Antecedent Scenario: What Has Been Happening Before the Poem Begins

Intro to Poetry Analysis – Exploring a PoemMB Ferrell AP Literature and Composition

Adapted from Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology, Second Edition, 2002. Helen Vendler, Bedford St. Martin

Antecedent Scenario: What has been happening before the poem begins? What has provoked the speaker into utterance? How has a previous equilibrium be unsettled? What is the speaker upset about: / Title, author, year, genre, historical literary period, historical context
Division into parts: How many? Where do the breaks come? Reference line numbers. / The other parts: What makes you divide the poem into these parts? Changes in pov? In tense? In parts of speech? In speaker? / How do the other parts fall around the breaks?
Skeleton: What is the emotional curve on which the whole poem is strung? (It helps to draw a shape – a crescendo, an hourglass, or a sharp ascent followed by a steep decline so you’ll know how the poem looks to you as a whole.) / Games with the skeleton: How is the emotional curve made new?
Language: What are the contexts of diction? Chains of significant relation? Parts of speech emphasized? Verb tenses emphasized? / Tone: Name the pieces of the emotional curve – the changes on tone you can hear in the speaker’s voice as the poem progresses. / Volta: Where is it? The tone changes from what to what? What effect is created by the volta?
Agency and its speech acts: Who is the main agent in the poem, and does the main agent change as the poem progresses? See what the main speech act of the agent is, and whether that changes. Notice oddities about the agent and speech acts. / Tone is described with adjectives – describe at least two instances of tone and the effect they create.
Point/s of view: / Motivation:
Roads not taken: can you imagine the poem written in a different person, or a different tense, or with the parts rearranged, or with an additional stanza, or with one stanza left out? Discuss why the poet wanted these pieces is this order. / Imagination: What has this poem invented that is new, striking, memorable – in content, in genre, in analogies, in rhythm, in a speaker?
Figurative Language: What figurative language is present, and what effect does it create? / Themes: What themes are present in this poem? How is the theme created?
How does figurative language create theme? / Symbolism: what symbols are present? How does they create theme?
Personal Reaction: What is your reaction to the title? The poem? The volta? The theme? The poem after the third reading? Why do you like or dislike this poem? / How is theme relevant to universal application?

Other observations?

1 | Page