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Writing a Poem Analysis Essay: Strategies & Examples

Writer's picture: MelMel

Updated: Jan 29

A poem analysis essay can be difficult to write because of the notoriously subjective nature of poetic interpretation. However, by following a few strategies and a rigorous template you can write a poem analysis essay that works.


What exactly is a poem analysis essay that works? Just as in the case of other examples of literary analysis, it would be an essay that provides a satisfactory explanation of a poem, its themes, intended effects, actual effects, and how it achieves these effects rhetorically. 


In this article, I provide a few strategies and templates to follow to ensure that you write poetic analyses that you can take pride in. In addition, I provide a few examples that you can use as a template. This includes a biographical-historical approach to Yeats' poem "No Second Troy." which was inspired by the unrequited love of Maud Gonne.


Portrait of Maud Gonne McBride who inspired Yeats' bitter poem "No Second Troy."
Portrait of Maud Gonne, the inspiration of Yeats' "No Second Troy."

What’s the goal of a poem analysis essay?

When writing poetic analyses, the focus should be primarily on explaining the effect of the poem on you the reader. This is what is expected of you by your professor or instructor.


Poems are notoriously subjective. This means you should begin with the universal principles of literary criticism. Then you should expand it to include your personal impressions of the poem. 


Relying on your personal impressions of the poem doesn’t mean that it’s inaccurate or unprofessional. If you read enough poetry and have a good enough grasp of its universal concepts, this means your personal impressions will be informed by this knowledge. 


The challenge is to write an essay where you can make a compelling argument that supports the articulation of how the poem “impresses” you. Before writing an essay, think of asking the following questions: 


  1. What are the intended effects of the poem?

  2. Did the writer achieve any of these effects? 

  3. If so, how did the writer achieve these effects? 

  4. Did the writer fail to achieve these effects, and if so why?


There are various approaches that can be taken to analyze a poem. However, you should not forget the basics. This includes 1. Form,  2. Rhetoric or literary devices, 3. Setting, and 4. Mood and tone, and  5. Persona. 


Form refers to whether or not the poem is written in regular meter or free verse. Rhetorical devices refer to how devices such as metaphor, simile, repetition, and so on are used in the poem. 


Setting, mood, and tone are essential to explaining the emotional effects of the poem. The persona refers to the speaking voice in the poem and their perspective.


Strategies for writing a poem analysis essay

There are various strategies you can take to analyze a poem. Another term for this is critical approaches. For a full explanation of the various critical approaches to literature, you can read this previous article: Critical Approaches to Literature


However, in this article, I will focus on three approaches. They include:


  1. the comparative approach,

  2. the Rhetorical approach, and 

  3. the biographical-historical approach 


In the comparative approach, you compare one or two poems to see how they differ and mirror each other to gain deeper insights. In the rhetorical approach, the main focus is on how the poem uses rhetorical or literary devices to achieve its effects. 


Lastly, in the autobiographical-historical approach, you focus on how the poem could be understood in terms of its relationship with the historical context in which it is set, as well as the relevant facts of the author’s life. 


Comparative approaches

Comparative approaches allow you to enrich your understanding of a poem by comparing and contrasting it to poems with similar themes. In the comparative approach, you can cover the depth of similarity or dissimilarity between poems through a three-stage process. 


This includes:


  1. Pointing out the obvious surface similarities

  2. Going deeper to discover how the poems differ

  3. Synthesizing a new or common understanding despite these differences


You don’t always have to follow this exact process. What if the poems at the surface level show differences? Then your analysis would entail first pointing out these differences. Second, digging deeper to find similarities, and then coming back again to point out fundamental differences.


Also, it does not even have to be a three-stage process. If you discover enough depth and meaning at stage two of the process, there is no need to go any further. 


Here is one poem analysis that compares Wordworth’s “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” with the other four poems in the five-poem Lucy cycle. I focused on how the poems support each other and portray Lucy as a personification or idealization of the various aspects of nature that were so central to Wordsworth's Romantic philosophy of poetry. 


The argument suggest that the poems differ from each other, although being part of a larger whole: 


"She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" is a full explanation of the entire cycle of the Lucy poems. It makes the point of the last stanza of "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” quite clear. Lucy is now caught in "earth's diurnal course / With rocks, and stones, and trees" as she at an early stage was chosen by nature to be its bride.


However, the tone of that poem stands in stark contrast to “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal.” “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” is almost sure evidence that Lucy wasn’t real. It is way too fanciful and artificially poetic, with “Nature” itself speaking and giving an entire monologue about why Lucy was chosen. 


In “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” the poet expresses the genuine shock of losing a loved one suddenly, which many of us have experienced. It reads like something autobiographical, even if Lucy is likely a fictional figure. The poem may have even been partly influenced by someone close to the poet passing away. 


The poet achieves two remarkable effects here. He simulates the emotional effect of the loss of a loved one, and the mystical realization of the nexus between life, nature, and death.


“She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” portrays Lucy as a Genius of nature with a sensitive spirit capable of communing with the spirit of sublime nature. However, it comes nowhere close to the verisimilitude of human emotion at the loss of a loved one that is achieved in the first stanza of “A Slumber Did My Spirt Seal. 


For more examples of comparative analysis of poems, you can check out how three different poems use biblical allusions here: Biblical Allusions in Literature


Rhetorical approaches

Rhetorical approaches focus on the form of the poem and how competently it uses rhetorical and literary devices to achieve its intended effects. This means looking at:


  • Meter and verse forms

  • Rhetorical devices

  • The use of irony and perspective


A good example of a poem that benefits from a heavy rhetorical analysis approach is ‘the mother’ by Gwendolyn Brooks. The poem is written in free verse. However, it uses regular rhyme and numerous repetitive rhetorical devices to achieve its effect.


Let’s look at how Brooks uses repetitive rhetorical devices, such as anaphora, to great effect in the poem. 


Brooks makes rich use of repetition as a rhetorical strategy. We could go so far as to say that the main effects of the poem rely on its ingenious use of repetition.


This is apt as the poem reads as a conversation that the poet is having with herself and her aborted children. Repetition is frequently used to persuade and explain things to listeners. The persona in the poem is trying to persuade herself and the lost souls of her children of the logic and reason in her choice to abort. 


Anaphora occurs when the speaker repeats the same words at the beginning of a phrase or a sentence. The poet uses this frequently throughout her poem. We can even go so far as to say that anaphora stands out as the main rhetorical device used in the poem. 


For example, in the first stanza, the second line says, "You remember the children you got that you did not get." The poet then switches to the "you will never" pattern, repeated three times throughout the stanza. 


In the second stanza, she continues with these repetitive phrases. The first one is "I have . . ." before she switches to "If I . . ." The last stanza also has an instance of anaphora that begins with "Believe me," which is repeated twice. 


The poem despite being in free-verse form uses frequent rhyme, which gives it a somewhat musical quality that we associate with. It also creates a sense of creative tension with the free verse used in the poem. 

 

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Biographical-Historical approaches

In biographical-historical approaches to literature, the focus is on how the biographical facts of the author’s life and historical events shed light on the meaning of the poem.


Let’s get straight into an example. In this case, it is Yeats’ “No Second Troy” (1921): 


Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?


The poem without knowing anything about the biographical or historical facts about it is impressive. At the surface level, it is a poem based on classical allusion.


A woman is being compared to Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in ancient history according to Greek legend. Surely, this is a compliment. But from the very first line, we catch a hint of bitterness in the poet’s tone.


She describes the woman in question as someone who “filled my days / with misery” (Lines 1-2). We also remember that not only was Helen of Troy the most beautiful in the world. She is also the face that launched a thousand ships.


This refers to the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans. This war led to the destruction of Troy and the death of numerous Greek Heroes and leaders. The war came about when Helen ran away with the Trojan prince Paris, although she was married to the Greek King Menelaus. 


So who is this woman who owns this dangerous “beauty like a tightened bow” (Line 8) and how could her beauty in the modern world result in anything that resembled the political crisis represented by the Trojan War? 


The poem was inspired by no one less than Maud Gonne. She was an Irish Republican Revolutionary, who Yeats was in love with, but who constantly rejected his advances. She later married Major John MacBride, who Yeats felt was too low-born for her. 


More than that she advocated for Irish Republicanism and independence from Great Britain, even if that meant violence. She was accused of participating in the lead-up to the Easter uprising of 1916, although she wasn’t directly involved in the uprising against British rule. The Easter Uprising took place before the poem was written in 1910. The poem was published in 1921 in The Green Helmet and Other Poems.


Nonetheless, her husband John MacBride was involved i the uprising and was eventually arrested and executed by the British for it. These historical facts help explain the poem.


Yeats is filled with “misery” because the woman he loved and proposed to four times rejected him and chose a “commoner” over him. This is what he means when he says “taught to ignorant men most violent ways” (Line 3). 


The ignorant man in question is Maud’s husband John MacBride. The violent ways in question is Maud's "reckless" support for Irish Republicanism, which in Yeat's mind was not adamant enough in condemning violence against British rule. In addition, when he says “hurled the little streets upon the great,” he is possibly referring to two things.


First, he could be referring to Maud choosing MacBride, a man inferior in class and refinement over him (that is, a little street). He could also mean how Maud’s Revolutionary Republican zeal led to the violent political turmoil between England and Ireland.


So Maud is portrayed more or less as a femme fatale. She attracts men with her beauty, only to lead them to their downfall and destruction. It is her nature. The title suggests that if the wondrous city of Troy still existed, it would stand no chance against the terrible beauty of Maud. 


In the absence of Troy, it is Yeats, "ignorant men" like John MacBride, and Ireland who have to suffer from her terrible beauty and wrath. This of course is Yeats' perspective, which is rather biased. We would expect it to be after having his marriage proposal rejected four times by Maud.


Before, we knew about the facts of Yeats' life that informed or influenced it, the poem already struck as powerful and brilliant. Now that we know the biographical and historical facts that underlie it, we can describe it as an exquisite piece of embittered art.

 

Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2025, January 23). Writing a Poem Analysis Essay: Strategies & Examples. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/poem-analysis-essay


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