Poetry Analysis
By: Naomi Almero
What is poetry analysis? Poetry analysis is when you, personally, take the time to
read and understand a poem while analyzing it. When you analyze poetry, you have to
understand it thoroughly and find the flow of the writing from the writer him or herself. To
analyze is to examine methodically and in detail the constitution or structure of information,
typically for purposes of explanation and interpretation. I analyzed five poems: A Thank-You
Note by Michael Ryan, Mending Wall by Robert Frost, Medusa by Louise Bogan, Two
Guitars by Victor Hernández Cruz, and The Widow’s Lament in Springtime by William
Carlos Williams. Each poem was unique and well-written by its author and contains
entertainment as you read through each word, through each syllable. In my opinion, I love
reading poems, but I love understanding them more because then, I feel more connected or I
feel in sync with what the author wanted to tell its reader. Each poem has as special meaning
through their context and rhythm and with each literary technique, each poem becomes
more of a connection. Like with similes and metaphors, they compare an item to another
item or person, but there’s a reason that they did. How does analyzing poetry help you better
understand? When you read a poem, you use your knowledge to better comprehend the
poem whether you have little knowledge. Always remember that poets use literary
techniques in every poem to show or achieve a particular effect.
In A Thank-You Note by Michael Ryan, I noticed a story in the poem about a father
thanking a friend of his because she sent his daughter pens to write with to show a healing
process. Do you know what happened that might have hurt her? No, you don’t because the
poet has left that with you to understand thoroughly. Michael Ryan had a rhyming pattern
in the poem, with word like “card” and “hard, “sent” and “instrument”, and “done” and “one”
to rhyme. To rhyme is have or end with a sound that corresponds to another. He also had
another literary technique known as a simile. My example in his poem was “Who can love
you as your child does?” A simile is a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing
with another of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid. In this
case, he was comparing the love your child gives you than anyone else.
Robert Frost wrote a poem called Mending Wall. I noticed that when I read the poem
that he used repetition as a literary technique. He would always repeat “Good fences make
good neighbours.” When you use repetition, it is usually used to emphasize on something,
but when I read that line the first time, the only word that came to mind was alone or
loneliness because if you don’t have neighbours, you might as well have fences to keep you
company. Repetition is the action of repeating something that has already been said or
written. Robert Frost also used a lot of comparisons in his poem, an example would be a
metaphor, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to
which is not literally applicable, like “He is all pine and I am apple orchard”. He is comparing
him and another to trees, beautiful trees, I might add.
The third poem I analyzed was Medusa by Louise Bogan. In this particular poem, two
types of literary devices caught my attention: alliteration and tone. Alliteration is the
occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected
words, in this case, “hissing hair”. Medusa is known for her once beautiful locks and now
turned to snakes. What beauty has been rid from her, she turns people to stone when they
glare into her orbs known as eyes. The tone being known as dreadful or sad because the
general character or attitude of a place or situation. An example to show the type of tone was
when Louise Bogan said, “This is a dead scene forever now.”
The fourth poem, Two Guitars by Victor Hernández Cruz, held many examples of
personification as if the guitars, something nonhuman, had live or human-like
characteristics. Victor had added a setting to his poem which was a place or even a where
and when can take place. The setting in this poem contained both time and place which was
1994 in New York. The last poem was The Widow’s Lament in Springtime by William Carlos
Williams. When I first read this poem, I came across these set of words, “…cold fire…”, and I
thought to myself how fire can possibly be cold. That is another literary technique known as
an oxymoron, which is defined as a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms
appear in conjunction. There are also many types of imagery in this poem like how the plum
tree is white today. The poem is about a widowed woman and she talks about all the flowers
and trees she comes across so there is also a story present.
Throughout those five poems I analyzed, I noticed how every poem known to man is
similar and different in their own ways. Poets write poems that have some type of meaning
and add literary techniques to make them seem more interesting and worthy. I believe and
agree that literary devices make poems more interesting and each poem I analyzed kept me
reading more. Some poems are alike and have similar literary techniques, but what they do
with it makes it unique and different, yet special.