Topic 1- 6 Round-up and Self Assessment > Analysing a whole poem

Analysing a whole poem

Topics 1-4 have been concerned mainly with the analysis of poetry, and although we will learn more things relevant to poetry analysis in other parts of this course, now is a good time to consolidate what we have explored so far by looking at a whole poem. We will 'guide' you through this poem by examining it at a number of different language levels in turn. We won't examine every single aspect of the poem as not every linguistic detail is stylistically relevant (relatable in a clear way to meaning and effect). Instead, we will go through the poem looking at the foregrounded features at various linguistic levels.

Task A - Read through the poem several times

The first step is to read the poem a number of times so that you feel you are familiar with it, and understand it at least in a general way (hopefully you will understand it in a lot more detail after doing the analysis). So, read the poem through a few times now, talking about it with anyone next to you, before you go on to Task B.

Task B - Write down your general understanding of poem

The next step is to write down your general intuitive understanding of the poem. You will need this to refer back to as you go through the various stages of analysis. Effectively, it becomes the interpretative hypothesis that you will need to check each level of analysis against, as you go along. You may find that you need to change your interpretation, at least to some degree, in the light of that analysis. So it is important to write your views down now, as a record of your starting point. Try to write more than a few words - a paragraph of a few lines is probably about right. You need to get at least some detail into what you say in order to have something to check. When you have come up with your views on the poem, compare them with ours.

Our comments

If you disagree with us, you can then use the linguistic analysis at its different levels to try and decide whether your account of the poem is better than ours, or whether they are both equally valid.

Task C - Intertextual relations

Most of the work we have done so far on this website has had to do with levels of language structure. But in Topic One: Session A we pointed to the fact that texts can have intertextual relations with other texts. Look at the last three lines of the poem. They are foregrounded orthographically and may well remind you of a nursery rhyme. How are they foregrounded orthographically? What nursery rhyme is being alluded to? And what effect does this allusion have on the poem as a whole? Jot down some ideas, and then compare your comments with our analysis.

Our comments

Task D - Identify graphical deviations

We have explored graphological deviation in the last three lines of the poem. Now we'd like you to go through the rest of the poem (beginning with the title), line by line, isolating any other graphological deviations and explaining them and their effects. As you come across graphological deviation, note down any comments you have about that particular line or lines, and then view our comments.

Before you begin, we'd like you to take a couple of minutes to jot down your general impressions, and then compare them with our general observations.

General observations    

Our comments

Task E - Look at how the poem starts

Now let's have a look at how the poem starts. Does it start in an 'orderly' way? What kind of effect is created by the first line? Write down your response and then compare it with our analysis.

Our commens

Task F - Grammatical structure

The second sentence of the poem contains a series of quite extensive grammatical parallelisms which it is important to understand. We will isolate them and comment on the effects of the parallelism here. But it also turns out that the parallel items are semantically deviant too, and so we will finish our commentary on the relevant lines in Task G, when we look at semantic deviation.

First, though, let's notice the overall grammatical structure of sentence 2. Line 7 contains two coordinated main clauses 'Comeclose' and 'Sleepnow', but the second of these main clauses then extends to the end of the poem, with a series of subordinate clauses, some of which, in turn, have other subordineate clauses nested inside them. The conjunction 'for' (menaing because) in line 8 is the beginning of an adverbial clause which gets picked up in line 15 ('for in the morning . . . you will put on a dress of guilt and shoes with broken high ideals'). This adverbial clause has another adverbial clause coordinated with it: 'and . . . run alltheway home'. this last clause has another adverbila clause ('refusing coffee') embedded inside it, and the clause beginning 'for in the morning' in line 8 has two coordinated adverbial clauses embedded inside it ('when a policeman disguised as the sun creeps into the room and your mother disguised as birds calls from the trees').

The parallelisms we want you to concentrate on are (a) the two coordinated adverbial clauses in lines 9-14 (quoted above) and (b) the two coordinated noun phrases whice are objects to 'put' in lines 15-16. Explain exactly how the parallel parts are parallel in grammatical terms and also what effect the parallelism has. Then compare your answer with ours.

Our comments

Task G - Sematic deviations

Now let's have a look at semantic deviations in the poem and the meanings and effects associated with them. Work out your comments on each semantic deviation you find and compare what you say with what we say.

Our comments

Task H - Phonetic parellelisms

We have already noticed some phonetic parallelisms (rhyme relations between words in the poem and other words outside the text which form part of clichés which are parallel grammatically to the relevant parts of the poem) when we have discussed semantic relations in lines 2, 9-14 and 15-16. But there are a few more phonetic parallelisms which, although not as significant, are probably worth commenting on in the poem. Identify these extra phonetic parallelisms and explain their importance and associated effects. Then compare your thoughts with ours.

Our comments

Concluding Remarks

1. In this analysis we have not commented on absoloutly everything in the text. Instead, we have focused on the matters which seem to us to be foregrounded and relevant interpretatively. Any alternative account of the poem would at the very least have to take account of the foregrounded features we have discussed.

2. We have gone through the text an aspect at a time in a way which we hope you will have found revealing. Note, however, that if you were writing up a stylistic ananlysis of a text as an essay you would almost certainly have to structure your writing differently from the way we have done it here. When writing an essay it is important to (a) to make your interpretation clear, (b) to discuss all the foregrounded elements and other elements which you feel are relevant to that interpretation, (c) to be as explicit, detailed and honest as you can be in your account of the text and (d) be as helpful to your reader as you can by presenting what you say in a way which makes your interpretation as explicit and detailed as possible.
   

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