I still feel like I am horrendous when it comes to understanding poems, the message just never hits me and I end up wasting a lot of time reading it over and over. Does anyone have any tips with how I (or anyone else) can improve?
My advice might be rather contradictory. But here it goes…
Don’t try to understand the message of the poem.
Your essay should be
Topic Sentence (observation) + (power verb) + (inference)
Expand the observations using quotes
Tie in with the inference
Make a claim about theme
Do this three times and your on your way to a 7+ on your essays!
See how this template avoids focusing on an overarching theme for the poem.
Thanks for the advice! If its not too troubling, may I ask you for an example of an effective topic sentence? @tau628
I am terrible at interpteting poetry. What helped was googling for the analyses of people with the knack for interpreting them. It makes you aware of the imagery and structure poets use to convey different things. I’ve had a lot of “Huh?” moments, but improved by learning what to look for.
Tau is offering a good way to get around not necessarily understanding. Take from a poem what you can and then intelligently flesh out your observation.
Through descriptions of lonely snowy paths of the 19th century New England countryside, the speaker reflects the coexisting simplicity and munificence of the bucolic forest.
For the famous Frost poem. Doesn’t matter that I don’t understand what it’s saying. Just take pieces that you know.
Would the model for AP Language analyzing rhetoric work if adjust properly?
Poet, poet’s name, in his/her poem, “title of poem,” conveys “general gist/theme,” through the use of “enjambments, diction, figurative language, and etcetera.” The speaker adopts a ____ tone in order to “general message.”
Yes.