Understanding poetry takes more than just knowing the words. That’s because writers use many different techniques to express ideas and feelings in poems. For some people, recognizing the abstract and figurative language is a challenge.
Here are five tips for understanding and analyzing poems that you can use and share with your child.
1. Read through the poem to get the general idea of what’s going on. Ask yourself, “What is the poem about?” Note the subject of the poem. See what is being discussed or shared.
2. Next, think about the title of the poem. Does the title give you an idea of what the poem is about? Note the connection between the title and the rest of the poem. See if the title helps with understanding what the poem is about.
3. Then ask yourself who’s telling the poem. Note whether the speaker is involved in the poem, or telling the poem like a narrator. See if you can get any clues about the speaker in the poem. Think about things like personality, attitude, and age.
4. Now you can think about the language of the poem. Go through the poem again and identify where the writer uses figurative language. Label the techniques used. Is it personification? Is it visual or tactile imagery? Is it a metaphor or simile? Remember that poetic language is used for a purpose. The author is trying to convey an emotion or an idea with words. This means thinking about the author’s intention will help you. So ask yourself why the author used that particular technique. Why not something else? What is the important idea that you must understand in this part of the poem?
5. Once you’ve gotten an idea of what each of the techniques convey, replace the figurative language with the explanation. Read the poem again with your explanations to get a better understanding of the meaning of the poem and the ideas the writer is sharing.
After doing all of that, you can now discuss the poem with more confidence. You’ll be able to comment on the techniques used, the ‘speaker’ in the poem, and the ideas or emotions the poem is sharing. From there you’ll also be able to talk about why you think the author wrote the poem the way it was written.
This type of analysis is a process that gets easier with time, so read poetry and practice it often.
