "All summer roses bloom."

• A poem may have multiple themes. You may identify love, death, and sorrow all in 1 poem.
• For example, Robert Frost’s “Asking for Roses” features themes of loss, love, and fertility. Frost presents the theme of fertility by making biblical allusions to Mary and through floral imagery. The themes of loss and love are shown through memories of a love the narrator once had.

• For example, a limerick is a humorous poem, while an elegy is a sad, mournful poem.

• Understanding the poem's rhyme scheme can help you recognize words and phrases the poet wants to emphasize. Additionally, it will help you identify the form.
• For example, you might notice when you read “Asking for Roses” that the first line rhymes with the third line and the second line rhymes with the fourth line. This rhyme scheme of odd lines rhyming with other odd lines and even lines rhyming with other even lines continues throughout the poem. You'll also notice that the placement of "roses" signals that it's an important image in the poem. [5] X Research source

• Metaphor, which is when 2 things that are not similar are compared, such as a house and grief.
• Metonymy, which is when something stands in for something similar, such as “the crown” in place of the queen or king.
• Simile, which is when the author makes a comparison between 2 unlike things using “like” or “as,” such as by saying “Life is like a merry-go-round.”
• Personification, which is when something non-human gains human attributes, such as by saying “the tea kettle screamed” or “the painting mocked me.”
• Irony, which is when the surface meaning of something is different from what you may draw from it, such as getting laid off on the 10 year anniversary of your hire date.

• For example, you might consider the potential implications of the term “old-fashioned” in Robert Frost’s “Asking for Roses” given that it was written in 1915. [8] X Research source
• While historical and cultural context are important, don't base your entire analysis of the poem on it. Keep your focus on the words on the page.
• Use secondary sources to support your interpretation of the meaning of the poem.

Drafting Your Essay

• For example, if you have chosen to write about Robert Frost’s “Asking for Roses,” then you might open with something like: “Robert Frost’s 1915 poem ‘Asking for Roses’ follows a couple who walk together to a vacant house that is surrounded by rose bushes. The woman in the poem, called Mary, tells her cohort that, although the house appears to be empty, they must ask the owners of the house if they want any roses. The pair seem to be lovers since they are described as holding hands.”

Make sure that you avoid attributing the poem’s sentiments to the author of the poem. Instead, refer to the “speaker” or “narrator” of the poem.

• For example, if you are making an argument about Robert Frost’s “Asking for Roses,” your thesis might read: “The roses in Frost’s ‘Asking for Roses’ symbolize the children that a couple hope to have despite the risks, which is evidenced in the text by allusions to loss and fertility.”

• For example, if you want argue that the roses in Robert Frost’s “Asking for Roses” symbolize the children that the couple hope to have despite the potential for loss, you might start a paragraph by stating that “Frost opens his poem with a symbol for loss: ‘A house that lacks’ and ‘all littered with glass and plaster’ (1 & 3). [12] X Research source Then, follow this up by explaining why you see these as symbols of loss.
• Use additional paragraphs to build on your argument and strengthen it. Move through the poem chronologically or jump around depending on what works best for your argument.

• For example, if you are writing about Robert Frost’s “Asking for Roses,” then you might point to the ending of the poem, which indicates that the pair were finally given the roses they sought. This may help readers to see the symbols of loss more clearly.

• “A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master, / With doors that none but the wind ever closes,” (Frost 1-2). [15] X Research source
• So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
• There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
• And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
• And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses. (Frost 9-12)
• The entry for the poem on your works cited page should include the following information: Poet’s Name. “Title of the Poem.” Title of Book or Anthology Publisher. Editor’s name (if included). Year. Page number(s).

Revising the Essay

• For example, after you finish drafting your essay, wait to look at it again until the next morning. Then, make notes on any additions, changes, or deletions you want to make.

• For example, if your reader does not fully understand the point you are making about the empty house in Frost’s “Asking for Roses,” then you might want to add more detail to clarify this section of your essay.

• Ask someone to listen to you read for additional feedback on how the essay sounds.
• Make sure to read any quoted passages out loud as well and double check them against the original to ensure accuracy. Accurate quotations and citations are essential to any academic essay. [18] X Research source

Revision is a crucial part of the writing process , but lots of people skip it or don't spend much time on it. Set your poetry essay apart by giving yourself at least a few days to revise your completed draft!

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/poetry-explications/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/writing_about_poetry.html
• ↑ https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/asking-roses
• ↑ https://www.hamilton.edu/academics/centers/writing/writing-resources/poetry
• ↑ https://www.bartleby.com/117/13.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_quotations.html
• ↑ https://www.monmouth.edu/resources-for-writers/documents/mla-citing-poetry.pdf/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/revising-draft

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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

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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.

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All's fair in love and poetry? How to write a poem (with a little help from Taylor Swift)

Will Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album “The Tortured Poets Department” usher in a new era of poetry appreciation ?

Delaney Atkins, a part-time instructor at Austin Peay State University who teaches a class exploring Swift’s music's connection to Romanticism , hopes this album will help people realize the power of poetry as “one of the purest forms of human expression.”

“Poetry is not a scary thing,” she says. “If it’s something that (Swift) reads and leans into , I’m hopeful that other people will take it as an opportunity to do the same and not be afraid of feeling like they aren’t smart enough or it’s not accessible enough.”

How to write a poem

Ever heard the saying “the best writers are readers”? The first step to writing a poem is figuring out what you like about poetry.

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Is it imagery? Format? Rhyme? Start by sampling a few poets. Maya Angelou, William Wordsworth, Frank O’Hara, Sylvia Plath and Amanda Gorman are among the greats. Look to your favorite songwriters and ask yourself, "What do I admire about their craft?" Atkins also recommends looking for a poem about a subject you're passionate about.

“I promise you, there’s a poem for everyone,” she says.

Next, decide what you want to write about. Simple as it sounds, this can often be the hardest step for writers. What do you want to say?

Finally, decide how you’re going to write it.

Atkins recommends starting with metaphors and similes , which Swift often employs. Some metaphors are more obvious, like in “Red,” when she sings “Losing him was blue, like I’d never known/Missing him was dark gray, all alone.” She uses a simile when she says “Loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street.”

If you’re writing about a relationship, ask yourself what it felt like. “This relationship feels like … a burning bridge,” is Atkins's example. You can stick to a single line or make it an extended metaphor with an entire poem about that bridge.

Use imagery, or visually descriptive language, to help tell the story. Look around the room and describe the setting using lofty prose or personify the objects around you. Or create a character and tell their story – think of Swift’s love triangle in the “Betty,” “Cardigan” and “August” trilogy or “No Body, No Crime,” in which she slips into the skin of a vengeance-seeking best friend.

Do poems have to rhyme?

While many of Swift's songs rhyme, it’s not required in poetry.

“There are no rules and that’s a good thing, it’s a freeing thing,” Atkins says. “Take that and run with it – be as creative as possible.”

Review: Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets' is hauntingly brilliant

Taylor Swift has always been a member of 'The Tortured Poets Department'

In Atkins’ class, Swift's 10 previous albums are on the syllabus. Some connections to poetry are more overt, like Swift’s reference to English poet William Wordsworth in “The Lakes.”

But Atkins also teaches the motifs and literary devices that Swift uses throughout her discography, like the repetition of rain . In “Fearless” Swift alludes to naively running and dancing in the rain. Later in “Clean” from “1989,” rain is a baptismal metaphor for washing away the addiction of a past relationship. On “Peace,” off of “Folklore,” Swift sings about rain as a manifestation of her anxieties. 

She uses the extended metaphor of death and dying in several songs. Atkins points to “dying in secret” in 2009’s “Cold As You” as representative of shame (“And I know you wouldn’t have told nobody if I died, died for you”). In 2020’s “peace” death is a symbol of unconditional love (“All these people think love’s for show/But I would die for you in secret”). She also repeatedly references her death throughout “My Tears Ricochet” – “And if I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake?”

Poem ideas inspired by Taylor Swift

Want to become a “Tortured Poet” yourself? Here are some prompts to kickstart your poetry era.

• Use a five-dollar word: Who else could fit “clandestine” and “mercurial” in a song? Use an unexpected word from Swift's work, like “elegies,” “unmoored,” “calamitous,” “ingenue” or “gauche” as a jumping-off point.
• Write a poem based on one of the “eras” : Tell a girl-next-door love story based on “Taylor Swift,” a bitter heartbreak for “Red” or the tale of your slandered character for “Reputation.”
• Write about your “invisible strings”: The “invisible string theory” hypothesizes that there’s some larger force at work laying the groundwork to lead us to our destinies. In “invisible string,” Swift writes about the path that led her to a romantic partner. Write about your own.
• Paint the image of a season: It's tempting to break out your flannels and drive to go leaf-peeping after listening to "All Too Well." In literature, fall often represents change. Pick a season and describe it using imagery – how does that season represent what your poem is about?
• Use rain as a metaphor: Take inspiration from Swift's many uses of rain, which sometimes symbolizes losing yourself in a passionate moment but other times indicates a cleansing or sadness.
• Take a spin on a classic: Swift invokes classic literature in “Love Story” when she sings “You were Romeo I was a scarlet letter.” How can you put a modern take on classic tropes ?
• Retell history: This is precisely what Swift does in “The Last Great American Dynasty” when she tells the story of Rebekah Harkness , a socialite who lived in the Rhode Island house Swift bought in 2013. Who can you use as a muse?
• Play with color: A whole essay could be written about Swift's use of the color “blue.” Try out a common color symbol (like blue for sadness, red for passion, green for envy) or flip it on its head entirely and have it represent a new emotion.
• Use the year you were born: Swift's “1989” symbolizes her artistic rebirth . Title your poem the year you were born. How can you emerge as a poet reborn? 
• Random lyric generator: Still stumped? Use this random lyric generator and use that phrase as the theme or first line of your poem. Just make sure to credit Swift if you post it anywhere online.
• Write about “The Tortured Poets Department”: What would it look like if it was a real place? Assume the role of Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department and craft your world of punished poets. 

Tortured poets: Is Taylor Swift related to Emily Dickinson?

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Why You Should Read Poetry All Year

To really kickstart your creative thinking, read poems often..

Posted April 23, 2024 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

• We need new ideas and thought combinations to solve daily challenges.

Poetry can help us think differently.

• A poet uses high-level creative thinking to write a poem. The result can spark creative thinking in readers.

Is it just me, or is Poetry Month everywhere this year?

Poet Mary Ruefle had something to say about this:

Every April, since the establishment of National Poetry Month, I receive a call from my local library or high school, asking if I will participate in a reading. How about November? I always ask, and the answer is always the same: People aren’t interested then; April is the month poetry goes public. (from Madness, Rack, and Honey )

While I appreciate the airtime poetry is receiving this month, my mission today is to convince you to care about poems into May and beyond.

Why You Should Care About Poems in May

When was the last time, in the physical world, you saw something that startled your senses? You turned toward the scene as emotion kindled within: awe , surprise, fear , love.

One of my favorite poets, Jane Hirshfield, wrote: “Many good poems have a kind of window-moment in them—they change their direction of gaze in a way that suddenly opens a broadened landscape of meaning and feeling.” (from Ten Windows )

Poems Open Windows in the Mind

A powerful poem ignites a thought-spark, loosening the trend of your thinking from the ruts of conformity and the latest righteous cause downloaded to your brain from the internet.

To write a powerful poem requires solitude, self- denial (of screens), time, and concentration —four ingredients that result in the highest-tier thinking that we call creativity .

Originality infused in the work affects the reader as it sparks new ways of seeing, fresh possibilities, and reinvigorated feelings.

Hirshfield again from Ten Windows : “A good poem is a solvent, a kind of WD-40 for the soul . . . To feel oneself moved creates in itself an increase of freedom.”

Specifically, it increases freedom of thought—freedom from thinking the way others are thinking or from the way we have thought before.

Don't we need new thoughts in our daily lives?

Constantly we are tasked with solving problems:

• how to respond to a surly teen or disgruntled customer
• how to most effectively teach a difficult concept to a classroom of students
• how to think up the latest market-defying innovation to move our business forward

The best way to solve these problems is to make new combinations of thought. Poetry can help us do this.

Why You Might Resist

That said, some people resist poetry because quite a bit of contemporary poetry is so jarring that it shakes the reader too much. Or it’s so obscure that it keeps the reader out and makes you feel dumb for not understanding its very hidden message.

In fact, I went through a long period during which I avoided contemporary poetry because I found the images in many poems so disturbing and depraved that I didn’t figure I needed them in my life. But then I took a deep dive and began to discover many insightful, thought-provoking poets.

Presently, I’m on a quest to collect poetry that stirs thought without the trendy shock-and-awe approach but with failsafe original thinking that probably resulted from a poet's solitude, self-denial (of screens), time, and concentration. I can share a small selection of this poetry with you through this Poetry Guide that includes favorite poetry books for beginners or experts.

Of course, you can always go exploring to find just the right poems to inspire your own thought-shift. No matter how you do it, read more poems.

This post also appears on Sparkitivity . Copyright Sparkitivity, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Ruefle, Mary. (2012). Madness, Rack, and Honey. Seattle: Wave Books.

Hirshfield, Jane. (2017). Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. New York: Knopf.

Kathryn Haydon, MSc , is an innovation strategist, speaker, and author who helps teams and individuals activate and maximize their creative thinking and innovation potential.

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