How To Write About Poetry: Technical Terms To Use

Understanding and Writing about Poetry 1. Comment on Structure and how it adds to meaning To work out the meaning of the poem it often helps to focus on the title. Then focus on the first and last few lines. These should tell you what the poem is about, and hopefully what message the poet wants the reader to take away at the end. If it ends in a rhyming couplet, say why the poet chose to rhyme or end with those particular words. Comment if there is an interesting contrast or juxtaposition (where two ideas / words / characters are put together to create a particular effect).

Part way through the poem, look for a twist or shift in mood/place/person/zoom in or zoom out. In War Photographer, the poem shifts between UK, photographs and memories of war. Comment on what effects this creates. Why do you think the poet shifts between emotive language and emotionless, matter-of-fact phrases? Poems often describe unusual feelings or things that seem to be a contradiction (things that seem not to make sense). So comment on it! The poet wants to make you think about things like 1. Problems we can't solve 2. How we are hypocritical 3. How ordinary things can also be unusual 4. How we deceive ourselves (and others), and more.

Some technical Terms for structure

Stanza (like a paragraph) TIP: count the number of lines in each stanza to work out how regular the poem is. Is it perfectly regular, broken into short bursts or long section where ideas can be developed in more detail? NOTE how each stanza ends, starts. Is there a pattern? Repetition, rhyme? How do ideas develop through each stanza?

Sonnet is a very regular poem (looks square) with fourteen lines. It has a rhyming couplet at the end. It also has a twist or volta at the end of the first eight lines and start of the ninth. The first eight lines set up the idea; the next four comment on it, and the couplet (the final two lines) contains the moral or lesson.

Rhythm is the number of beat or syllables to a line. Shakespeare's poetry has ten beats in each line. Count them to find out if a poem is regular. This suggests order, discipline. Run on line is where the sentence goes over the end of the line(s). This can create an effect of breathlessness, breaking out of the limits of the line - and more.

Rhyme has many different types. End rhyme is where the ends of lines rhyme, either with the next line aa bb cc (also known as rhyming couplets) or in a less regular, but still noticeable pattern abab cc or ababcdcd etc. Internal rhyme is where words inside a line rhyme together. Half rhyme is where they almost rhyme (e.g. bat and boat). The effect of rhyme is usually to make the reader compare the words together and look for contrast, interesting links/development etc.

Repetition also has various types. There may be direct repetition of the same word, repetition of a similar form of that word (vile, vilest), repetition at the start or end of sections. Comment on why THIS WORD or idea was repeated and in what different contexts (i.e. the other words/ideas around it - does it change, develop the idea in some way by putting it in a new context?)

VOICE (i.e. who 'speaks' the poem): first person (I), third person (he, she, they). Does it directly appeal to the reader? Is it in the voice of the poet (autobiographical), or is it a dramatic monologue (where the poet writes as if they are a particular character)?

2. Comment on the THEME. What is the moral or message the poet is trying to get across? How do features within the poem build up this effect on the reader?

You can remember these with the acronym APOSSUMZ.

Alliteration e.g. melt like mist (links words to emphasise contrasts or connections, or just to enhance the emotion of the word)

Personification e.g. the wind sang a dismal tune (where any animal or object is described with human qualities or actions)

Onomatopoeia (and other sounds, sibilance, assonance, consonance, soft, gentle, harsh, quick)

Similes e.g. melt like mist, soft as snow (any comparison using like or as) The poet adds qualities of another object into the poem, with further sensory or emotional appeal

Sensory language appeals to the five senses (sights, smells, sounds, touch, taste). Also comment on emotive language. Comment on key words that add to the theme or appeal particularly to the reader's feelings.

Unusual imagery (contrasts, juxtapositions, oxymorons). If something seems odd or baffling, comment on why you think the writer might have put those things together.

Metaphors 'forests of the night', 'spools of suffering' (like a simile in that it is not literally true, but does not use like or as, so the link is more direct).

Zooming in on particular details/elements. Comment on places where the writer zooms out to give an overview or comment if they fix on a particular detail, e.g. fingerprints in dust.