Poetry often seems to scare people. Here’s a straightforward video presentation that demystifies and helps you to understand and appreciate poetry:
n.b. The definition of alliteration in the video above is wrong – alliteration is the repetition of the initial (first) sound in a string of words. If those repeated sounds happen to be consonants, then it is also consonance – but if they’re vowels, it is also assonance.
Don’t forget that poetry is a different country (They do things differently there). Where you may think about a prose or drama excerpt, the poem is more for feeling. One good way of approaching a poem is to ask yourself how it makes you feel. This may or may not be the poet’s intention, but that’s beside the point – try to work out why it makes you feel this way. Then just ensure that you remove personal pronouns and focus it instead on the poet and his/her writing techniques (Always WHAT, HOW and above all WHY). Thus, “I feel uneasy when I read this poem” becomes “This poem generates a sense of unease through…” Finally, don’t forget that it is no good just to identify the ‘WHAT’ – you have to explain the HOW and the WHY.
