POETRY PRESENTATION & POETRY INTERPRETATION
PAPER GUIDELINES
The Poetry Presentation (group) and the Poetry Interpretation Paper (on your own) have the same
format. It does not follow the format of a 5-paragraph intro-body-conclusion school paper, so
don’t organize it like one. I want a 3-part format that looks like this:
 A POETIC FEATURES LIST: This part should not be a bunch of sentences. You should
not be trying to compose any thesis statements. What I want is a detailed inventory of all the
poetic features you can find in the poem you are analyze. The inventory should be a LIST of
poetic features beginning with, in your judgment, the most important poetic feature to the
poem, and so on down the list. So, for example, you decide the most important poetic feature
in Poem X is metaphor. Make metaphor the first poetic feature on your list—and then show
me where all the metaphors are in the poem and describe them. You do not have to explain
yet what they mean; you need only be as descriptive as possible. Do this for all important
poetic features in Poem X.
 A DISCUSSION OF SPEAKER & TONE: Remember, I said Speaker and Tone were the two
most important poetic features. Consequently, they get their own little section for discussion.
In this section you can write sentences. Your job is to tell me about the Speaker of the poem
and the Speaker’s attitude (Tone) as he/she/it speaks the words of the poem. Sometimes all
you will be able to tell me about a Speaker is that it is an entity speaking; other times you
may be able to specify gender or other traits. One way or the other, you have to try to prove
what you say about the Speaker by using the language of the poem. Tone is characterized as
an adjective of some sort: happy, sad, angry, frightened…In any event, keep in mind that
Tone is often a mixture of more than one attitude (writers are very complex people  ).
Also, do not judge Tone by theme—not all poems about death (theme) are expressed in a
depressive Tone.
 MEANING: Okay, here’s where you put it all together. Look at all the wonderful details
you have found in Part1 and all the wonderful insights into Speaker and Tone you found in
Part 2. Then, use them to tell me what the theme/point/claim/purpose/message/point of the
poem is. Warning: Poets do not sit down to express ideas which we all know already. Don’t
let your interpretation of theme be some great big cliché like “life has its difficulties.” Yuk!!
Anyway, in this section you are making your main argument about what a poem means; thus,
any claim you make about the meaning, make sure you go to the detailed language of the text
to prove your claim(s).
GOOD LUCK !!!!!