*Created by Lori Winkcompleck
FRACTIONS: A Method for Analyzing Poetry
FR
First Reading
In this step, you will read the poem through entirely and, upon completion, write
down your initial impressions. Don’t skip the title! Your comments can be as simple
as “The speaker seems sad about losing something” or “This poem seems to be a
celebration of something.” Although this step seems simple, it is crucial to
analyzing the poem. If you try to begin analyzing parts of the poem before having a
preliminary understanding of the poem as a whole, you are likely to make incorrect
assumptions and misinterpret the poem.
ACT
A Complete Thought
This step requires that you section off the poem into complete thoughts and then
briefly summarize each. Usually, punctuation marks dictate the completion of a
thought or idea, not necessarily the end of a line. Also, a complete thought does not
necessarily mean the end of a sentence. One sentence may contain multiple
complete thoughts. By dividing the poem into complete thoughts and explaining
those thoughts in your own words, you essentially paraphrase the entire poem.
IO
Identify the Obvious
Any poem contains a variety of literary devices. In this step, you must identify the
obvious, tangible literary elements that are present in the poem. You may mark them
on the poem itself, looking for any of the many poetic devices, such as alliteration,
simile, personification, rhyme, and all the others. This is probably the most time-
consuming step of the analysis because you need to make sure that you have
identified and marked every discernible element that you can find in the poem.
N
Nuances
Using the literary elements that you identified in the previous step, you now infer
the nuances—the connotation or suggestions of the poem—such as the tone, overall
effect, and purpose. This is the step that requires you to THINK, to go beyond the
mere identification of the literary elements to your own evaluation of WHY the poet
chose to use them. How do the literary devices help convey the meaning of the
poem? Why did the poet use the particular elements he did? In this step, you suggest
your own ideas and impressions of why you think the poet made the choices he did.
S
Statement of Meaning (Theme)
This is the end result of your analysis. In this step, you must, upon review all of the
previous steps’ information, write a sentence incorporating both the meaning of the
poem and the techniques used to communicate it. If you were writing an essay, this
would be your thesis statement.
*Note that all of these steps should be annotated directly on the poem.