How to Write About Poetry

Writing about poetry often turns out to be one of the most difficult tasks that students have to deal with. The very nature of poetry introduces certain challenges for writers that need to analyze it. How can students write an informative, clear, and comprehensive essay about poetry? Writing experts at https://writers-house.com/ service know the answer, and they are ready to share their knowledge with you.

What’s the Purpose?

To write about poetry effectively, students should clearly understand what’s the purpose of such a task. When you need to write an analytical essay about a poem for your English class, the main purpose of this assignment is to provide a thesis about the poem, and to support it, analyzing its specific elements and the way they relate to each other.

Why do teachers assign such tasks? How can you benefit from writing about poetry? Here are some important reasons to consider:

• You can learn to make an argument based on the text. You can understand how to support your ideas using evidence from the text, improving your reasoning skills and learning to interpret someone else’s words using logically correct reasons why your readers should agree with you. These skills are useful not only in the academic world. Such experience will also be appreciated by journalists, politicians, and lawyers.
• You can better understand what you read. People put more effort into understanding difficult material when they need to write about it. In addition, writing helps you focus on things that you would otherwise miss because you need to focus your analysis.
• Writing about poetry can also help you better understand it and enjoy it. You get an opportunity to interpret the author’s words and create meaning with him or her. Writing about a poem not only helps you better understand it but also contribute to a general conversation about it. If your analysis is persuasive and informative, your audience will better understand the poem.

What You Should Write About

Theme: You can start your paper by considering important themes. Does the poetry address such topics as love, peace, death, or war? What are other themes? Is it based on certain historical events? What are its most important concepts?

Genre: What kind of poem is it? It might be an epic poem (based on a heroic subject), a sonnet (a brief poem which is usually 14-lines long), ode, elegy, lyric, or satire. A poem may also belong to a certain literary movement (e.g. Renaissance, Modernism, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, etc). You only need to do your research and gather some background information that will help you distinguish a particular movement or genre.

Versification: Consider the rhyme and meter of the poem, try to identify the rhyme scheme, consider the number of syllables in lines. For example, the most common meter in English poetry is iambic pentameter, which is characterized by five feet with two syllables, where every unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable. To learn more about meter and rhyme, check out the Norton Anthology of Poetry or another standard textbook. We also recommend that you consider such techniques as enjambment (continuing a clause or sentence from one line to another) or caesura (a pause in the middle of a line). Can you draw any conclusions about the poem depending on the author’s choices?

Figures of speech: What literary devices did you notice while reading the poem? Here are some examples of the most common figures of speech:

• simile: comparing two different things using “as” or “like”
• synecdoche: a part that acts as a whole (for instance, in the phrase “all hands on deck,” “hands” mean people in the crew)
• metaphor: comparing two different things
• personification: describing non-human things using human characteristics
• metonymy: one thing describes another thing, related to it (for example, saying “the Oval Office” when referring to the president)
• irony: using a difference between an obvious meaning of words and possible interpretations
• litotes: the intentional use of double negatives (such as “not impossible” or “not unlike”)

Cultural context: What is the historical context of the poem and how did it affect the way it was written? Such questions help you distance yourself from the poem itself and focus on more general aspects, such as philosophy, religion, art, history, economics, etc.

What Style You Should Use

We recommend that you follow some standard requirements when writing your paper about poetry. For example, we recommend that you use the present tense instead of past tense. You should also use quotes from the poem, explaining their significance in the context of your argument. You’ll risk undermining your credibility if you don’t use any quotes to support your claims. If your assignment also requires you to provide outside criticism, you may also include quotes from other critics that support your argument. Make sure to use the right citation format to avoid plagiarism issues. When writing about poetry, the most common citation format is MLA. However, we recommend that you talk to your instructor to understand what format to use.