📚AP English Literature Review
What Is Poetry and How Can It Be Analyzed?
What Is Poetry and How Can It Be Analyzed?
AP English Literature and Composition focuses on imaginative literature, including fiction, poetry, and drama. The AP English Literature exam has a multiple-choice section and a free-response section with three essays: one poetry analysis essay, one prose fiction analysis essay, and one literary argument essay. On the exam, students analyze poetry and prose passages in the multiple-choice section and in the poetry and prose fiction analysis essays, and on the Literary Argument essay they write about a work of prose fiction or drama, chosen either from their own reading or from a provided list on the exam. For most students, the task appears daunting, especially in regards to poetry. In this article, I will provide a short guide to understanding and analyzing poetry! Continue to prepare for your exam by checking out this video about the complexities of poetry!
On the AP English Literature exam, poetry analysis is not just identifying devices. You must make a defensible claim about how poetic elements and techniques work together to develop meaning, then support that claim with specific textual evidence and commentary.
What is poetry?
Poetry is, according to famous poet Robert Frost, "a way of taking life by the throat."
🌺 Poetry is relevant.
A lot of people do not like to read poetry because they think it is boring and unimportant outside of the classroom. However, its life expands beyond the textbook to encompass music and art.
"Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry." ~ Maya Angelou 🌟
🌺 Poetry is fluid.
Poems can support more than one interpretation, but on the AP exam your reading must be defensible and grounded in textual evidence. Strong analysis explains how specific details in the poem support your interpretation.
"Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you" ~ Jim Morrison 🌟
Learn more about the importance of poetry by checking out these videos:
🎥 Watch: AP English Literature - Poetry Analysis Part 1
🎥 Watch: AP English Literature - Poetry Analysis Part 2!
What elements compose a poem?
💜 In general, poetry is a literary form that uses language, sound, structure, and imagery to convey experiences, ideas, emotions, or observations. Some poems tell stories, but many focus instead on a speaker's perspective, a moment, an idea, or a pattern of images. Here are a few elements of poetry you can analyze on the AP English Literature exam. Check out this video on how to read a poem for more help💜
In AP Lit, students analyze more than sound and form. Key poetry elements include: speaker and perspective; structure and form (line breaks, stanza divisions, repetition, rhyme, meter); contrasts and shifts (changes in tone, perspective, syntax, or imagery); word choice and imagery; simile, metaphor, and extended metaphor; symbolism and other figurative language; and how these elements support an interpretive argument about the poem as a whole.
⚫️ Speaker/Perspective
🖋️ In poetry, always identify the speaker—the voice of the poem—which may or may not be the poet. Ask who is speaking, to whom, and with what attitude or perspective.
- On the AP exam, the speaker's perspective is often important, but you should also analyze structure and form, contrasts and shifts, imagery, symbolism, and figurative language to explain how the poem develops meaning as a whole.
⚫️ Sound
🖋️ Sound refers to the flow of a poem when it is read aloud.
- It is created using rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme.
- Sound can also create emphasis, reinforce mood, or highlight important contrasts in the poem.
⚫️ Language
✏️ Poetry often operates on both literal and figurative levels. Ask what is happening literally in the poem and what ideas the figurative language suggests.
- Pay special attention to imagery (sensory details), symbols, similes, metaphors, and extended metaphors, and explain how they contribute to the poem's meaning.
- Literary devices like repetition, allusion, personification, and irony can also shape tone and deepen meaning.
⚫️ Shifts and Contrasts
🖋️ Pay attention to shifts in tone, attitude, imagery, syntax, time, or perspective.
- A contrast between ideas, images, or sections of a poem often reveals the poem's complexity and helps explain the speaker's changing understanding.
⚫️ Meter
🖋️ Meter is a more complicated element of poetry.
- Briefly summarized, meter refers to the stressing of syllables within lines of a poem.
- Even if you do not name a meter perfectly, you can still explain how rhythm creates pace, emphasis, or tension.
⚫️ Look / Form and Structure
✏️ The look of a poem is also referred to as its form, but on the exam you should think beyond appearance alone.
- Form and structure include line breaks, stanza divisions, repetition, punctuation, and the organization of the poem.
- Ask how the poem's structure shapes pacing, emphasis, and meaning.
- A poem is composed of lines, and when grouped they form a stanza.
- Some notable forms are the sonnet and the haiku.
- For example, a volta in a sonnet or a shift between stanzas may signal a change in attitude or idea.
⚫️ Building an Interpretation
✏️ The goal of poetry analysis is not to make a list of techniques. It is to explain how those techniques work together.
- Start with a clear claim about the poem's meaning, tension, or speaker.
- Then use specific details from the poem as evidence.
- Finally, explain how those details support your interpretation of the poem as a whole.
If you keep asking who is speaking, what changes, what images stand out, and how the poem's structure shapes meaning, you'll be doing the kind of analysis that helps on the AP exam.