1. What is the subject of the poem? [What is it about?]

2. What is the persona (character, mask, or “voice” of the narrative)? What does the poet think of the persona?

3. What is the tone /style of the poem? Is it humorous/serious, vernacular (everyday speech)/ elitist, short or long lines, many or few adjectives (descriptive versus journalistic), musical/ flat, approving/disapproving, formal/informal, intimate/public, solemn/playful, arrogant/humble, angry/loving, etc.?

4. What are poetic devices used in the poem?

• ambiguity: having an unclear meaning. Example: The man was strectcher in the long hours

• symbolism: an object/image that represents something else. Example: The flag symblolizes freedom.

• irony: a gap or incongruity between what a writer says and what is generally understood

5. Is the poem written in the first (“I”), second (“you”), or third-omniscient (“They, him, she, John,” etc.) person?

6. What are the poetic devices used?

• assonance (repititon of vowels) Example: The fat cat leaped in a heap over the hat.

• alliteration: same sound appears at the beginning of two or more consecutive words  Example: Fifty-five years for your fat yams I waited!

• onomatopoeia: imitates the sound it is describing    Example: whip, thump,  sizzle

• simile: compares two different thing using  “like” or “as”  Example: He was like a mad dog.

• metaphor: comparison of two unlike things (not using like or as) using is or “to be” verb. Example: He was a dog in the hunt

• Personification: non-human object takes on the characteristics (actions) of a human Example: The leaves whispered her childhood name.

7. What is the poem’s overarching theme?  Example: One theme of Othello is the Friend that Betrays

8. What is the message of the poem; what new wisdom is experienced? Example: The message of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost might be that there really is not a correct road to take in life, yet one is damned to wonder if there is.

9. What is the form of the poem? [How is it structured?]

• Is it rhymed or unrhymed?                     Is there a rhyme scheme? If so, what it it?

• What is the meter (sound patterns of stressed/unstressed syllables), rhythm (beat). In an iambic pentameter, there is a series of 5 iambs (one stressed, one unstressed syllable)

Example:  Shall I/ compare/ thee to/ a sum/mer's day? (William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18)

See if you can find the stresses on the syllables in one line form the poem.

• Is it a standard/classical form (couplet, Shakespearean sonnet, limerick, etc.) or a modern (Whitman, Saemus Heany, etc.), free form (e.e. cummings, no clear pattern)

• Are the lines short or long, dense or loose, the same length or different length than other lines