Close Reading: poetry

Be an active reader.
Dont just read for plot (to find out what happens).
Write on the text! Underline, write questions in the margins, stick stickies in
there, keep your mind moving along with your eyes as you read.

A reader who isnt responding to the text isnt reading.

Read it again! You wouldnt glance at a painting once and then write a paper
on it. Dont do that with a poem. Read and re-read and re-re-read your
passage.
Think of the text as a whole.
We read texts from front to back in a linear fashion, but writers jump all
around, changing things and fitting pieces together to make a structure, not
just a line of words. Find that structure.
Compare chapters, stanzas, or sections. Compare voices. Compare the end
and the beginning. Find meaning in the differences.
Ask questions. Why did the poet make the poem look/sound/seem like this?
Why end a stanza here? Why omit this? And include that? Question, question,
question!
Where does your selection/passage fit in the text as a whole? Youre using
your literary microscope to look intensely at a small portion of the text, but
dont ignore the rest of the beast. The point of focusing on a small portion isnt
to just describe that little bit; its to draw conclusions about the whole from
examining a piece.
Be bold.
You can say I think or I feel.
Your personal response to the text matters. Youre one of the readers that the
poet imagined as she sat for hours alone in a room writing this text.
But dont just give your emotional response. Examine your responses and find
what the poet does to evoke them.
Find the context.
What do you need to know to understand this text?
Look up definitions, historical context, literary context, biographical context
(but be wary of the lastjust because the poet had a similar life to the does
not mean you can conflate the two).
Find the narrator/speaker.
Whos telling this story?
o First person, second person, third person limited or omniscient, etc.
Sometimes it seems like there is no speaker and the poet is talking directly to
us. Distrust that. The speaker is always separate from the writer. Find little
hints and tells that show you how the speaker/narrator thinks.
Why are they telling this story? What is the purpose of using this form of
narration?
Find the audience.
Is the poem addressed to a specific person?
Is the poem addressed to you, the reader? (this is called direct address)

Who is the poem talking to?

What is the audience meant to learn or gain from the poem?
How does that match up with what you as the reader gain?

Examine themes/motifs/metaphors.
What kind of imagistic and symbolic language is being used? (for example, is
the poet using metaphors about war to talk about love? Why would she
choose this seemingly discordant image-system?)
How do the images and the themes connect (or seem to clash)? Why does the
poet do this?

Examine how the poem looks on the page.

Look at the line breaks. Is there enjambment, or are all the lines end-stopped?
Why would the poet choose to do this?
Do the lines break in unexpected places or on unexpected words? Why?
Where do the stanza breaks fall? Can you see why the poet made those
choices?
Is the poem one block of text? in couplets? in quatrains (four line stanzas)?
How does this affect your experience of the poem?
Are there white spaces around words or breaks in the line? Why?
Is the first letter of every line uppercase or lowercase? why?
Examine the quality of the language used.
What rhythms and forms does the poet employ? and why?
Is the language lush? Or spare? and why?
What does the language used indicate about the poets purposes for the text?
Do the kind of rhythms and language used reflect the poems themes or
contrast with them? Why?
Is there repetition:
o at the beginning of the line: anaphora
o of sounds at the beginning of words: alliteration
o of whole lines: refrain
o WHY does the poet repeats these? what effect does it have on the
reader?

Putting together a close reading.

1. EXAMINE all the above facets of the text (and more!) first.
2. THEN MAKE A CLAIM about these specific uses of literary
devices/language. Start with evidence-gathering, and once you feel
you understand how your passage works, make a claim about what it
does/what the purposes of the literary devices are.
3. SUPPORT your claim with EVIDENCE and ANALYSIS. Prove it to me
with detailed analysis, succinct and purposeful quotes, and careful
explanation.
4. SHOW how your claim matters to the text as a whole. What role does
your passage play in the texts overall project?