Poetry Analysis

Try to approach analyzing a poem the same way you would think of a doctor diagnosing a patient. In medicine, there is a standard procedure for diagnosing an illness. Although some trial and error may come into play, the steps are usually going to be the same each time.

The same is, in a way, true of analyzing poetry. There are just different things/conditions/symptoms to look for:

NOTE: Read a poem from the beginning of a sentence to the period. Just because you get to the end of a line doesn’t mean you’ve gotten to the end of the meaning.
 

We will begin with "The Eagle" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.


1. Start with who the speaker (the “voice” relaying the poem to the reader—sort of like a narrator in a book) might be—this is not necessarily the poet him/herself. It could be a tennis shoe complaining about how much use it gets, etc. Try to figure out what you can about the speaker.
For example in the poem, “The Eagle,” the only thing we can tell about the speaker is that it is someone who is observing a eagle.

2. Then try to determine the situation in the poem. Some are easy, like “Ballad of Birmingham” since it tells you after the title that it was written on the occasion of the bombing of the church. Others are a little more vague—sort of like a patient who cannot articulate the nature of the problem, who just says “it hurts.”

3. Next, try to determine setting—this can be time (of day or historical time period, season, period in someone’s life, etc.) and place (indoors, outdoors, a geographical location, in the speaker’s imagination, etc).

4. At any time during this process look up words you may not know, especially word that can have more than one meaning. Often, a poem will make use of a particular meaning and if you miss how it is used in the poem, you miss the poem entirely.

5. Next, determine the purpose of the poem: The purpose of “Ballad of Birmingham” is to evoke an emotional response from the reader. A secondary purpose may be to memorialize the girl who died under these tragic and ironic circumstances.
The purpose of “The Eagle,” however, is simply to provide a “snapshot” in words of something from nature—an experience that many would have not taken the time to consider as carefully as this speaker does.
Other poems are meant to be entertaining (such as a limerick), to be persuasive, to make a comment of something, to express joy/sadness/regret/despair/etc.

6. Then, try to put the poem into your own words. This can be done as a line by line paraphrase or just a general summary of the whole poem or stanza.

7. NOW and only now are you ready to step back and look at any deeper meanings—to see if the poem is a metaphor for something else, or what symbolism might be present, etc. This is where you look at the figurative language (simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, symbolism, and others).
Depending on the poem and its purpose, there may not be any deeper meaning. Some poems are just meant to be enjoyed on the surface, others just play with words. These are the poems that, in medical terms, just need a band aide. Others, as you have discovered, will require other diagnostic procedures, tests, and even exploratory surgery.

“The Convergence of the Twain” by Thomas Hardy
This poem was written about the sinking of the Titanic.
 

Stanza

Explanation

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. 		This one’s easy enough. The Titanic is resting still on the bottom of the ocean. The poem is critical of those that built the ship and the boastful pride that accompanied her launch.
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres		 Steel chambers would be the staterooms, etc. recently the burial structures of the ship.
The cold water threads through the sunken ship rhythmically, like a lyre or harp being played.
Over the mirrors meant
        To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls - grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.		 Sea worms cover the mirrors meant to decorate the ship—now making it an ugly sight.
Jewels in joy designed
        To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.		 The jewelry lies in the sunken ship where the light cannot make it shine and sparkle.
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
        Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"		 The fish are personified here—they look at the fancy decorations of the ship and wonder how it came to be there.
Well: while was fashioning
        This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything		 These two stanzas go together—they are part of the same sentence. “Immanent Will” refers to God. According to this stanza, it was not in God’s plan for the Titanic to sail its wealthy patrons. Instead, God intended for it to hit the iceberg—“Shape of Ice”. This stanza also implies that the iceberg was the intended mate of the Titanic.
Prepared a sinister mate
        For her - so gaily great--
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
And as the smart ship grew
         In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.		 As the ship was being built, the iceberg was also getting larger—far away where no one would suspect the two would soon meet.
Alien they seemed to be;
         No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

These three stanzas are all the same sentence. No human would have suspected the two would ever meet, much less striking against each other. The Titanic and the iceberg were both ½ of a single event—one that could not have happened without both existing. It was God who decided their fate.

The word “consummation” carries on the “mate” image of an earlier stanza.

 
Or sign that they were bent
         By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,
Till the Spinner of the Years
         Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.


In this poem, God is presented as vengeful, unkind, and even cruel to bring about such a disaster. This is an instance where it helps to know a little something about the author’s life. Due to tragic events in his life, Hardy began to find it difficult to believe in a forgiving or nurturing God. Early in his life Hardy had wanted to be a minister, which may be why he does not write in this poem about the human lives that were lost, only about the destruction of the ship and the vain, gaudy accessories on it.

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