Poetry Analysis
Did I Miss Anything
Tom Wayman
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything, I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
on earth
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
Gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
The First Things, First
• Title- the “name” of the poem; may
not be very informative
• Speaker- the “who” in the poem; may
not be the poet
• Occasion- the “what” of the poem;
tells where and when
• Stanza- the “paragraph” of the poem;
grouping of lines
The Parts of a Poem
Cinderella
The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,
Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan
Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels
Begin on tilted violins to span
The whole revolving tall glass palace hall
Where guests slide gliding into light like wine;
Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall
Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,
And glided couples all in whirling trance
Follow holiday revel begun long since,
Until near twelve the strange girl all at once
Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince
As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk
She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.
Title
Stanza #1
Stanza #2
Stanza #3
Stanza #4
Poetry Analysis
View the title
What does it
mean?
It may not be
100% correct.
Read the
poem aloud
more than
once
Identify the
speaker and
occasion
Paraphrase/
Summarize
the stanzas
Who? Where?
When?
Put in your
own words
Language
• Diction-the actual meaning of a word and
the choice and arrangement of words by the
poet
– Ex.: scarlet (shade of red); rose (shade of red)
• Connotation-the implied feelings/emotions
associated with a word
– Ex.: scarlet (negative, evil); rose (happy, good)
• Tone-the feeling/attitude of the
speaker/poet
– Ex.:
Poetry Analysis
View the title
What does it
mean?
It may not be
100% correct.
Identify the
tone
What’s the
attitude of the
speaker/poet?
Read the
poem aloud
more than
once
Identify the
speaker and
occasion
Paraphrase/
Summarize
the stanzas
Who? Where?
When?
Put in your
own words
Look at
diction
(meaning)
and
connotation
(feelings).
Figurative Language/Figures of
Speech
• Figurative language- language which means
something different than what is literally stated
• Simile-compares two things; uses “like” or “as”
– Ex.:
• Metaphor-compares two things that are basically
unlike that have something in common; does not use
“like” or “as”
– Ex.:
• Personification-giving human characteristics to
ideas, animals, objects
– Ex.:
• Hyperbole- over exaggeration for effect or humor
– Ex.:
Poetry Analysis
View the title
What does it
mean?
It may not be
100% correct.
Read the
poem aloud
more than
once
Identify the
tone
Look for
figurative
language
What’s the
attitude of the
speaker/poet?
Simile
Metaphor
Hyperbole
Personification
Identify the
speaker and
occasion
Paraphrase/
Summarize
the stanzas
Who? Where?
When?
Put in your
own words
Look at
diction
(meaning)
and
connotation
(feelings).
Surgeons must be very careful
Emily Dickinson
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit – Life!
Metaphor
Eve Merriam
Morning is
a new sheet of paper
for you to write on.
Whatever you want to say,
all day,
until night
folds it up
and flies it away.
The bright words and the dark words
are gone
until dawn
and a new day
to write on.
The Writer
Richard Wilbur
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through a crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her lucky passage.
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk top,
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
Incident in a Rose Garden
Donald Justice
The gardener came running.
An old man, out of breath.
Fear had given him legs.
Sir, I encountered Death
Just now among the roses.
Think as a scythe he stood there.
I knew him by his pictures.
He had his black coat on,
Black gloves, a broad black hat.
I think he would have spoken,
Seeing his mouth stood open.
Big it was, with white teeth.
As soon as he beckoned, I ran.
I ran until I found you.
Sir, I am quitting my job.
I want to see my sons
Once more before I die.
I want to see California.
We shook hands; he was off.
And there stood Death in the garden.
Dressed like a Spanish waiter.
He had the air of someone
Who because he likes arriving
At all appointments early
Learns himself patient.
I watched him pinch one bloom off
And hold it to his noseA connoisseur of rosesOne bloom then another.
They strewed the earth around him.
Sir, you must be the stranger
who threatened my gardener.
This is my property,, sir.
I welcome only friends here.
Death grinned, his eyes lit up
With the pale glow of those lanterns
That workman carry sometimes
To light their way through the dusk.
Now with great care he slid
The glove from his right hand
And held that out in greeting,
A little cage of bone.
Sir, I knew your father,
And we were friends at the end.
as for your gardener,
I did not threaten him.
Old men mistake my gestures.
I meant only to ask him
To show me to his master.
I take it you are he?
Imagery
• Descriptive words or phrases that
create a sensory experience for the
reader
• Appeals to the five senses
–
–
–
–
–
Hearing
Sight
Smell
Taste
Touch
Poetry Analysis
View the title
What does it
mean?
It may not be
100% correct.
Identify the
tone
What’s the
attitude of the
speaker/poet?
Read the
poem aloud
more than
once
Look for
figurative
language
Simile
Metaphor
Hyperbole
Personification
Identify the
speaker and
occasion
Paraphrase/
Summarize
the stanzas
Who? Where?
When?
Put in your
own words
Look for
images
Sight
Smell
Sound
Touch
Taste
Look at
diction
(meaning)
and
connotation
(feelings).
The Seven Ages of Man (from As You
Like It)
William Shakespeare
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Oranges
Gary Soto
The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted –
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl's hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
Rhyme
• End rhyme-the end of the lines rhyme
– Ex.:Roses are red;
Violets are blue;
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you!
• Rhyme scheme-the pattern of end rhyme
– Label the word at the end of the first line with
“a,” anything that rhymes with it will also be
labeled “a.” When there is a new word that
doesn’t rhyme, label it and all the words that
rhymes with it “b” and so on until the end of the
poem.
Rhythm
• Meter- organization of verbal
stresses/speech rhythms into regular
patterns
• Foot- one set of metrical markings
Rhythm
• Consonance- repetition of ending consonant
sounds
– Ex: Susan won a ribbon for her green bean
casserole.
• Alliteration- repetition of beginning
consonant sounds
– Ex: “Wild Wild West,” “Beautiful Baby Boy”
• Assonance- repetition of vowel sounds
within non rhyming words
– Ex:
My grandmothers are full of memories
Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay
Free Verse
• If a poem does not have a regular
pattern of rhyme and meter, we call it
a free verse poem.
Poetry Analysis
View the title
What does it
mean?
It may not be
100% correct.
Identify the
tone
What’s the
attitude of the
speaker/poet?
Read the
poem aloud
more than
once
Look for
figurative
language
Simile
Metaphor
Hyperbole
Personification
Identify the
speaker and
occasion
Paraphrase/
Summarize
the stanzas
Who? Where?
When?
Put in your
own words
Look for
images
Sight
Smell
Sound
Touch
Taste
Identify the
rhyme
scheme and
rhythm
Look at
diction
(meaning)
and
connotation
(feelings).
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you
may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other
thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and meYes!- that was the reason (as all men
know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by
night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more
than loveI and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of
heaven
Coveted her and me.
But our love it was stronger by far than
the love
Of those who were older than weOf many far wiser than weAnd neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
For the moon never beams without
bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the
bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by
the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and
my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Voice
• A writer’s unique use of language that
allows a reader to “hear” a human
personality in his/her writing
Poetry Analysis
View the title
What does it
mean?
It may not be
100% correct.
Identify the
tone
What’s the
attitude of the
speaker/poet?
Read the
poem aloud
more than
once
Look for
figurative
language
Simile
Metaphor
Hyperbole
Personification
Identify the
speaker and
occasion
Paraphrase/
Summarize
the stanzas
Who? Where?
When?
Put in your
own words
Look for
images
Sight
Smell
Sound
Touch
Taste
Identify the
rhyme
scheme and
rhythm
Look at
diction
(meaning)
and
connotation
(feelings).
Identify the
voice
Is there a
personality?
What is it
saying?
since feeling is first
e.e. cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
and death i think is no parenthesis
Theme for English B
Langston Hughes
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of youThen, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston- Salem.
I went to school there, the Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on
this page. (I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other
races.
So will my page be colored when I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of
me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--although you’re older---and white--and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In
The House
Billy Collins
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.
The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,
and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.
When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton
while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
Child Development
Billy Collins
As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs
and sauntered off the beaches into forests
working up some irregular verbs for their
first conversation, so three-year-old children
enter the phase of name-calling.
Every day a new one arrives and is added
to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead,
You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor
(a kind of Navaho ring to that one)
they yell from knee level, their little mugs
flushed with challenge.
Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing
out
in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying
to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack.
They are just tormenting their fellow squirts
or going after the attention of the giants
way up there with their cocktails and bad breath
talking baritone nonsense to other giants,
waiting to call them names after thanking
them for the lovely party and hearing the door
close.
The mature save their hothead invective
for things: an errant hammer, tire chains,
or receding trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.
I Chop Some Parsley while Listening to Art Blakey’s
Version of “Three Blind Mice”
Billy Collins
And I start wondering how they came to be
blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and
sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.
Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,
how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?
And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's
Wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.
Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist
grass
or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.
By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"
which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.
On Turning Ten
Billy Collins
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every
digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary
friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.