This should help with analysing those poems:D enjoy!
Questions To Answer Before Writing
1. Who is speaking? 10. End rhyme scheme?
2. To whom? 11. Alliteration?
3. About? 12. Assonance?
4. Tone? 13. Consonance?
5. Examples of abstract imagery? 14. Caesura?
6. Examples of concrete imagery? 15. Enjambment?
7. Examples of denotative language? 16. Theme?
8. Examples of the 5 figurative devices? 17. Rhythm / Meter?
9. Examples of rhetorical devices? 18. Syntax?
Writing Your Paper
The actual writing of the paper is probably the easiest task because you have already identified everything that needs to be covered. You may wish to cover all the important items in your own order, however, the order listed above does work well.
Most likely you will not be able to simply write a few lines for each device, rather you must group these devices together. A proper order of paragraphs may flow like this:
I. Dramatic Situation
A. Who is speaking?
B. To whom is that speaker speaking?
C. What is the situation?
D. What is the speaker’s tone?
II. Imagery
III. Theme
IV. Diction (word choice)
A. Connotation (suggested meaning of words)
B. Denotation (dictionary definition)
C. Abstract (can only be understood intellectually)
D. Concrete (words describing physical objects)
E. Kinds of language
1. Figurative
a. Metaphor (implied comparisons)
b. Simile (comparison using ‘like’ or ‘as’)
c. Personification (giving human characteristics to an inanimate object)
d. Metonymy (the use of an attribute or quality of an object to represent the object itself)
e. Synecdoche (substitutes a significant part of something for the thing itself)
2. Rhetorical
a. Irony (opposite of what is meant)
b. Hyperbole (exaggeration)
c. Allusion (reference to something)
d. Pun (play on words)
e. Paradox (contradictory)
f. Oxymoron (self contradictory term)
g. Litotes (form of understatement)
V. Syntax (sentence structure)
A. Length
B. Transposed elements
C. “Unusual” sentences
VI. Conclusion
