by Felicity Jakc

Created on: March 07, 2009   Last Updated: April 13, 2009

Poetry is the creative distillation of an experience which the writer seeks to reproduce beyond the corporal self, through the particular medium of poetry. The experience can be an idea, an event, an emotion, a response to a place or a thing, the response intellectural, sentimental or sensual.

The art of writing poetry is paradoxically, both free and rule bound; simple on the surface yet in meaning most complex. It can glow with exquisite simplicity, or be terrifyingly obtuse. Sometimes an empty line, is a line of poetry.

Sometimes people refer to there being poetry in a photograph, a way of walking, even something as staid as a report. What they refer to is a quality which is ethereal and intangible, a special otherness, difference, flavor or sense that goes beyond the immediate, the everyday, and, sometimes, the recognizable or even identifiable - but which is always wonderful.

Reading poetry can be tricky.Some people take to it immediately. Poetry sings for them, speaks from the page with no requirement save the measured movement of the words through their minds. The link between music and words and images works for these readers immediately and for them analysis is not needed for enjoyment, unless it be another way of enjoying the words.

For the rest of us, and for students of Literature, and for those who like to pull things apart and see how they work (no judgement intended here), analysis of poetry is either a necessity or a joy.

I fit into the category of those whose reading sometimes stumbles. I often need to analyse in order to understand, and from there I can move to pleasure. I love it when poetry works for me. Poetry catches the essence of things, it can stop time for me, it gives me insights through the play of words via either no rules, or forcing them to fit a strict pattern - so I persevere.

This is what I have learnt about analyzing a poem.

Just read it

Forget or leave out for the moment, anything you know about literary theory. Take each word one at a time, go back over them as often as you like. If it doesn't make immediate sense move with no anxiety or concern to the next word, the next phrase. If something a bit further on resonates with something earlier, go back. Just as in poetry there are rules only if the poet chooses, so there are no rules in reading. Read from the bottom line upwards if that works for you.

Read it over and over

This cannot be overstated. Read it ten times. If if begins to irritate or annoy - identify the section that is causing

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