How to Read a Poem Closely and Carefully

1. How to Read a Poem Closely and Carefully

2. Tip #1: Underline or Highlight • Remember: • *for parts you like • !For parts that seem important • ?For parts that need clarification • Underline or highlight or take notes on passages that stand out. • Things you might look for: • Repeated images, words or ideas • Words or phrases that jump out as important • Words or phrases that can be interpreted in more than one way • Irony or ambiguity • Passages you don’t understand • Figurative language • Symbolism

3. Tip #2: Checking for Understanding • After you read, make sure you understand the basic idea or message in the poem • Talk about your ideas with a partner or group • Use the Read/Think/ Wonder grid • Look for associations you make with words that don’t align with what you already know, for example • An angel is normally associated with cleanliness and purity. • Passages that emphasize dirtiness might be important.

4. Tip #3: Meanings of Words • Look up words you don’t know in case they have meanings that help clarify the poem’s meaning. For example: Beguile – • 1. To entangle or over-reach with guile; to delude, deceive, cheat. • 2. To deprive of by fraud, to cheat out of. • 3. To cheat (hopes, expectations, aims, or a person in them); to disappoint, to foil • Look for words that you don’t understand or that might be important • In a poem, especially short poems, all words are important.

5. Tip #4: Re-read • Re-read passages you did not understand the first time. • Never ignore anything that you don’t understand. • Keep working at and discussing difficult passages until they make sense.